With teacher workloads continuing to increase, how can you expect to improve engagement, feedback and outcomes with the little time you do have to spare?
Well, there is a potential solution… Learning by Questions (LbQ). This innovative app promises:
“Curriculum-aligned Question Sets and immediate feedback to super-charge learning. Reduce your workload with automatic marking and instant insight for effective interventions. It covers all abilities so you can support your students your way.”
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.
Picture the scenario – you’ve found what looks like the perfect job. You send off your application and manage to secure an interview. All you need to do is survive an hour of questions, maybe a lesson observation, and you’ll land your dream role.
Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Even though teachers are used to classrooms full of pupils and handling difficult parents, even the most competent and confident educator can fall flat during an interview.
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?
Strategy Education have been in the business of supplying outstanding teaching staff into the education sector for over ten years now!
In this time, we have built up a wealth of experience enabling us to match the perfect candidates to the right schools.
