This is excellent. Not easy to convince colleagues to abandon levels/‘expected standard’ mindset, but Siegler’s wave theory does strike a chord - we know from our own lives that we don’t make progress in smooth, even steps.

New Study Confirms a Core Truth About Learning carlhendrick.substack.com/p/new-study-...

Handwriting bias is a real problem. Some essays are really hard to read & get lower marks as a result. Our latest feature lets you toggle between the original handwritten script & a transcription. substack.nomoremarking.com/p/can-ai-sol...

NEW ALBUM & UK TOUR NEWS! 'Rainy Sunday Afternoon' to be released 19th September. Pre-order now from our webstore for ticket pre-sale access. More info: thedivinecomedy.com/news/rainy-a... Listen to the lead track 'Achilles': lnk.to/RainySunday #thedivinecomedy #rainysundayafternoon

New pilot: inspired by Hirsch’s Realms of Gold, we’ve created ‘What to Read at Bedtime’: a term’s worth of bedtime stories, including: * A novel (Pilot: Morpurgo) * Extract from classic (WitWillows) * Ten poems to read at the weekend. (Frost. Rossetti) * A story from English history.

NEW blog on sweating the small stuff. Pencil cases! What’s on a desk? And some thoughts about what that means for your school leadership. nickhitchen.weebly.com/home/pencil-ca…

Something practical you can do today to make a difference in your classroom: compile your knowledge organisers into #KnowledgeBooks Learn more here: nickhitchen.weebly.com/home/knowledge…

A simple way to set meaningful #homework: give the pupils retrieval practice quizzes. Learn more: nickhitchen.weebly.com/home/meaningfu…

NEW blog post on how we set meaningful homework using @carousel-learning.bsky.social Blog nickhitchen.weebly.com

Reading>Audiobooks>Film>TV>Tiktok. Placing Civilisation VII between film and tv!

I’m a practical chap. There’s LOTS of great advice on this site…but what’s sometimes lacking is, ‘What should I do on Monday morning with Y4.’ Here’s something really practical that could make a big difference to your class: #KnowledgeBooks nickhitchen.weebly.com/home/knowled...

Really like the Y6 writing prompt, @nomoremarking.bsky.social @daisychristo.bsky.social - fewer characters than other prompts, and very clear implied conflict. Should encourage candidates to describe the scene, too.

Reminder: #WorldBookDay is a great excuse to share books and spend time reading books in class; this is a jolly good thing! Making the day about dressing up is a waste of time. Half the kids will come as characters from Netflix shows!

You’ve organised your knowledge, but have you organised your organisers? #KnowledgeBooks nickhitchen.weebly.com/home/knowled...

Really interesting post - but I hold the opposite view! My take is that an awful lots of problems fester because we aren’t efficient enough. ‘Yes, Bob hadn’t mastered phonics yet…but there’s always Year Three. I’m sure my colleague will sort it out…’ @bernardandrews.bsky.social

NEW blog: Use knowledge organisers with your class? Here’s a ‘quick win’ you can try TODAY. #knowledgebooks nickhitchen.weebly.com/home/knowled...

This is excellent from @gregashman.bsky.social ‘A knowledge-rich curriculum is anything but basic.’ Best service Francis review could do is to outline that knowledge - the nuts and bolts - in detail.

Interesting and cogent piece by beckyfrancis.bsky.social , but I’d argue it’s not case that ‘higher attainers are well served’; in primary sector, certainly, many bright kids sit through a knowledge-light foundation curriculum. Awful lot of their time spent on PowerPoints and posters, too!

In a school where the behaviour culture is strong and behaviour leadership is everywhere, a good teacher can be an excellent teacher. In a school where it's absent, a good teacher will have to fight just to remain good, and it will probably burn them out in the process.

I'm off to Flanders to visit primary schools and discuss their work on curriculum, so a reminder of this paper which reports some very promising findings on the value of a knowledge-rich curriculum in primary: edworkingpapers.com/ai23-755

Seen this at play already. No, you don't need someone who training 3 frameworks ago to translate what's already there. No training has happened within ofsted. They are making it up. And while I'm here, if you need help with your SEF, I'll help for free and others will too.

In my experience, (a) most successful heads are not particularly charismatic & (b) those that are often have feet of clay. For example, worked under one who said ‘Curriculum doesn’t matter: just download anything. Don’t waste time on it’!

BACK TO BACK 🤩

So counter-intuitive to think anyone learns anything in smooth steps; we go forward…we go back…but the tide eventually comes in… Far better: focus assessment on knowledge. Do they know and remember what you’ve taught? And junk the ‘expected standard for y4 history’ nonsense.

