This little post is a brief summary of my experiences as part of the panel that was consulted on the new History Curriculum. I know this seems like an odd way to start a post, but I want to make it clear that this was a fair while ago. If I asked you to tell […]
Read more "DfE History Consultation"Occasionally I feel like the books I am reading with the kids are a bit bleak. Some bleak things need to be learned about, but occasionally, the curriculum conspires to make their lives morbid. Consider a theoretical week in the life of a Year 5 child. They’ll learn how climate change is raising the sea […]
Read more "Writers, Kids Deserve More Than Poo Jokes"It was the final day of my first year of teaching. I did TeachFirst. so I had my own class from day one, and they were my babies and mine alone from October. I had a really enjoyable year, learned so much and enjoyed teaching such a brilliant bunch of kids. It sounds as though […]
Read more "The Mangled Forearm – #teachinghighlight"Things change in schools and in education – that is one certainty among a fog of uncertainty. These changes are rarely immediate changes from one thing to another. Schools are fluid and their changes have a quite lilting, drifting quality. Sometimes, you can orchestrate these changes – these creepings – but sometimes you can only watch idly […]
Read more "Education Creeps"The following are answers to a question ‘why should offenders be punished?’. They deserve to be punished. Punishment will stop them from committing further crimes. Punishment tells the victim that society disapproves of the harm that he or she has suffered. Punishment discourages other from doing the same thing. Punishment protects society from dangerous or […]
Read more "The Telling Off: Discipline, Punish"Thinking about my teaching and about some of my work with kids through different projects, I can share countless examples of times when I have needed to ‘administer a telling off’. This differs from general ‘classroom management’ and ‘behaviour management’ and this is outside of the domain of routines and rules. The telling off is after […]
Read more "How Best To Tell a Kid Off"My literacy class are writing quirky fairy tales where rather than waiting to be rescued by a heroic man, our princesses pluck up the gusto to free themselves and face the foes of the enchanted forest themselves. The writing focus is about using dialogue, using parenthesis and being able to write humorously through wordplay, subversive […]
Read more "Cedric the Multilingual Centaur"
jonny walker teaching 