What blogs have captured your imagination?
Here are the most popular blogs from Teacher Toolkit during the academic year, September 2015 to July 2016.
September 2015:
Throughout this month, I posted 17 blogs.
In Claim Back Your Weekend, I asked ‘what day of the week are teachers most likely to mark students’ classwork?’ Of course the answers is most-likely to be on a Sunday.
I also had a blog-rant about Verbal Feedback Stamps and questioned who the stamps (evidence) was for: students or for observers? The blog created good debate online.
October 2015:
Throughout this month, I posted 18 blogs.
In Teaching and Learning One Year Later, I shared how we were moving forward without lesson gradings, sharing some of the future projects we were working on in our school. Eight months later, we have now published our proposed Learning Policy which defines our expectations from classroom to classroom – without gradings and formal observations.
November 2015:
Throughout this month, I posted 17 blogs.
At the start of this academic year, Nicky Morgan chose to highlight the issue of emails, focussing on the idea that teachers should not be expected to answer emails after 5pm each day. After lots of publicity around these comments, little seems to have happened as a result.
In ‘Why We Must Protect Our Staff From Emails?‘, we recognise that stress is such an issue amongst our colleagues, that we need to consider how we can manage workload and how we can protect our colleagues out of the classroom, as well as within it.
This blog on Marking and Work Scrutiny upset a handful of teachers online – apparently, schools are not allowed to grade teachers in lessons and are now not allowed to look in students’ books!
Absurd …
December 2015:
Throughout this month, I posted 21 blogs.
What teaching and learning ideas would you like to say goodbye to in 2016? 8 Teaching Ideas to Bin in 2016 is a collection of ideas I would like to see banished throughout 2016 and remains the most popular blog of the academic year.
January 2016:
Throughout this month, I posted 20 blogs.
Having used social media as a teacher for almost 10 years, I’ve seen all sorts of online car-crashes! When using social media, how can teachers protect themselves from damaging their career, or worse, losing their job?
Read 3 Tips to Keep Teachers Safe Online.
February 2016:
Throughout this month, I posted 23 blogs.
What do you believe are the traits of an effective teacher? Working with over 1,000 teachers over the past 20+ years, these are what I believe to be the 7 Traits of an Effective Teacher.
March 2016:
Throughout this month, I posted 26 blogs.
At the end of my 8th year of school leadership, I have much to learn, but I’d be a fool to admit that everything is perfect. It’s not. There are many types of leadership that exists within schools and if leadership is less than desirable, how does it manifest itself?
Read 10 Poor Leadership Attributes.
April 2016:
Throughout this month, I posted 23 blogs.
This list of educators are people I draw inspiration from on Twitter. 101 Educators to Follow on Twitter took me 3 days to compose. It has now reached over 15,000 views in less than 2 months.
May 2016:
Throughout this month, I posted 22 blogs.
As an experienced teacher, have you ever had the opportunity to coach another teacher? In Coaching Teachers, I argue how this can replace formal observations altogether (for every school).
June 2016:
Throughout this month, I posted 21 blogs.
Assessment After Levels shares the story of a primary school and what they have been doing with assessment. And one of my favourite blogs to write this year: if teachers quit the classroom, do they reach their ‘best before end’ date too early? And what is the reason behind this? Read, Stay on the F***ing Bus!
July 2016:
Throughout this month, I posted 19 blogs.
Over the past 20 years, what do you think teachers have wasted their time doing most? 20 Years of Educational Fads have proven to be my most controversial and most-read blog of the year. Not bad considering I only wrote it on a whim less than 3 weeks ago!
Did you manage to read them all?
Image: Shutterstock
What blogs have captured your imagination? Are there any on Teacher Toolkit that are not listed here?
TT.
