Alex Quigley (The Confident Teacher) is a blog by the author, Alex Quigley - @AlexJQuigley - sharing ideas and evidence about education, teaching and learning.| Alex Quigley
Alex Quigley (The Confident Teacher) is a blog by the author, Alex Quigley - @AlexJQuigley - sharing ideas and evidence about education, teaching and learning.| Alex Quigley
Newsletter (The 3 Rs)| Alex Quigley
Mindfulness is hugely popular across the world and there is a question to be asked about whether it could prove useful at scale in schools and colleges. It is clear that mental health referrals are up across young people, from around one in eight children and young people in 2017| Alex Quigley
Alex Quigley (The Confident Teacher) is a blog by the author, Alex Quigley - @AlexJQuigley - sharing ideas and evidence about education, teaching and learning.| Alex Quigley
In Brazil in 2012, the government offered prisoners the chance to read for their lives. Their novel approach saw prisoners granted four days of remission for each book they read and reviewed. Prisoners had the opportunity to submit up to 12 reviews per year, which equates to a| Alex Quigley
Should we ditch the Kindle and pick up a paperback? Or put away the plain ol’ textbook and dive into digital learning instead? In our brave new world of ever-present technology, we are left with questions about what is best: tried and tested traditional methods or innovative new technologies. New| Alex Quigley
Tutor time reading has experienced a wave of popularity in English secondary schools over the last few years. As schools responded to plummeting reading habits, along with a focus on reading in inspection and across curriculum, it became a popular fix for promoting and practising more reading during the school| Alex Quigley
Barak Rosenshine is most famous for his principles of instruction, but what did he have to say about building knowledge? In his writing on ‘Advances in research on instruction’, he put forward the important – and familiar notion – of ‘knowledge structures’. Put simply, this is how information is organised and stored| Alex Quigley
Let me introduce you to James. James finds it hard to articulate his thoughts due to limits to his vocabulary and a difficulty in understanding complex language in class. He can rely on simple words, repeat phrases, and non-verbal communication to get through the school day. In science, he particularly| Alex Quigley
The canon of English literature - and what is taught in English classrooms - is always the stuff of fierce debate and news headlines. A new TES article claims schools 'need support to break away from An Inspector Calls'. So, we should ask the question, should it be scrapped, what| Alex Quigley
3 Rs is my fortnightly newsletter where I’ll share interesting writing, reading, and interesting research from the world of education and beyond.| Alex Quigley
Making change in education is hard. Making a change at scale is even harder. Whether it is a new secondary school, growing their departments and staff, or a school trust mushrooming in size, this type of scale up can easily suffer what has been termed a ‘voltage drop’. The book,| Alex Quigley
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that vocabulary knowledge is crucial for pupils’ school success. Pupils are language sponges, learning thousands of words each year. Like increases in a child’s height, it is a slow but inexorable development. On a daily basis it is near-imperceptible, but when you begin| Alex Quigley
‘Ro-man soc…i-e-ty… The army tried to con…q…u…er new lands for their v…ast Em-p-i…re.’ It is all-too common to hear arduous attempts at reading aloud in classrooms. Particularly with younger pupils, well-meaning enthusiasm, stretching their hands into the sky, is often followed by dysfluent reading.| Alex Quigley
British summer time is about to begin and the year continues to tick over at pace. If things are moving a little too fast, perhaps take a few minutes to reflect and read about the latest reading and writing in education. This edition includes writing on the state of writing| Alex Quigley
Writing problems, and solutions, can too often go undetected in schools. Unlike reading, there are relatively few specific writing assessments to detect issues that schools can use, so it is hard to follow clear trends. As a result, when national exams reveals issues – such as the drop in primary pupils’| Alex Quigley
Alex Quigley (The Confident Teacher) is a blog by the author, Alex Quigley - @AlexJQuigley - sharing ideas and evidence about education, teaching and learning.| Alex Quigley
Year after year, teachers conduct assemblies, workshops, and share resources on effective revision. Despite all that effort, students continue to fall for the all-too-common seven deadly sins of exam revision. So, what are these ever-present sins that beset so many students? 1. Procrastination and cramming. Perhaps the most famous sin| Alex Quigley
Alex Quigley (The Confident Teacher) is a blog by the author, Alex Quigley - @AlexJQuigley - sharing ideas and evidence about education, teaching and learning.| Alex Quigley
The proverb ‘penny wise, pound foolish’ was first recorded back in the eighteenth century. It represents how people can focus on being stingy with small amounts of money, but may be wasteful with larger sums. When it comes to specifically spending on research and development (R&D), you can make| Alex Quigley
Valentine's Day is here. I am afraid I don't offer roses or gifts, but if you are inclined to love reading about education, this may be the 30 minutes of lovely links you are after! This 57th edition includes a review of an excellent new book on reading in primary,| Alex Quigley
Everyone has a view on education. Every parent and politician has sat in a classroom, so they have a view on what the teacher does or doesn't do. But experience does not always translate into wisdom and understanding. Happily, we are not short of wisdom that does shine a light| Alex Quigley
Alex Quigley (The Confident Teacher) is a blog by the author, Alex Quigley - @AlexJQuigley - sharing ideas and evidence about education, teaching and learning.| Alex Quigley
"As pupils progress through an increasingly specialised secondary school curriculum, there is a growing need to ensure that pupils are trained to access the academic language and conventions of different subjects. Strategies grounded in disciplinary literacy aim to meet this need, building on the premise that each subject has its| Alex Quigley
How do we encourage reluctant children to successfully stick with a tricky task? How do we advise truculent teens to persist through a long and winding learning curve fraught with failure? These are the perennial questions we ask that are about how best to motivate learners to undertake the struggle| Alex Quigley
How pupils read, write, talk, and the vocabulary they use in every classroom is specialist and unique. There are general words and literacy strategies to deploy, but as pupils move up through school, the language they use gets more specialist and subject specific. As a result, the language of the| Alex Quigley