Many teachers will learn that assessment is either summative or formative. But how many actually know the etymological meaning of the word ‘assessment’?
According to Evangeline Harris Stefanakis (2002), “The word assess comes from the Latin assidere, which means to sit beside. Literally then, to assess means to sit beside the learner.”
For some, the start of a new year means healthier eating and more exercise. For others, it represents an opportunity to set goals and be more successful.
So, what about teachers? Well, it’s fair to say that most in education will have a number of hopes and fears for 2020, which are likely to include the following.
What does the run-up to the festive season look like at your school? Several teachers will integrate the 12 Days of Christmas into their lesson plans as a way to keep children engaged, as attention spans are usually at their shortest point of the year.
But why should teachers miss out on all the fun? Here’s an education-inspired 12 Days of Christmas, with a reading recommendation for each.
A few years ago, a US study suggested that teachers should stop using red pens because the colour is associated with ‘warning, prohibition, caution, anger, embarrassment and being wrong’.
The research revealed that students think they’ve been assessed more harshly when their work is covered in red ink compared to other colours. It could even have a negative impact on teacher-student relationships and learning outcomes.
News of the report was met with ridicule by many, including Tory MP Bob Blackman who said: “It sounds to me like some petty edict which is nonsense. It is absolutely political correctness gone wild.”
In October, the Department for Education (DfE) published its Teacher Workload Survey for 2019, which attempts to act as a national ‘barometer’ for teachers’ working conditions. It also forms a key part of the DfE’s commitment to improving the evidence base on what drives unnecessary teacher workload and what works to reduce it.
Throughout the DfE’s report, which gathered results from a nationally representative survey of teachers over a three-week period, comparisons are made to the same publication in 2016.
Despite small wording changes to the 2019 survey, and efforts to minimise response bias, it is now possible to ask the question, “Teacher Workloads in England – Are They Improving?”
Did you know that a quarter of teachers in England work more than 60 hours a week, far in excess of their counterparts elsewhere in the world? Recent research found that teachers in England work 47 hours a week on average during term time, including marking, lesson planning and administration, going up to about 50 hours in the summer during the exam season.
It goes without saying that finding the time for anything other than your daily duties is extremely difficult. But what about helping trainee teachers who are taking their first tentative steps into schools? How can established teachers ensure that the next generation have the best experience possible?
According to research, retrieval is a key process for both learning and understanding. As well as being a neutral assessment of a learner’s knowledge, the act of retrieval itself also produces learning.
But how best can teachers test what pupils have learnt in the classroom? What do you know about memory and how can you develop its capacity to learn?
Getting your class passionate about creative writing is no mean feat, especially when you consider the amount of research, planning, teaching and marking involved to perform this activity in the first place.
But what if you could instil a love of creative writing among your pupils in just one day? It might sound impossible, but where there’s a will, there’s a way…
Professional development is at the heart of teacher practice. But in addition to learning on the job and formal training courses, you can increase your confidence and competence as a teacher by accessing the abundance of resources available online today, starting with the following:
As you’re probably already aware, whenever an Ofsted inspection is triggered, the head teacher of a school has to notify parents about the inspection and invite them to complete Parent View – an online survey that gives parents and carers the opportunity to tell Ofsted what they think about their child’s school.
At this moment in time, anyone can log in to the system and complete the survey as many times as they want. Some have argued that this could result in unreliable outcomes, as several questions were considered ‘dangerous’, such as: Read More