I'm looking forward to my first term as a freelance writer and supporting schools. If you think I could be of any help, do get in touch.

*** NEW POST *** A response to an interesting piece from Aidan Hesslewood in the @The_GA journal Teaching Geography - is hope and a future-facing curriuclum really a problem in geography education? open.substack.com/pub/enserm…

There are many golden nuggets in this post. Connections are key. I would just add that for students to make these connections they need to be taught a whole lot of words and content both through morphology and word relationships. We need to begin at the elementary level. Knowing migr means move and understanding the similarities and differences of the words immigrate, emigrate, migrate, migrant, and migratory should be common knowledge BEFORE students move to secondary schools.

This is one of the best content-specific posts I’ve read on here. There’s so much to take away from Mark’s insights on the importance of students understanding the morphology of disciplinary vocabulary in geography. Thanks to the work of @smorrisey, this concept is already part of my instruction, but it’s also an area where I need to continue refining and improving my practice. Because of Mark’s post, I now have several actionable ideas to build on, especially in the areas of curriculum coherence and assessment.

This is great Mark. Super useful extension for schools 🦾

For me the seismic shift in focus from the consultation version of the toolkits around attendance to the final version is a massive issue that just isn't getting the attention it should

*** NEW POST *** Reflecting on 10 Common SEN (Mis)Interventions from @PepsMccrea and @Barker_J - and considering what it means for teachers on a Monday morning. open.substack.com/pub/enserm…

This man has published work on @guardian , IRIS, @BloomsburyBooks and a fair amount of others. Horrific.

The #geographyteacher community should probably be aware of this.

School governance… It affects us all, but we rarely get a reyt good chance to sit and sen what’s what. @5Naureen will be unpacking it all at #rEDYshire 🎟 Tickets ’ere: buff.ly/GGLIpXH

A thoughtful summary of the key points made by @PepsMccrea and @Barker_J

This response from the EEF to the SEND paper ties in nicely with it all. d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.ne…

🚨New paper released today: 10 Common SEN Mis(Interventions)—An Evidence Summary steplab.co/news/common-sen-m… Supporting students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) is a vital and growing challenge for schools. But it’s not straightforward. Learning is complex, marketing claims are confident, and the evidence is often hard to access. As a result, we can sometimes end up adopting approaches which are less effective than we initially think. For some, this may well be uncomfortable reading. As a profession, many of us have put time, effort and belief into these things, and lots will have seen students who looked like they were getting something from it. However, it’s essential that we temper our intuition with evidence, because ultimately: our most vulnerable students deserve it. This new paper co-authored with @Barker_J is an attempt to raise the visibility of the best available evidence around several commonly used SEN interventions. For each, we provide an overview of what the research says, offer a more informed approach, and provide a suite of rigorous links to help you get started. We hope it will serve as a useful resource and over time: push us to be even more 'evidence demanding' as a profession. As ever, let me know what you think. If you have pushes or suggestions for how this paper could be better, hit reply and give it to me straight. 👊

One of the trickiest questions in vocabulary instruction is deceptively simple: Which words should we explicitly teach? After years working with schools on vocabulary, I explore that challenge here: alexquigley.co.uk/selecting-…

I enjoyed reading Mark's substack. It was really well written. I put up the word "move" today. This is the result. A structured vocabulary curriculum can help scale up teacher knowledge and make vocabulary stick for students. Elementary schools must build the foundation.

WELL THIS SHOULD GET A FEW FOLK THINKING 👏 @acohenNY IS COMING TO #rEDYshire Andrew Cohen will be exploring: ‘How to prevent AI study tools from eroding student learning’

PROPER CHUFFED TO HAVE @lamb_heart_tea JOINING US AT #rEDYshire ☕ Alex will be exploring: ‘The Scaffolding Effect’ Reyt ways to help 'em use their nouse and get on thersen.

An excellent blog by @EnserMark on ‘Teaching and learning vocabulary’ in geography. “Once we begin to look for morphology in geography, it becomes impossible not to notice how saturated the discipline is with these patterns. open.substack.com/pub/enserm…

I wish that more articles were written on that important topic which seems to be flouted by some many subject areas.