I am going to try and explain my position on terms like oracy, metacognition, adaptive teaching and inclusive teaching. These things are all desirable. We want students who can speak articulately. We want them to be able to be creative problem solvers. We want them to be and to feel included in our teaching, regardless of their starting points or particular needs. We want teachers to adapt and respond to students as their knowledge grows and develops. I don't think any of that is controversial, but it's like saying "we want teachers who can teach" - ok, sure, but what does it mean? What are the things we want people to actually do in the classroom? When you tell me my classroom should be an "oracy" classroom, what does that mean? What do you want me to do differently? Debates? Group work? Hot seats? Turn and Talk? Cold Call? Warm Call? No hands up? All hands up? Students showing proof of listening? Explicit vocabulary instruction? Expecting full sentences? Policing pronunciation? Teaching tonal variation? Encouraging humour? Everything in this list can -and has!- been called "oracy". And the problem is that some are good ideas, and some are bad ideas. Even the ones which might be good ideas have specific parameters. Subject or disciplinary constraints. Lesson phases. Curricular placements. Behaviour management. So you take a big fluffy thing that nobody could ever disagree with because it's obviously good, but then people do stuff in class that is often a bad idea or doesn't work, but it's fine, because it's oracy, and Oracy Is Good, Obviously. The same is true of everything else on the list. Without specific definitions of what they actually mean, and what you then do in the classroom, you are absolutely 100% going to run into big trouble. It's logically obvious, but also empirical. I've seen this stuff in schools, where teachers are doing things that make no sense, and I ask why and they say because of oracy, or adaptive teaching or whatever. And then none of that is even to mention assessment. How do we tell if a student has good "oracy" or "metacognition"? How do we *really* ascertain if a teacher is "inclusive" or "adaptive"? We can't, and all we can do is look at the specific things they are doing, which brings us right back round to the start. Sometimes, I think we should ditch the terms altogether. Sometimes I don't, and think instead we should be specific about what we mean. People ask me to deliver training about "adaptive teaching", and I say "sure" and then just talk about checking for understanding, mini-whiteboards, thresholds for reteach etc. I'll rarely mention the term. Occasionally I will, and just say "...and all of these are critical components of what is commonly called adaptive teaching". Either way, just chucking the terms out there is almost definitely going to cause harm and weird, weird things. How do I know? Because I've seen it. Lots. And I don't like it, because ultimately it just leaves teachers confused and cynical, and students worse off.

🎁🎁BACK TO SCHOOL GIVEAWAY🎁🎁 As you may know, the summer is when things get really busy for the @Carousel_Learn team as we get everything ready and sorted for September. Whether or not you are a Carousel user you should definitely check the thread out 👇👇

As if all that wasn't enough, we are also re-running our landmark Retrieving Better course. This course is hardcore nuts and bolts of retrieval. The first part covers how to get your own classes into an excellent place with their retrieval and homework, and the second half looks at spreading the love across a department or school. It is designed around change, and, year after year, it works. If you want students to get better at doing homework, this is for you. carousel-learning.com/teachi…

Whether you use Carousel or not, I hope you can see how powerful and epic all the above is. We are, and I say this without a smidge of humility, the most exciting and cutting edge Edtech company out there. On all fronts, we are doing stuff that nobody else is doing. I'm tremendously proud, and the team have worked unbelievably hard on all this. Here's to the best academic year ever. Please share if you can 🙏🙏🙏

Simultaneously exhausted and energised from delivering three INSET days. Was lucky enough to be invited to be invited to two wonderful schools in Leicester and the fabulous King's Hospital School in Dublin. There was lots on the various menus, including questioning, routines, checking understanding, modelling, instructional sequences and more. Looking forward to a couple of days off and then being an audience member in my own school's INSETs!

My various positions on "behaviour is all about relationships" are (in no particular order): If you want behaviour to improve, trying to build relationships is a significantly worse option than - Having a good policy - Implementing simple behaviour management strategies like FLMOP and Golden Silence Building relationships in challenging contexts is not a straightforward undertaking. Nobody really knows how to do it. There are a few tips here and there, but there is literally nothing that is "guaranteed" or even close to "guaranteed" to work. Sure, there are some things you shouldn't do (like shout, be sarcastic, be rude), but what *should* you do? Anyone who tells you they know the answer is lying or deluded. If you work in a school where you have a good behaviour policy and culture, it's much easier to build relationships. If you work in a school where you have a good behaviour policy and culture, building relationships isn't going to help you, and if you happen to have ok behaviour it's because of a different variable. Good relationships are neither a necessary or sufficient condition of having good behaviour. Some of the students who have caused me the most grief are also the ones I had the best relationships with. I have plenty of students who I have no relationship with (i.e. ones I only just started teaching), who magically behave just fine. All the above means that correlation and causation are impossible to untangle. Ok, so Sarah over in maths has great relationships with her class and lovely behaviour? Which came first? Did they behave because of the relationships, or did the relationships flourish because of the behaviour? If you are a cover teacher, or new to a school or anything like that, you should be able to expect good behaviour without having to build relationships first. Final point: None of the above means I don't care about building relationships. In fact, I care MORE than the "behaviour is all about relationships" crew. Why? Because I think they are important in and of themselves. I couldn't care less if they mean I get better behaviour - that's not why I try and build them. I think it's part of my job to respect my students and build relationships with them because it's fundamentally important, and not for any other reason.

The science of learning is theory. Theory is all very well, but it doesnt tell you what to actually do in the classroom. I think there is probably 3ish hours of SoL content that is a *necessary* condition of being a better teacher. But the rest? It is neither necessary nor sufficient, and even that 3 hours isn't a *sufficient* condition of a person being better at teaching. The best teachers I know are familiar with very little of the technical literature. Instead, their heads are filled with the mechanics of teaching, mechanics which might harmonise with findings from SoL, and may even be predicated on it, but don't require it to be implemented. Name at End questioning is a great example. Sure, the SoL research tells us that you can only learn if you are paying attention. But that doesn't lead you automatically to NAE questioning. There are plenty of people who know about the need for attention, and don't use simple strategies like NAE. From my own practice, I spent about 4 years reading everything I could from SoL (certainly more than 25 hours/year) and developed as an actual practitioner extremely slowly. It wasn't until I discovered TLAC and TTA that I started getting better. Finally, I would be stunned if the top 20 schools in England spent substantial amounts of CPD time on SoL. They will be spending their time on mechanics around routines, questioning, MWBs etc. They won't be spending their time on detailed content from the SoL. I don't want to be that guy, but this is literally why we built Carousel Teaching. Because too much CPD is theoretical, and we wanted to focus on concrete changes that people can make tomorrow. Yes, we also communicate as much theory as we think is necessary, but the emphasis is on practice, and we are confident that completing a 1 hour course would make someone better at teaching the next day.

No No No No No No No No with a cherry on top? I strongly doubt AI is anywhere close to being able to do this effectively, let alone the message it sends about "how much we care about training new teachers"

I agree that many schools are not ready for this. But they should have been. For years, students have been able to cheat on homework. Now, it's easier and faster, but fundamentally the same problem. carousel-learning.com/resour…