The (Passionately) Boring Teacher

It’s no secret that I’m a big advocate of knowledge organisers. However, over the last few months I have a read a number of blogs by influential edu…tweeters(?) who, taken on their title alone, appear to criticise their use. However, on closer inspection, I complete agree with the common line of argument from almost all of them: knowledge organisers themselves are not a bad thing per say, so long as they are written and implemented properly ; fail to do so, and they become a time-consuming, workload-expanding bolt on or fad with very little impact. If knowledge organisers aren’t working for you, ask yourself the following questions: Why are you using them? Roughly 4 years-experience of knowledge organisers within my current school has shown us that the format, content and use of knowledge organisers will and should differ vastly from department to department: while history has knowledge organisers which focus on the narrative and key events within a particular period, langu...

I believe that knowledge organisers can be the ultimate tool of inclusion. However, used poorly they can amplify the Matthew Effect, supporting most able while simultaneously disadvantaging those who need the most support. Put simply, they can cause the knowledge rich to get richer and the knowledge poor to get poorer. Over the four years which my department has used knowledge organisers, we have developed a number of techniques to minimise this effect and ensure that knowledge organisers benefit as many pupils as possible. Quiz questions: In order to encourage pupils to engage with the knowledge organisers, all of our homework is based around either answering quiz questions or practising quizzes which they have already completed. Originally, pupils wrote their own questions and answers. They were required to write a minimum of 7 questions and answers which the teacher would collect feedback on while they were completing their starters. Pupils would then have a set amount...

This Friday, I went into the staff room before briefing and found a plaque with this infamous quotation in my pigeonhole. Along with the quotation by Haim Ginott about how a teacher’s “daily mood…makes the weather.” this has to be one of the most commonly used quotations about education. It is also a quotation I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with. After spending a good part of the morning stewing over who wanted to poke the bear on a Friday, I decided to correct it. If someone were to ask me how I want pupils to feel in my lessons, I would say that obviously they should feel safe, successful and confident. I think that all of these are components of long term happiness. However, I would stop short at saying that I aim for my pupils to be happy. As I discussed in my previous blogs “Where Fun Comes From” and “Satisfaction and success: infinitely better than fun”, I believe that happiness is not generic and therefore it is impossible to make pupils feel genui...

1. Mrs Sayers Mrs Sayers has now been teaching for more than thirty years. Despite telling me I shouldn’t be a teacher (turns, out she mean a primary teacher), she’s the woman who first made me think about what makes a good job. For 19 years, I watched mum clear the dining room table and sit down to work every weeknight. Every weekday afternoon, I (not so patiently) waited in her classroom for her to finish marking. Almost every shopping trip, I saw her pop a book into her basket which would be good for her classroom’s book corner. Lesson: Just because your job’s hard work, doesn’t mean you can’t love it. 2. My main PGCE mentor I was lucky enough that my PGCE mentor not only the head of PGCE course, but also a force to be reckoned with. The mannerisms which I watched with awe in my first weeks of my PGCE placement are now part of who I am as a teacher. She applied her firm but fair approach to her pupils and to me, making sure that, even though I may have briefly wallow...

Last week my first PGCE student finished his placement. He wrote me a lovely card which signed off with “stay passionately boring”. This is a mantra which I live by and I think is embodied by a recent tweet of mine which has taken off over half term. Unfortunately, some people appeared to take from this that I am against any form of fun within lessons. I absolutely believe that lessons can and should be fun. However, I want this enjoyment to be rooted within enjoyment and success within the subject itself, rather than the activities which frame the content. I began my career vehemently believing that fun activities in the classroom were the route to effective learning. Examples from my early career which I now avoid include: Writing a facebook page for Henry VIII. “Plan your own lesson” lessons (which often involved people writing “Watch a video about it.”) Empathy pieces (“Imagine you are...”) There are three reasons why my focus has moved from ac...

“With great power comes great responsibility” and the best manifestation of this in teaching is zero tolerance behaviour policies. Many recent articles about these policies appear to infer that they are discriminatory and cruel. To an extent, I agree: If used incorrectly, they can act as a sledgehammer cracking a nut. However, if used in a thoughtful and nuanced manner, they can help to create strong bonds between teachers and pupils and ensure an excellent learning environment for all. I think there are three main principles or nuances which should be applied when using zero tolerance or high expectations behaviour policies: 1. High expectations don’t just apply to the pupils: Just as ‘zero tolerance’ creates high expectations for pupils’ behaviour, I believe it creates high expectations for teachers’ teaching. It is no coincidence that I believe that my teaching has improved the most during my time at a school with a ‘zero tolerance’ behaviour policy: teaching in an e...

In my previous blog, “Weaving the Tapestry: How I Use Knowledge Organisers”, I spoke about how my school has made knowledge organisers the core of homework by asking pupils to either write questions and answers about them or to test themselves on the quizzes they have already written. In previous years, I have always found homework a bit of a struggle and, as a result, on many occasions I quietly avoided it. This year, I’ve seen a substantial change, both in terms of pupils completing homework and the quality of their work. A particularly enthusing example is seeing that many pupils are independently catching up on quizzes when they have been away. I believe that one of the key reasons why I have seen a significant increase in the perceived ‘buy in’ of students to this form of homework is because, right from the off, we emphasised the sound pedagogical basis of this homework; we explained the forgetting curve to pupils during assemblies and lessons, we demonstrated the importanc...