David Didau

Literacy? That's someone else's job, isn't it? This is a book for all teachers on how to make explicit to students those things we can do implicitly. In the Teachers' Standards it states that all teachers must demonstrate an understanding of, and take responsibility for, promoting high standards of literacy, articulacy, and the correct use of standard English, whatever the teacher's specialist subject. In The Secret of Literacy, David Didau inspires teachers to embrace the challenge of improving students' life chances through improving their literacy. Topics include: Why is literacy important? Oracy - improving classroom talk How should we teach reading? How to get students to value writing How written feedback and marking can support literacy.

Making the Implicit, Explicit

The Secret of Literacy

If you feel a bit cross at the presumption of some oik daring to suggest everything you know about education might be wrong, please take it with a pinch of salt. What if everything you knew about education was wrong? is just a title. Of course, you probably think a great many things that aren't wrong. The aim of the book is to help you 'murder your darlings'. David Didau will question your most deeply held assumptions about teaching and learning, expose them to the fiery eye of reason and see if they can still walk in a straight line after the experience. It seems reasonable to suggest that only if a theory or approach can withstand the fiercest scrutiny should it be encouraged in classrooms. David makes no apologies for this; why wouldn't you be sceptical of what you're told and what you think you know? As educated professionals, we ought to strive to assemble a more accurate, informed or at least considered understanding of the world around us. Here, David shares with you some tools to help you question your assumptions and assist you in picking through what you believe. He will stew findings from the shiny white laboratories of cognitive psychology, stir in a generous dash of classroom research and serve up a side order of experience and observation. Whether you spit it out or lap it up matters not. If you come out the other end having vigorously and violently disagreed with him, you'll at least have had to think hard about what you believe. The book draws on research from the field of cognitive science to expertly analyse some of the unexamined meta-beliefs in education. In Part 1; 'Why we're wrong', David dismantles what we think we know; examining cognitive traps and biases, assumptions, gut feelings and the problem of evidence. Part 2 delves deeper - 'Through the threshold' - looking at progress, liminality and threshold concepts, the science of learning, and the difference between novices and experts. In Part 3, David asks us the question 'What could we do differently?' and offers some considered insights into spacing and interleaving, the testing effect, the generation effect, reducing feedback and why difficult is desirable. While Part 4 challenges us to consider 'What else might we be getting wrong?'; cogitating formative assessment, lesson observation, grit and growth, differentiation, praise, motivation and creativity.

What if everything you knew about education was wrong?

What is English as a school subject for? What does knowledge look like in English and what should be taught? Making Meaning in English examines the broader purpose and reasons for teaching English and explores what knowledge looks like in a subject concerned with judgement, interpretation and value. David Didau argues that the content of English is best explored through distinct disciplinary lenses - metaphor, story, argument, pattern, grammar and context - and considers the knowledge that needs to be explicitly taught so students can recognise, transfer, build and extend their knowledge of English. He discusses the principles and tools we can use to make decisions about what to teach and offers a curriculum framework that draws these strands together to allow students to make sense of the knowledge they encounter. If students are going to enjoy English as a subject and do well in it, they not only need to be knowledgeable, but understand how to use their knowledge to create meaning. This insightful text offers a practical way for teachers to construct a curriculum in which the mastery of English can be planned, taught and assessed.

Exploring the Role of Knowledge in the English Curriculum

Making Meaning in English

Benedict Carey

Barbara Oakley

Henry L. Roediger

Aaron S. Benjamin

Nicholas C. Soderstrom

Francis J. Pirozzolo

Alan D. Castel

Daniel Wellingham

Study Smart will show you in clear, simple terms how you can use breakthroughs from the science of learning to study smarter for the SAT/ACT-or anything else, for that matter. Backed by decades of research from university learning labs, the techniques in Study Smart are surprising, counterintuitive, and best of all, have been shown to really work. Study Smart will help you learn the fundamentals of how to study for the SAT/ACT and change the way you study forever.

10 Ways to Master the SAT/ACT Using the Science of Learning

Study Smart

Much of what we do in classrooms is intuitive, steered by what 'feels right', but all too often intuition proves a poor, sometimes treacherous guide. Although what we know about the workings of the human brain is still pitifully little, the science of psychology can and has revealed certain surprising findings that teachers would do well to heed. Over the past few decades, psychological research has made real strides into understanding how we learn, but it's only in the last few years that education has become aware of these insights. Part of the problem is a tendency amongst teachers to resist being told 'what works' if it conflicts with intuition. Whilst we cannot and should not relinquish our professional judgement in the face of outlandish claims, we should at least be aware of what scientists have discovered about learning, thinking, motivation, behaviour and assessment over the past few decades. This though is far easier said than done. Every year thousands of research papers are published, some of which contradict each other. How can busy teachers know which research is worth investing time in reading and understanding? Here, David Didau and Nick Rose attempt to lay out the evidence and theoretical perspectives on what they believe are the most important and useful psychological principles of which teachers ought to be aware. That is not to say this book contains everything you might ever need to know - there is no way it could - it is merely a primer. We hope that you are inspired to read and explore some of the sources for yourself and see what other principles can find a home in your classroom. Some of what we present may be surprising, some dubious, but some in danger of being dismissed as 'blindingly obvious'. Before embracing or dismissing any of these principles we urge you to interrogate the evidence and think carefully about the advice we offer. While nothing works everywhere and everything might work somewhere, this is a guide to what we consider the best bets from the realm of psychology.

