Anyone who knows me knows that I am a strong advocate of mini-whiteboards (MWBs). Brief thread explaining the WHENWHYBY: when are they useful, why are they useful and how do you make them useful: First, a CAVEAT

This is a thread. Not a full blown training session. It contains nuggets, no more. Towards the end of the thread I will signpost more content. If you are planning on delivering training from scratch based on this thread or building policy, please don't.

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YES we are discussing PowerPoint again!

Ok, ok so first: If someone says

"PowerPoint sucks"

And you say

"It's just a tool, it depends how it's used"

That's right, but it isn't a good argument. Why not? READ ON First, because tools are - almost by definition - designed for different jobs. A screwdriver is good for driving screws, and bad for hammering nails.

If you are hammering nails with a screwdriver and someone says "don't do that", you wouldn't say "it's just a tool, it depends how it's used."

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Here's a little experiment for you to try that relates to Teaching & Learning and professional development.

First, read the scenario below.

Second, before hitting the following post in the thread, try and predict "what would happen next in this lesson"

Scenario: Here's what happened next:

[This is a real lesson, and these are my real observations (I'm Ms C in this scenario).]

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Turn and Talk is very popular right now, I see it in most lessons I go to.

HOWEVER, in 95% of cases I watch it and think "that lesson would have been better without it to be honest"

Why? 👇 When there's a T&T in play, I almost always see at least one of:
Minimum 25% of the class just not doing it
Finishing well early
Doing it for something where everyone knows the answer
Doing it for something where nobody knows the answer
Melding into just chatting really quickly

In the past weeks, I've seen a number of people make snide remarks about researchEd and how its presenters and organisers don't produce research. People asking for the papers they've written and stuff like that. This is simultaneously stupid and a fantastic cause for hope.

Read on > It is stupid because researchEd is not an organisation dedicated to producing research. Instead, it is about translating, implementing and disseminating research findings. Let's be clear, the people making this complaint are not serious. BUT

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A little story about behaviour, relationships, expectations and consequences:

A while back, I taught a really tough Year 11 class. There weren't many of them in the room. Their attendance was sporadic. They hated science, and weren't doing very well.

> The students in there were very challenging. Lots of needs, lots of difficult home lives etc. Not straightforward.

Individually, I got on extremely well with every single one of them. I did my lunch duty near where they hung out and we used to chat and have jokes and stuff. Relationships were strong.

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Most of the time, homework doesn't work. There are lots of reasons for this, but one biggie is that a key part of the evidence is all too often overlooked. Short thread to explain what that is 🧵👇 There isn't a huge amount of evidence on homework. But the EEF handily summarise what there is, and one of the things that sparks off big questions in my head is this:

Been reading the @RoySocChem's very interesting Science Teaching Survey report and thought I'd snip a few bits out



> rsc.org/policy-evidenc…




If you thought behaviour was a problem in England, wait till you see Scotland and Wales...

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I need to stop tweeting about Inquiry and research papers about it.

I *know* it doesn't work. I've been in ~500 lessons over the last ~18 months, and in any case when the teacher was not explicit about something, a good number of students then didn't understand that thing. Two quick notes

1. It's worth asking yourself "hm, I wonder what type of student was most likely to not understand that thing"

If you aren't sure, the answer is "probably the one that needed to understand it the most."

Lots of people are now talking about attention and strategies for ensuring students are listening. I think that's a Good Thing, so here are some things that might help 👇👇

First - Ratio. I wrote this based on Lemov almost 4 years ago! Still useful imo!
achemicalorthodoxy.co.uk/2020/02/09/rat… The longer you spend questioning one student, the more likely it is that others in the room will switch off. Questioning the one student is important though, so you need to use techniques that keep everyone else involved.

achemicalorthodoxy.co.uk/2022/05/25/kee…

At TTA for the bulk of our verbal questioning we use a form of Cold Call that involves a) putting the name at the end of the question, and b) targeting specific students. So NOT hands up, NOT calling out, and NOT at random.

How do we target? Based on what?

