A thunk is a ridiculous question but with a serious. purpose. They provoke comment and encourage all, including less confident students, to find their voice. This brief Powerpoint will give you some examples but you’ll find many more suggestions and associated questioning strategies in the resource Outstanding Question and Answer.

The typical countdown timers used in our classrooms are functional but not very attractive, Try this simple but effective visual Powerpont timer. Simply open in slideshow mode and when the moon eclipses the sun time is up. Roughly 10 minutes but you can control the speed by using the spacebar to advance and back key to reverse. There is no programming and once you get the idea you can soon be creative and design your own versions. The resource Outstanding Collaborative Learning provides many examples of individual, paired and group tasks that benefit from a timer to add pace plus the other examples on this page.

Jazz up your Q&A by selecting students to answer at random by rotating their photographs or names on Powerpoint. Adds a sense of fun can facilities random ‘cold calling’ Discover full details of effective Q&A strategies in the resource Outstanding Question and Answer

If you have read the description for Eclipse this is another visual timer for Powerpoint. There are three trees and when the third tree grows and touches the sky 20 mins will have elapsed. Consider the resource Outstanding Collaborative Learning to gain a wealth of suggestions for imaginative paired and group tasks.

If you have read the description for Eclipse this is another visual Powerpoint timer for classroom activites. The ten stars will individually fly away at one minute intervals. The resource Outstanding Collaborative Learning provides many examples of effective and engaging paired and group tasks

Same instructions as for Eclipse and the other visual timers for Powerpoint. Watch the seconds fly away for fast-paced classroom activity. Set on two minutes. The resource Outstanding Collaborative Learning will give you a wealth of suggestions for individual, paired and group work.

Contrary to popular opinion we can teach creativity and prompt the development of original ideas by your students. This is a much sought after quality in most businesses and industries in relation to critical thinking to resolve problems as they arise or to add value to existing products and services and most prized of all the ability to develop new products or services. The revision of Bloom’s famous taxonomy in 2001 replaced ‘evaluation’ with ‘creating’ as the highest form of cognitive development in the new emerging knowledge age. Discover the strategies to generate and test original ideas and to promote entrepreneurship by following the ‘RESOLVE’ model of critical thinking. What might your students help to design or develop in future years or even before they leave your school or college?

The stand alone timetabled lesson with a start, middle and end is a deeply embedded construct that has defined teaching and learning for over 200 years but over the last five years Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed how curriculum information is accessed, presented and assessed. Learning is no longer bound by time, location or solely reliant on the curriculum knowledge of an individual teacher. Why limit learning to the span of the weekly timetabled lesson when a world of knowledge awaits online? Discover how to reorganise your curriculum for the digital age and place essential factual knowledge online to be digested outside the classroom and reserve classtime for a mixture of overview direct instruction, and collaborative tasks to evaluate and analyse the curriculum information. Our existing system has created dependency on the teacher but we can coach and develop student agency and embed learning beyond the classroom as a norm and gain significant extra learning time.

Boost engagement from the start by introducing a stimulating range of ‘appetisers’ to draw your students into full participation by raising curiosity and interest across wider curriculum topics, careers, well-being etc. Gain volunteer presenters to contribute their own appetisers e.g Website of the week or App of the week or TED Talk of the week or Arresting image of the week. Consider the many suggestions and choose what will work best to capture your students’ interest. Involving your students will boost their confidence by giving mini presentation experiences, promote peer dialogue and create a supportive learning culture.

The world is changing and if we wish our students to thrive in the digital economy then reducing eleven years of compulsory education to a set of exam grades will leave them ill equipped. Companies are not waiting for GCSE or A Level subject knowledge to walk through the door. That knowledge already exists within their walls. They need employees who display the ability to add value to existing products and/or services or to develop new ideas and this requires confident employability skills and this manifests as the 4Cs of employability Critical thinking. Communication, Collaboration and Creativity. The OECD Learning Compass goal for 2030 emphasises the importance of personal development and personal skills as a major priority and focus for future curricula. Step ahead of the curve by embedding the 4Cs.

Learning is memory or more precisely long term memory. Explore how memories are received, stored and encoded by sensory. working and long term memories with significant implications for how we teach and how our students learn. Reflect on the Rule of Three and how we too frequently overload our students’ ability to process and remember new information. In particular apply spaced practice, dual coding and interleaving to maximise memory retentionj.

