Thoughts from a Teacher & Father
It’s exam week!
For the whole week, students at my school have been traipsing into school, lining up, entering an exam room, writing exams, going to a holding room to wait, repeating this three times daily…rinse and repeat!
Exam season has become a hallmark of education. After all, how can we have school without these formal examination periods? They help teachers test understanding and retention, and are a critical part of developing and assessing a student’s understanding…
But that’s a lie!
It’s so great getting feedback from the first post in any blog. Thanks to everyone who sent me an email, and also to those who gave me suggestions. they are absolutely appreciated!
A big shout out goes to my sister, Zoë, who sent me an interesting blog by Bill Gates, partly about classroom design. He mentions walking into Ricky Thacker’s classroom, and being struck at how different it is to classrooms of the past. Continue reading “Re-Imagine!”
I saw an interesting article yesterday. Science Alert posts an article about Finland’s latest schooling shifts. In a nutshell, Finnish schools will retire the traditional teaching of content in the classroom, replacing it with thematic, integrated learning. They will take a theme, such as “The European Union”, and in this theme, teachers will guide students to appreciate the economy (maths and economics links), politics and history, languages and so forth. The idea being to integrate learning around real life issues, rather than discreet academic subjects. Continue reading “Trends in Teaching”
