By Donald Cumming

Success criteria (a much more student and teacher-friendly expression than the strangely clinical 'differentiated outcomes') are something that can make a huge difference in our classrooms. Being clear about where we want our students to end up before we plan what they do makes our lesson planning much tighter (and ensures you differentiate too); it makes the whole lesson much clearer to the students (you can see the lightbulb going on above their heads!); and of course SLT/Ofsted/Mocksted/etc will like it because they can see the beloved progress happening before their eyes.  Everyone's a winner!

By Donald Cumming

Summer is here (well …) and it's the time of year when our PE colleagues swan into staffrooms tanned and relaxed after a 'difficult' day out on the field 'working' hard. It would seem natural to get a little green-eyed with envy, your pallid skin the product of artificial light and evenings spent marking while your PE friends run clubs in the post-school sunshine.  But what is the real truth about PE?  And what can we learn from it that can benefit our own pedagogy? 

For the next two weeks we welcome back Donald Cumming to our expert blog.

By Adam O'Connor

In a recent seminar I attended we debated what should be in the new revised National Curriculum for History.

During this heated discussion we stumbled into the age-old argument of 'the importance of chronology' ...

By Adam O'Connor

I don't read many educational books, I find it off-putting reading the dry thoughts of an academic who hasn't entered a classroom since 1987. For me most of these books are constructed in the châteaux and not the trenches of the modern class and so are simply coffee table books.

So it was with great scorn and derision that I accepted a copy of Ron Berger's Ethic of Excellence ... 

By Adam O' Connor

Hands up how many of you out there like going to museums? You liar! It is a whispered truth that history teachers hate museums.

Another one is that History teachers like historical sources ...