I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about Glynis Cousin’s short introduction to ‘threshold concepts’, an idea developed by Erik Meyer and Ray Land and, although I have reservations about some of the things she argues, I find her central theme quite helpful. She describes a threshold concept as one that is ‘central to the mastery of… Continue reading Threshold concepts and the idea of sound to print
When Matthew Syed, former table tennis champion, Times correspondent and author, trained his sights on what it is that makes someone a champion, he tackled the question head-on by dealing with one of our most cherished enigmas: in his superb book Bounce(2010), he asked the question ‘How do you solve a conundrum like Mozart?’ The reason he… Continue reading What do young children learning to read and write have in common with the young Mozart?
The following post is what I intended to get across at the recent researchEd conference and didn’t have time to finish! The post covers some of the important issues raised by John Sweller, Paul Kirschner, John Hattie, Daniel Willingham, David Geary and others in a number of academic pieces published on human cognitive architecture and… Continue reading What human cognitive architecture has to tell us about instructional design in phonics teaching.
For some time now, there have been various accounts of the differences between linguistic phonics and synthetic phonics. Some of the principal differences you can find here on SusanGodland’s excellent website dyslexics.org.uk, but the differences also extend far beyond those adumbrated by Susan into the detail of how linguistic phonics should be taught. And, of… Continue reading Linguistic phonics: a practical example
The latest issue of teach PRIMARY has just come out and there are two articles (at least) of note that are worth a look at. The first, ‘Good education doesn’t change every time there’s a new secretary of state’, is about Belleville Primary School in Wandsworth. According to Jacob Stow, the head teacher John Grove… Continue reading Clear vision, consistency and effortful practice
There was an acknowledgement on kitchen table math yesterday of the huge importance of deliberate practice in teaching. As I wrote in my reply to the posting: ‘I’ve been banging on about Ericsson’s work for ages. Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich and Hoffman produced The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance in 2006, since which… Continue reading Deliberate practice