📢 We're hiring a PRIMARY SPECIALIST (part-time or full-time; we're flexible)! If you have a background in primary teaching and ❤️ retrieval practice then please do apply here ⬇️ uk.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk... Email [email protected] if you have questions.

Anyone waiting for this should check out Hochman’s The Writing Revolution: embed across KS2 and you’ll have a top notch writing curriculum. schoolsweek.co.uk/2m-for-writi...

If you haven’t already, complete the Ofsted survey on ‘Improving the Way Ofsted Inspects Education’. Survey includes opportunities to comment on the proposals & offer ‘other ideas we could consider’.

The gap between ‘moderation work samples’ and what pupils produce under exam conditions for the @daisychristo.bsky.social Comparative Judgement test is huge - and revealing. I suspect lots of leaders are kidding themselves about the real standard of writing in their schools.

The comparative judgement way to find the nation's favourite Beatles song! It's easy... All you need is... a laptop/tablet/sideways phone. Follow link: au.nomoremarking.com/judging/sign... Then use the Left/Right buttons to choose your favourite! @nomoremarking.bsky.social @daisychristo.bsky.social

Cargo cult practice in schools: hiding from parents and pupils the details of what you expect the kids to know and remember. What are the benefits? Why do 99.9% of schools hide the component knowledge in the curricula in the depths of Sharepoint?

It really is odd, if you stop to think about it: why do schools hide away, in internal drives, the details of what they want pupils to know and remember? In most schools, all you can learn as a parent is ‘Year Six World War II’!

One of my favourite parts of Dylan Wiliam's work is his explanation of why written comments are "true but useless". Vague comments like "be more systematic" might be true, but they aren't useful. We are using these insights to develop our new AI feedback feature.

Some Y5 DT work.

We need to talk about ‘expected standard’. To be frank, a pupil who can’t read at expected standard by end of Y6 isn’t going to cope in Y7. If a quarter of pupils don’t reach the expected standard for reading in KS2 SATS - a quarter! - surely that speaks to deep weaknesses in the system?

Now that @daisychristo.bsky.social has forged the football analytics 🤝 education nerds link, the key question is surely, ‘What’s the goal probability added of primary school English?’

Is there anyone who isn’t a MAT CEO who defends salaries of £300k+ for MAT CEOs?

NOW THAT IS PROPER CINEMA 🍿

Booklets aren’t just for secondary schools. In fact, I’d argue even more useful in primary, where (a) textbooks are often low challenge & (b) colleagues more prone to poster/cut-and-stick tasks (as opposed to reading tricky texts & writing paragraphs).

2 ‘Everybody knows that if you want to learn to play the piano, you have to sit down, ideally every night, and play the piano for 20 minutes…so why are we so squeamish about homework?’ (Obviously, not nonsense ‘research’ task homework; talking proper retrieval practice homework).

#3 ‘The concept of ‘expected standard’ for Y4 geography is meaningless.’ #SixProvocations for your SLT

#SixProvocations for your SLT. #1 What advantages are there to NOT sharing with pupils and parents the details - the building blocks - of what we want the kids to know and remember?’ (Because that’s what you’re almost certainly doing!)

Not at all clear that requiring teachers to complete long forms & write application letters helps keep children safe; it certainly makes applying for jobs a long process!

Very sad to read of Dr Lee Shulman’s recent death. His research continues to influence my practice, and helps me to articulate why teachers’ subject knowledge holds such weight alongside pedagogical knowledge. Those Who Understand saysmiss.wordpress.com/2024/07/14/t...

AI: really useful for teachers (adapting texts; creating first draft of worksheets and knowledge organisers); at moment, can’t see how useful for primary school kids.

Knowledge Books: everything your daughter needs to know in KS2. 12 terms, so 12 books. Contains all the knowledge organisers, reading lists, spellings, Tier 2 vocab, poems etc.

This happened tonight! Who knew that 2024 would end with a live performance of songs from Sgt Pepper and the White Album by Paul and Ringo youtu.be/ruUp9DXikrE?...

Ringoooooooo!

Part 3 of our series on the perfect assessment system. Featuring examples of the type of exam question I dislike the most: short written responses that are hard to mark reliably & don't inspire deeper thought. Also featuring bonus analogies with VAR! substack.nomoremarking.com/p/designing-...

Here’s a fascinating glimpse at an unlikely but tantalizing possible future of literacy assessment and teaching. What if we grounded our assessments in knowledge, not just performance on random passages? 1/2 #edusky

Reports to parent pro tip: include the pupil’s TTRS heat map. Easy for parent to see which tables their daughter still needs to master. #timestablerockstars