Ramblings from the Chalk Face

Through reading widely around the topic of feedback, and wanting to move towards providing live and whole class feedback effectively, whilst at the same time reducing workload, I wanted to try using a visualiser in the classroom, after reading about their use in a Geography classroom in the following blog post: https://devongeography.wordpress.com/2015/05/28/instant-images-visualisers-in-the-classroom/ For some reason, I had obviously been hiding underneath a rock for the last 10 years of my teaching career, and hadn't come across this fantastic classroom resource. The visualiser has been a game changer for my teaching, and specifically for the way I provide feedback, but I will outline the ways that I have found using it very useful in lessons.  After a fair bit of research, I decided to go with the ELMO MX-1 visualiser, but there are many brands in the visualiser market, at a variety of prices. I am not going to write about their different qualities/technological aspects, as...

Having not blogged since 2012, and back then it was a department blog based around geography articles, this first effort is one that I have wrangled with for quite some time, and also petrifies me in equal measure.  Have I got the time to blog?  Will people read the posts?  How can I continue to set such high expectations from myself and for my students, whilst blogging at the same time? However, having read widely for the last three years, and making time for reading within my working week, the quality and effectiveness of my teaching has improved drastically. Surely therefore, I have some time to blog occasionally, and I really hope that some of you find some of my ramblings of use. First up: Rocks of Routine In this post, I am going to outline what a typical lesson looks like in my geography classroom on a daily basis. What are the rocks of routine that I use to set high expectations of myself and for the students that I teach? The quality of my teac...