So I went to look up exactly what Sir Michael Wilshaw said today about raising literacy standards – available on the Ofsted site – and I discovered that he gave his speech at Thomas Jones Primary school, the outstanding local primary I wrote about back in January. How exciting and …
Looking forward to tomorrow’s 10-point plan to improve literacy: Literacy progress has stalled, chief inspector says.
After my thoughts a few weeks ago about using colour to learn the piano, some simple Googling threw up the Rainbow Piano Technique in California, and something a little more academic: Color Piano. So, not such an original idea after all, but encouraging to know I’m not the only person …
Thinking again about microskills … one thing dyslexics often have a problem with is left-right confusion, and I have this problem too. When I am driving, and someone tells me to turn left, it takes me a long time to work out which way to go. I have to look …
I’m trying to think of a way forward with Tiny Mistakes. I’ve just read Tim Harford’s book, Adapt, in which he outlines three Palchinsky principles: develop new ideas and experiment (variation) make failure survivable get feedback and learn from your mistakes (selection) So: do more and get more feedback.
Complex cognitive processes (like reading, writing and playing music) can be broken down into a series of much smaller microskills. Most of us were so young when we learned them that we don’t remember each tiny step, and the distinction between each microskill becomes blurred. Microskills appear to be discrete, …
Not exactly news, but I was digging around for evidence of the impact of diet on children’s development and came across Michele Belot and Jonathan James’s evaluation of Jamie Oliver’s School Dinners campaign: Healthy School Meals and Educational Achievements (Jan 2009). So, we know that healthy eating is important to …
A brand new secondary school is going to be built on our doorstep – the Kensington Aldridge Academy – to open in September 2014. Today we went to a planning meeting to hear presentations from the architects and find out more about the plans. They spent some time emphasizing that …
Having a child in London means that, sooner or later, you start compulsively researching ‘good’ schools. I walked past Thomas Jones primary school today and saw a notice on their gate that said they had featured in an Ofsted report about how the best schools teach children to read. I …
I am struggling to learn the piano at the moment, grappling towards grade 2. I was trying to work out why it is so very difficult, when pressing a series of keys in a designated order by itself isn’t that hard. Then I realised that the thing that is so …