The below extract is taken from Writing at Greater Depth by Ros Ferrara. Click here to see sample pages. This publication looks at recognising greater depth in writing with children in each year group, it discusses a writing sample and offers suggestions to ensure progress and deep learning. The requirements... View Article
How can we help learners to think metacognitively and how can thinking metacognitively help in accelerating pupil progress? Get pupils to: think about the planning, monitoring and evaluation; talk aloud about how they think they can tackle the task (planning); talk about any adjustments they made as they were doing... View Article
Letting down left-handers in primary schools: Do you keep a check on the standards attained by left-handed pupils? As the data packs arrive at school, we will be asked to focus on different groups, such as boys/girls; disadvantaged/non disadvantaged; EAL/non EAL and SEN and non SEN. However, are we asked... View Article
A metacognitive route to better teaching in mathematics How can greater levels of thinking and reasoning improve our teaching of mathematics in primary schools? We are at a point in time when there are new ideas published every day, with claims about ‘best practice’ in the teaching of mathematics. In... View Article
What is metacognition and what is the significance of metacognition in primary schools? Metacognition refers to higher order thinking, which involves active control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning. Activities such as……: Planning how to approach a given learning task; Monitoring our comprehension of the task, and Evaluating progress toward... View Article
Changes in Primary Education 1972 – The year I started teaching Well, I must confess that I started teaching in 1972 at a time when seating pupils in groups was deemed to be ‘the thing to do’. In truth, the Plowden era was upon us and discovery learning was the... View Article