Lessons Learnt

This morning I came downstairs to my Husband and toddler getting increasingly frustrated with each other over breakfast.  Husband: 'Do you want something else?' Toddler: 'Yeah' Husband: 'So you want a croissant?' Toddler: 'No, no, no' Husband: 'But you want something else?' Toddler: 'Yeah, yeah' Husband: 'Well do you want some toast?' Toddler: 'No, NO, NO', eeeelse' Me: 'He wants 'else' because you are asking a 20 month old toddler an open question when he thinks it is a closed question and that 'else' is something for him to have. So he wants 'else'.' Communicating with a toddler has taught me things about the use of language in a way that I have never considered before and has made me think about the my use of questioning in all aspects of life.  I recently attended a webinar with Tom Sherrington about Questioning (I know I feel like his number one fan girl right now!) and whilst it fo...

Hands up, I admit it. This week I lost it and my year 7 class felt the brunt of it. It’s been a tough week for a variety of personal reasons and I was not in the right mindset to handle the needs of year 7 on Wednesday morning. I don’t consider myself a ‘shouty’ teacher and try to maintain the ‘relentless positivity’ to encourage and engage my students but on Wednesday I shouted for the first time in a long time and I’ve been feeling bad and also slightly embarrassed about it since.  Thankfully during my weekly scroll on Twitter I came across this article from @teacherhead https://teacherhead.com/2013/01/06/behaviour-management-a-bill-rogers-top-10/amp/?__twitter_impression=true   It was reading point 8 about Controlled severity that has made me feel a bit better about my actions that day. On reflection the class have begun to become quite restless over the past few lessons. In our current bubble system Year 7 are being taught all their lessons in the Maths block and it’s fair...