> This will vary. Bread and butter check for understanding questions* would be targeted to students who tend to take a bit longer to grasp the concepts than others. So, if they get the answer right, we can make an "ok" inference that other students might also have grasped it.

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My position is that "getting students into a room and working as quickly as possible" is desirable, and mucking about with fancy and unpredictable teacher led activities is inefficient and undesirable.

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https://twitter.com/adamboxer1/status/1733550410957201586

By all means, do those activities if you think they are great for learning or motivation, just don't do them *then*. If you think that they will be effective when kids are wandering in, getting stuff out their bags, coming late, asking you for a pen, explaining why they don't >

Who are the Jews? Where did they come from? Why do ostensible "Europeans" or "white people" want to live in the Middle East?



A short (hopefully) thread with a historical overview.

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https://x.com/adamboxer1/status/1721298547914526966?s=20

Just over 3000 years ago, there was a region called Canaan. Lots of tribes lived there. They didn't much like each other. It's (roughly) the northern orange spike here:

Tonight's thread is in response to the number of people who have asked me variations on:

"I have a Jewish friend/colleague. Should I say something to them?"

The short answer is YES ABSOLUTELY

"I'm so sorry for what's going on, are you ok?" is 100% welcome. But please read on: I think it's a fascinating question, because it gets to the heart of some really important cultural understandings. To explore, we start with:

why would a person *not* ask the question, or *not think* to ask the question?

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Here are a few thoughts on what has happened, and what I think will happen. They are my opinion, and I make no claim to expertise beyond that available to any other layperson.

As ever, honest and open discussion is welcomed, racism, stereotyping and straw-manning is not.

> It is important to distinguish between three (admittedly related) concepts:

Justly going to war
Justly behaving within war
Justly exiting a war

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Absolutely glorious day today observing three teachers who are in their 4th year of teaching and trained with us and are absolutely SMASHING IT

What things did I really like? First, their confidence and control. They knew exactly what they wanted to do in the lesson and in what order. They were in total command of the subject and how they were going to allow it to flow, and were entirely unflappable and adaptable whatever cropped up.

Pete's asked a great question. How do you balance the need for spaced retrieval, which may not be related to the lesson content, with the need to activate and retrieve information that is related or necessary for the lesson?

READ ON

https://twitter.com/adamboxer1/status/1686812986936016898

I start every lesson with a Do Now based on prior content. Students complete in back of book. Purposes:

Settler
Spaced retrieval
Triangulating with homework

carousel-learn.medium.com/starting-your-…

A couple of months ago I had some thoughts about Ofsted changes that I wrote down. They aren't comprehensive or fully formed, but maybe they will help the discussion, and I checked them with some Smart People who said they weren't entirely stupid. > I also want to frame this by saying that I don't think Ofsted is an evil entity. I think that accountability is a good thing, I think that Ofsted inspectors and workers want to do a good job and are good people. I refuse to make this personal.

Anyway, here goes.

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i saw something really interesting in a lesson today, so thought i would share - one for all the diehard T&L nerds out there!

So, the teacher is going over a retrieval starter. one of the questions has multiple answers.

> they ask student A, who gives answer X. Teacher goes yup, great, and prepares to bounce it to someone else in a bid to get answer Y as well. He asks student B, who says "sorry sir, but that's what I wrote too", so he asks student C instead who says Y. All good, right?

WRONG

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THREAD about resources, tech, and getting better as a teacher:

I know it sounds weird, but I'm going to try and make a super important and profound point, by reference to something a bit flippant and silly:

THE DEBATE ABOUT CHISEL TIPS VS BULLET TIPS

Read on > So basically, the debate is about which one writes better. Historically, it's used as a bit of a joke, but it's a serious point tbh, if you write more clearly with one rather than the other, that's the one you should use.

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Been working with a bunch of senior leaders over the last few weeks who have asked me to help develop their "CPD Curriculum Maps" for next year.

My advice in most cases has been: don't do this.

> First, what do I mean by "CPD Curriculum Map": essentially, they write down all the things they want teachers to work on next year, and then spread it over time. E.g. Cold Call in first half term, then metacognition in the next etc. Build in accountability and QA cycles.

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