Twenty seconds to really make you think – #6: On assessment Provocative quote number 6. Could this 15 seconds of video change your whole view of assessment? From John Holt’s ‘How Children Fail’. Click the image to watch the very short video of the full quotation. Feel free to share with your team to start the conversation.. ‘It is not the teacher’s proper task to be constantly testing and checking the understanding of the learner. That’s the learner’s task, and […]

Twenty seconds to really make you think – #5: Free yourself Provocative quote number 5. This 20 second video really makes you stand back and take stock of your role as an educator. From John Holt’s ‘How Children Fail’. Feel free to share with your team to start the conversation.. ‘Only when teachers in schools free themselves from their traditional teacher tasks – boss, cop, judge – will they be able to learn enough about their students to see how […]

Twenty seconds to really make you think – #4: On peer observation Here’s provocative quote number 4. Another 15 second video to really make you think about where real quality improvement happens. From John Holt’s ‘How Children Fail’. Click the image to watch the very short video of the full quotation.   Feel free to share with your team to start the conversation.. ‘There should be more situations in which two experienced teachers share the same class, teaching and observing […]

Twenty seconds to really make you think #3: Rethinking assessment Day 3 of the lockdown and provocative quote number 3. This 15 seconds of video could change the way you look at your whole assessment strategy. From John Holt’s ‘How Children Fail’. Click the image to watch the very short video of the full quotation. Feel free to share with your team to start the conversation.. ‘The problem is not to get students to ask us what they don’t know; […]

Twenty seconds to really make you think #2: They flunked unsuccessful methods. As we’re all stuck inside thanks to corona virus (2020), I thought I’d share some provocative thoughts from the book I’m reading at the moment: ‘How Children Fail’ by John Holt. It’s about his work in primary schools in the 50s and 60s, but how much of it is true for schools and further education today. Do we never learn? I’ll post one a day. ‘A ‘very modest […]