Supercollision

Karwai Pun at the Home Office has designed these Dos and Don’ts on designing for accessibility. Interestingly for autistic users, the link above is not that clear for people on the autistic spectrum according to this poster:

and it would be better to make a link using a button like this…

Visit the blog

I think there is a potential to make similar posters for teachers to know how…

My Turn Your Turn – I do, you do

At our school, we do a lot of MY Turn Your Turn. A form of direct instruction where children repeat back. This allows us to embed certain vocabulary or ideas. It also allows teachers to quickly assess who is on board. In the table below, there are different options

This blog post by Clare Sealy, she outlines the principles of maths instruction and an approach based on cognitive load theory. Citing Craig Barton’s book, ‘How I wish I’d taught maths’, she lists five principles of maths instruction:

Present new information in small steps with pupil practice after each step

Ask a large number of questions and check the response of all pupils

Provide models

Guide…

Effective Comprehension – the DI way

The first Thinking Operation today is Statement Inference.

Listen. Pollution in the air increases every year. Say that statement. (Signal.) Pollution in the air increases every year. (Repeat until firm.)

Everybody, listen. Pollution in the air increases every year. When does pollution increase in the air? (Signal.) Every year.

What increases in the air every year? (Signal.) Pollution.

Where does…

Sometimes it’s better to tell rather than ask

In his blog, Tom Sherringtonunpacks the teacher myth “Always ask before you tell”. The kind of teaching exemplified in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This myth is influenced by the famous quotation: “Tell me and I’ll forget, Show me and I may remember, Involve me and I will understand”. While this saying makes some sense in a passive…

Can we use the laptops today?

A colleague at school noticed that the children don’t ask, “Are we doing GarageBand or iMovie?” Instead they ask, “Are we doing laptops today?” What is it that they think they are doing? Are they oblivious to the creative pursuit and perceive work with these titles as dragging boxes around and causing effects? Perhaps in the end, despite, our best efforts, the children see the computers as boxes…

Pedagogies of Motivation and Pedagogies of Contingency

Click to access altc2007_dylan_wiliam_keynote_transcript.pdf

love the one you’re with

pedagogies of motivation and pedagogies of contingency – formative assessment and activity to close the gap, more than just feedback twice the effect

“And that’s why learning is a ‘liminal’ or ‘threshold’ process at the boundary between control and chaos. You cannot respect the individuality of every single…

List 100

Local Offer for Schools

There seems to be some confusion about how schools should show their information to parents about the quality of provision for SEN children. Our local authority is asking us to list generic provision irrespective of the relevance or clarity of this information.  It seems to me that the law is focused on what the local authority communicatesand as a school we should help prospective and current…

Susan Kare and Mac PixelArt

Susan Kare and Mac PixelArt

The iconic icons from the early days of Macintosh.

Children come to school with a disadvantage, but what will we do?

“[Children] will grow up in circumstances so chaotic that it’s not just a case that they are…

Adobe Web Fonts

Open license to use Adobe fonts on websites, code automatically generated.

Why do people jeer at Apple,

The Rise of Infographics