Following #MathsConf10, I promised myself that I would stop ‘marking books’ and start giving real feedback to my students. I had attended @Jemmaths’ workshop on developing a feedback (not marking) policy. I returned to school excited, knowing that I could bring this high-impact development to my new school the following September. Five months later, and (finally!) we’re using exit tickets to give timely and personalised feedback to our students. There are still some restraint

The weekend kicked off with an early finish from school to enable us to travel down to Park Lane for the early start of the TES Awards. We had missed the reception drinks so headed straight to find our table in the humongous room downstairs. Seated at our table were other shortlisters for the Bev Evans award, including TeacherCellar and ALutwyche. We were also fortunate enough to be sat with Magda and Amy from the TES resource team who were keen to hear our feedback. The even

My blog is fast becoming a place where I write down my lists of favourites… Assessment for learning (or AfL as it’s commonly known) is a crucial part of lessons in my opinion and total participation techniques (or TPTs) are useful for ensuring no students slip through the cracks. When used effectively they can lead to great differentiation and progress. These are some of my most used TPTs to assess for learning throughout the lesson, including resources needed and a rough ide

Below is a list of my favourite and most commonly used plenaries. They are from all over, and I have given credit if I can remember where I found it. Each has a description, an estimate for time needed, a difficulty rating (out of 5) and a student engagement rating (also out of 5). The difficulty rating is dependent on students’ understanding for the lesson, and the student engagement rating is based on my own experience with these plenaries. Please add any other great ideas

It’s that time of year again. Everyone is starting to think about that dreaded E word. Exams. As teachers, we know it’s not just subject knowledge and content we need to pass onto our students, but also exam skills and technique. The best way for this is practising exam questions. I am a great advocate of this – hence the revision booklets and intervention packs (and many of the RAG worksheets) are comprised of exam questions. But it’s important to not over-do it as many stud