Kris Boulton

Squaring the circle: can learning be easy and hard?

2014-09-17T19:56:47+01:00May 11th, 2014|learning|

Regular readers will know I've been ploughing a furrow on this question for quite a while now. Last June I synthesised my thinking in this post: Deliberately difficult – why it’s better to make learning harder. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the arguments, I'll summarise them briefly: - Learning is different from performance (the definition of learning I'm using here is the long-term retention and transfer of knowledge and skills) - We can't actually see learning happen; we can only infer it from performance - Performance is a very poor indicator of learning - Reducing performance might actually increase learning This [...]

Questions about questioning: just how important is it?

2014-02-19T09:54:12+00:00February 16th, 2014|training|

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Nietzsche It's a little tiresome, but I feel I must preface this by saying that these are just my thoughts. I'm not claiming anyone is wrong (or right for that matter) just that it always pays to question anything that passes as conventional wisdom. And what could be more conventionally wise that the assumption that teachers need to commit time and resources to improving their ability to ask questions of their pupils? The research suggests that teachers, traditionally, aren't that great at asking questions. We often answer our own [...]

A model lesson? Part 1: routines vs gimmicks

2014-08-19T15:24:12+01:00September 8th, 2013|leadership, learning, planning, training|

It's been a busy week this week. What with starting at a new school, getting up before 5 to drive two hours on Monday morning, living an Alan Partridge-esque existence in a particularly horrific Travelodge, and risking whatever credibility I might have by teaching a 'model' lesson in front of colleagues I'd barely met to kids I'd never met. That this was in any way successful is largely down to the efforts of co-conspirator, Fiona Aris: due to a series of unlikely but banal events, we were unable to meet up (or even meet) beforehand and she (Kindly? Foolishly?) agreed to plan said [...]

Teaching sequence for developing independence Stage 1: Explain

2013-08-29T18:51:34+01:00June 26th, 2013|Featured, learning, Teaching sequence|

"Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process." EB White There are some definite pit falls to avoid in explaining things to kids. The biggest criticism of teachers talking is that it's boring. And, generally speaking, boring kids is not a good way to get them to learn stuff. But to suggest that teachers should therefore avoid explaining their subjects to students is a bizarre leap. Surely it would be vastly more sensible to expend our efforts in improving teachers' ability to explain? This then is the aim [...]

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