Developing an Evidence-Informed Culture: 5 Essential Ingredients
Educational research has the power to supercharge a school’s teaching and learning culture. The question is, how can PD and school leaders, prioritise teacher development and embed these insights into the fabric of daily teaching practices and school culture?
One Pagers Refresh!
Recently, I have redesigned my original one page teaching summaries that were initially published back in March. The new design breaks free of the constrains of the closed grid and makes use of space on the page. Since sharing my one pagers, I have had lots of positive feedback from teachers on Twitter who love the A4 format as it is accessible and succinct. The layout and design (clearly inspired by the brilliant Oliver Caviglioli) helps to break down and categorise information so it is easy to read and process. The one pagers include a range of distilled research from educational psychologist, edu-Twitter influencers and inspirational teachers.
One-Pagers: Teaching Summaries
As CPD coodinator at my school, I wanted a simple way for busy teachers to engage with evidence based practice and share ideas about good teaching. One-pagers are practical, bite-sized A4 summaries of context-free teaching strategies that help educators reflect on their practice and check their knowledge and understanding.
Digital Audio Maps: Interactive Word-Diagrams
Technology has empowered my students to demonstrate learning in different ways. In order to revise the relationships between characters and historical context in George Orwell’s allegorical novella ‘Animal Farm’, I created a digital ‘audio map’. This allowed Year 9 students to record verbal explanations linking characters with underlying political ideas about power and oppression.
Visual Instruction Plans: Word-diagrams to Support Writing
A Visual Instruction Plan (VIP) is a set of visual prompts that provide a clear step-by-step outline of what students have to do to complete a procedure or process. They are much like the instructions you receive with IKEA flat-pack furniture — they have limited words, use diagrams and have simple steps to follow. Learn how they can be used in class to support students with analytical writing.
The Science of Learning: Top Five Tech Tools
In recent years more and more educators are engaging with evidence from cognitive psychology and introducing research based practices to support teaching and learning. Here are my top five tools and apps that support research from cognitive science.
Top 10 iPad Apps for Revision
We all know revision is not easy! The good news is that students can make use technology to help organise, process and memorise learning effectively.
Learning with Digital Green Screen
You might have seen recently on Twitter my example ‘Macbeth’ animated quotations made with digital green screen in Keynote and iMovie. I found the process of creating these can be a powerful method for students to explore the main quotations deeply whilst engage in deeper thinking.
Unleashing Digital Creativity
Term One of our Digital Creativity course has come to a close. Read all about the way our Year 7 and 8 students are implementing iPad skills inspired by Apple’s Everyone Can Create curriculum.
Digital Creativity for ALL Learners
Our new Digital Creativity course for Year 7 and 8 has made a massive impact on our students with disabilities at Corpus Christi College. The course is based on Apple’s Everyone Can Create curriculum and is designed to provide students with core digital skills in photography, video, audio and drawing.