by John Winwood  In the chaos of your first year at the helm of a classroom, it's good to take a moment to reflect and remember what supports great teaching and learning. In fact, whether you're a newly qualified teacher (NQT) or have been marking books for decades, it's always beneficial to remind yourself of the basics. So here are my top 10...

When I took my A-levels and GCSEs, I imagined them being marked by wise, Einstein lookalikes with great tufts of white hair, locked away in ivory towers. I pictured these sages ruminating over the points I had carefully laid out, raising an interested eyebrow from time to time, and often pausing to reflect on my argument. The idea of doubting ...

"Frankly, I question your sanity going into teaching," a former boss said, in response to my request for a reference for my part-time PGCE application. I can't say I blame him. On my first day as teaching assistant (TA) at a local primary school (a job I have taken to complement my PGCE and bring in a little cash) I encountered two news reports abo...

"Let down your buckets!" Mr Wilkes shouts at window-shaking volume. It's 1993 or 1994 and I am in my earth science class, a subject I think would be called geography today. Mr Wilkes paces the front of the room, red-faced and miming semaphore. "The becalmed ship flagged back its reply. We need fresh water! We need to drink!" We all lean forward, th...

Any discussion among teachers about good practice will get around, at some point, to learning outcomes. Conversation will often turn to Bloom's Taxonomy and the attendant verbs connected to the "lower" and "higher" order "thinking skills". And then someone will raise the idea of SMART targets, which, in conjunction with Bloom's, enable us to develo...