The Diamond Lesson Plan is your guide to creating, stimulating, challenging and creative lessons to an outstanding Ofsted and/or other inspection agencies standards. Discover how to win the full engagement of your pupils and weave together the separate elements of outstanding practice to generate a fast-paced lesson focused on learning rather than teaching. The guidance is based upon evidence-based practice with full academic referencing .

Most schools that were previously judged to be outstanding have been downgraded under the new EIF. Since they were last inspected the education landscape has shifted significantly and the new EIF places the spotlight on the curriculum and the value added for each pupil in terms of personal development. This resource is an essential read because it draws together all the Ofsted criteria and published underpinning research and presents the criteria in an explicit checklist format for individuals or whole curriculum teams to measure their practice against. In addition there is also a comprehensive collation of the inspectors’ descriptors for outstanding practice across a range of core categories. Whether you wish to retain an existing outstanding judgment or step up to outstanding this an essential read to identify possible areas for improvement in advance of your next inspection.

Draw your students into full participation by issuing a student-facing lesson plan to jazz up the sharing of learning intentions and to provide a capture and record worksheet of their progress and understanding during the lesson. Use eye=catching Smartart graphics to activate dual coding and prompt discussion of prior learning to address differentiation to and address Ausubel’s guiding principle, "The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach accordingly" The Big Picture Lesson Plan also includes a simple template to replace traditional teacher lesson planning in the style of a five minute lesson plan.

Empower your students by creating advance organisers i.e. explicit learning plans for each major unit of study to promote Self Regulated Learning (SRL) and underpin remote and home learning. The simple eye-catching layout packs in the key information the students need for study success from precise pre-questions to steer the students’ topic research to identifying the relevant supporting resources. Encourage your students to recognise and engage with four types of learning, Online, Classroom, Library or Workshop and Extended Learning.

Peer learning in the form of pairs, trios, quads or teams can significantly consolidate, deepen and extend new learning. Discover many examples of how to put into immediate action and introduce regular learning dialogue into your lessons. Johnson and Johnson’s research concluded, “Working together to achieve a common learning goal produces higher achievement and greater productivity than working alone.” This finding has been confirmed by the UK Education Endowment Foundation with high confidence. Regular peer learning/support opportunities promote overall peer bonding and avoid the appearance of sub groups in your classroom in favour of all engaged on a common learning journey. Use the fun random selection strategies described to ensure the formation of heterogeneous rather than homogeneous groupings to promote effective peer coaching and learning support. Whereas a student may not ask a question in front of a whole class they are more likely to do so in the shelter of a group and a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) may provide the answer. Aim for the dialogic classroom.

Science fact is fast eclipsing psychological theory in terms of how we learn and remember as ‘neuro’ research reveals the most effective teaching learning strategies to apply in your classroom. Discover how the brain develops from conception and how neuro education is today recognised by the world’s leading universities as an essential element in all teacher training programmes. You are perhaps already applying spaced practice and dual coding etc but discover the underpinning evidence and why and how ‘brain friendly’ strategies can boost learning.

Discover how universal education was first introduced in France in 1802, formalised into mass classroom-based education in Prussia in 1810 , adopted by the UK in 1870 and thereafter worldwide. Explore the division between nurture and nature in the major theories of learning and reflect on present day criticism of what is dubbed a ‘factory system.’ Will it survive in the digital era?

The fundamental fault line that runs through educational debate is between Liberty or Conformity. It goes to the heart of, ‘what is the purpose of education’? Either we give freedom of choice over what and when to learn or enforce conformity with school daily attendance and adherence to a prescribed curriculum. Home schooling is on the rise after the Covid lockdown and this debate is no longer purely academic but awakening the whole historical debate on the purpose of education. Reflect on the many different forms of school organisation and curricula that have emerged over recent years and gain a sharp well referenced guide to the whole debate.

Our core purpose is to stir curiosity, nurture, enthuse, inspire and challenge all young people to improve all aspects of their lives and to achieve a sense of personal fulfilment. However, all too often we focus on targets for exams whereas we need to focus on the individual and discuss and their future and their personal well-being. Happy students achieve. Discover the broad differences between our students in terms of independent, dependent and directed learners and how best to support each group and the simple to apply Personal Action Steps to Success (PASS) target setting strategy which places the students in control. Find full academic referencing and an evidence-based practice approach to transforming targets into meaningful action.