What Every Teacher Needs to Know about Psychology

Uncertainty is a fact of life. You can never know enough to make perfect decisions. Understanding this helps us balance an awareness of our tendency towards overconfidence with an acceptance of our own fallibility. The book discusses two opposed models of school improvement: the deficit model (which assumes problems are someone's fault) and the surplus model (which assumes problems are unintended systemic flaws). By aligning ourselves to a surplus model we can create a system of Intelligent Accountability. The principles that make this possible are trust, accountability and fairness. While we thrive when trusted, unless someone cares about - and is holding us to account - for what we do, we're unlikely to be our best. Some teachers deserve more trust and require less scrutiny than others, but in order to satisfy the demands of equality we end up treating all teachers as equally untrustworthy. The more we trust teachers, the more autonomy they should be given. To pursue a system of fair inequality we must accept that autonomy must be earned.

 Creating the Conditions for Teachers to Thrive 

Intelligent Accountability

What is English as a school subject for? What does knowledge look like in English and what should be taught? Making Meaning in English examines the broader purpose and reasons for teaching English and explores what knowledge looks like in a subject concerned with judgement, interpretation and value. David Didau argues that the content of English is best explored through distinct disciplinary lenses – metaphor, story, argument, pattern, grammar and context – and considers the knowledge that needs to be explicitly taught so students can recognise, transfer, build and extend their knowledge of English. He discusses the principles and tools we can use to make decisions about what to teach and offers a curriculum framework that draws these strands together to allow students to make sense of the knowledge they encounter. If students are going to enjoy English as a subject and do well in it, they not only need to be knowledgeable, but understand how to use their knowledge to create meaning. This insightful text offers a practical way for teachers to construct a curriculum in which the mastery of English can be planned, taught and assessed.

Literacy? That's someone else's job, isn't it? This is a book for all teachers on how to make explicit to students those things we can do implicitly. In the Teachers' Standards it states that all teachers must demonstrate an understanding of, and take responsibility for, promoting high standards of literacy, articulacy, and the correct use of standard English, whatever the teacher's specialist subject. In The Secret of Literacy, David Didau inspires teachers to embrace the challenge of improving students' life chances through improving their literacy.

Making the implicit explicit

In 'Making Kids Cleverer: A manifesto for closing the advantage gap', David Didau reignites the nature vs. nurture debate around intelligence and offers research-informed guidance on how teachers can help their students acquire a robust store of knowledge and skills that is both powerful and useful. Foreword by Paul A. Kirschner. Given the choice, who wouldn't want to be cleverer? What teacher wouldn't want this for their students, and what parent wouldn't wish it for their children? When David started researching this book, he thought the answers to the above were obvious. But it turns out that the very idea of measuring and increasing children's intelligence makes many people extremely uncomfortable: If some people were more intelligent, where would that leave those of us who weren't? The question of whether or not we can get cleverer is a crucial one. If you believe that intelligence is hereditary and environmental effects are trivial, you may be sceptical. But environment does matter, and it matters most for children from the most socially disadvantaged backgrounds those who not only have the most to gain, but who are also the ones most likely to gain from our efforts to make all kids cleverer. And one thing we can be fairly sure will raise children's intelligence is sending them to school. In this wide-ranging enquiry into psychology, sociology, philosophy and cognitive science, David argues that with greater access to culturally accumulated information taught explicitly within a knowledge-rich curriculum children are more likely to become cleverer, to think more critically and, subsequently, to live happier, healthier and more secure lives.;Furthermore, by sharing valuable insights into what children truly need to learn during their formative school years, he sets out the numerous practical ways in which policy makers and school leaders can make better choices about organising schools, and how teachers can communicate the knowledge that will make the most difference to young people as effectively and efficiently as possible. David underpins his discussion with an exploration of the evolutionary basis for learning and also untangles the forms of practice teachers should be engaging their students in to ensure that they are acquiring expertise, not just consolidating mistakes and misconceptions.There are so many competing suggestions as to how we should improve education that knowing how to act can seem an impossible challenge. Once you have absorbed the arguments in this book, however, David hopes you will find the simple question that he asks himself whenever he encounters new ideas and initiatives Will this make children cleverer? as useful as he does.;Suitable for teachers, school leaders, policy makers and anyone involved in educations

David Didau

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