Reading in Threes (1)

I want to start a 'regular' feature on the blog - three blog posts/articles that I've read.  I don't know how frequently these posts will come but I'm hoping they will help me to write more frequently and also allow me to keep a nice record of what I've been reading.  I am also in need of a name for this series of posts.


I really liked this post from Mark Enser - The Ritual of Teaching
In this post Mark discusses some practices in classrooms, how these have become a required element of all lessons in some schools and advocates for teachers to practice in their classrooms what they know to work.



This is also a great one from Ben Newmark - Ten Principles for Great Explicit Teaching. 
Here Ben chronicles his journey to improve his teaching through explicit instruction.  This is not a maths specific post but this is definitely a post worth reading for an insight into making explicit teaching work as effectively as possible.  It has also been very kindly illustrated by Oliver Caviglioli.

I really like Tom Sherrington's blog and this post - Principles of Effective Teaching is a good one.

Tom outlines 12 principles for effective teaching and briefly explains them.  I especially like what he has to say about behaviour, teaching to the top and planning.  He references a few lists collated by other sources and then gives his own research free and driven by his gut.

Some extras:

The NCETM have just published their Secondary Mastery assessments and there are some nice questions in there.

If you haven't already you should check out the Teacher Tapp app.  

Every day at 3.30 the app notifies you to answer three questions.  The purpose of which is to gather information about teachers, their working conditions and what they spend their time doing.  As a 'reward' for answering their three questions, the app shares the results from the previous day and gives you a 'tip' which is normally in the form of a quick blog post or article to read.  I have certainly read some very enjoyable and informative posts through the app.