Disciplinary Knowledge and RE: an attempt at professional wrestling

When there is no easy answer to the question of disciplinary knowledge the temptation arises for the classroom teacher to disengage with the debate. That is, quite honestly, the place I have been occupying for the last two years of my practice. I have put a big focus on the substantive knowledge in RE, IContinue reading “Disciplinary Knowledge and RE: an attempt at professional wrestling”

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New Year’s Resolutions: three honest reflections on my own practice

This time next week I will be welcoming back students into my classroom and I feel okay. I don’t have the knot in my stomach I did last year before I began NQT, I know a lot of my students already, I know what my classroom looks like, I know what our schemes of workContinue reading “New Year’s Resolutions: three honest reflections on my own practice”

Writing knowledge organisers – a step-by-step guide

There are plenty of blog posts and articles and book chapters extolling the virtues of knowledge organisers, that’s not what this post is. Instead this is a step-by-step guide to how I write my RE knowledge organisers. 1. Decide what knowledge you want to organise This might feel obvious, you probably have a scheme-of-work forContinue reading “Writing knowledge organisers – a step-by-step guide”

A very short ‘trad’ reading list – five books for NQTs

I’m not going to spend long going into the taxonomy of ‘trad’, you can read my defence of the pedagogy and my dislike of the terminology here, The Radical Case for ‘Trad’ Education. Instead I’m just going to accept the term (and the division between trad and prog) as something that (a) really exists andContinue reading “A very short ‘trad’ reading list – five books for NQTs”

Sweetening the apricot – how useless knowledge makes life more enjoyable

Bertrand Russell was a great proponent of ‘useless knowledge’ – knowledge that doesn’t seem to have an immediate instrumental benefit when learned but which holds a value just by dint of being interesting. It is this knowledge, he argues, that is what makes life that much more rich and makes idleness and leisure that muchContinue reading “Sweetening the apricot – how useless knowledge makes life more enjoyable”

What’s the point in RE?

I was really fortunate to be involved in a PhD project this year where the object was to interview RE teachers and gain an insight into the thought processes at work behind their teaching. As a result I got the opportunity to sit down a few times and have quite lengthy and in-depth discussions aroundContinue reading “What’s the point in RE?”

At the end of a long year: thoughts on NQT and thriving

There was a time this year when I had written my notice, I had told my husband I was quitting my job and I’d applied to go back to studying Theology. There was a time when I sat in my head of department’s classroom and cried in a visceral, horrible way because I felt likeContinue reading “At the end of a long year: thoughts on NQT and thriving”

Resources: Buddhism Revision / Recap PPTs

I wanted to upload these as I know we are in the midst of revision season for GCSE RE and I also know that there aren’t always as many resources out there for the Buddhism components as Judaism and Islam. The PPTs are really just a distillation of what I have put onto the BuddhismContinue reading “Resources: Buddhism Revision / Recap PPTs”

Let students learn: why we shouldn’t take cues on classroom design from tech giants

There is not much more likely to cause controversy on Edutwitter than discussion of classrooms whether that’s their layout, furniture, displays or, rather infamously, the views from the window. The physical spaces in which we teach are naturally close to our hearts so imagining life with no projector or a suite of white sofas orContinue reading “Let students learn: why we shouldn’t take cues on classroom design from tech giants”