As a young teacher, I used copying as a classroom management technique.

You can find my slides from ResearchED below. The ideas in the presentation are explained in far more detail in both of my books: Explicit English Teaching and Direct Instruction in Action Research…

My 7 year old son recently wanted to learn how to play ‘Peaches’ (a song by Jack Black from the Super Mario Bros film).

Over the last ten years, we've assessed almost 3 million pieces of writing as part of our national writing assessments for students aged 5 - 16. We've also worked with a lot of post-16 institutions…

YouTube video by Mind the Gap with Tom & Emma

Why students fail to make progress when curriculum lacks specificity, systematicity and subject sensitivity

Why oral vocabulary predicts reading ability.

I have spent more than a decade writing about vocabulary and working with a range of teachers across primary, secondary and colleges. Over that time, I've come to think differently about one of the mo...

How ‘efficiency’ derailed education

Proven with maths

Here are my slides from the conference. If you would like more information about how to create instructional sequences for teaching writing components, you may be interested in my last book ‘…

Are we in danger of making learning too simple? When it comes to students in the classroom, we can simplify an explanation of a concept into PPT where complex phrases become glossy icons. Books can b...

The art of creating equilibrium in a world of possibilities and constraints

Why blaming the curriculum misses the point and what leaders can do to make teaching both rigorous *and* engaging

This is a blog about some of my favourite research findings in the field of attention. They are remarkable studies for their simplicity, the scale of the effect that they find, and the deep philoso…

Not long ago a drive emerged against "fun" lessons. The push was to rid the focus on fun and return it to subject knowledge itself. Soon followed the argument that students had to accept boring lesson...

A system is a black box Of which we can’t unlock the locks, And all we can find out about Is what goes in and what comes out. – Extract from the poem ‘Beguiling Events’ by Kenneth Boulding, e…

In this live webinar, Adam will offer a number of routes for improving teaching and learning across a school or department.

Assessment insights for schools. Click to read 100% Assessment, a Substack publication. Launched an hour ago.

Buy Thinking Reading: What every secondary teacher needs to know about reading by James Murphy, Dianne Murphy (ISBN: 9781911382683) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on e...