✨ Take what you need this week!

Welcome to your weekly POWER Up! I’m here to support you with simple, actionable strategies, ideas, resources and freebies!

P = Personal 💁🏼‍♀️

We celebrated Father's Day on Sunday! Watching Jez be a dad to our two boys has been one of the great joys of my life.

He's the calm one when I'm severely over-stimulated. He’s the one who’s taken on the lion’s share of parenting while I’ve been down and out with morning sickness. And he's the one who never needs the credit for any of it.

Very, very grateful!!

O = On the 'gram 📲

In case you missed it, here's some of what's been popular over on Instagram lately.

• ​The Sea of Wonder Collection is finally here! *​
• ​Unfortunately, these teaching trends really are worth the hype​
• ​Most of a teacher's exhaustion has nothing to do with the children​
• ​Was Roald Dahl secretly a phonics teacher?! *​

*Includes freebies

W = What's trending?📈

Teaching trends come and go... but some are truly worth the hype.
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I knowwww some of these things can get some eye-rolls. Explicit instruction sounds like it will turn kids into robots. Retrieval practice sounds like one more thing in a day with no room in it. Greeting at the door sounds cute, but cute doesn't help when the bell's about to go and nothing's ready.

But the research is annoyingly clear - and we can't ignore the research!!

So here are five teaching trends that actually earn the hype, and what each one looks like in a real room.

👉🏼 Explicit instruction.
​Telling them the thing, showing them the thing, then practising the thing with you there. Not rigid. Clear.

👉🏼 Decodables.​
They were never meant to be rich literature. They're practice texts, like the scales a piano student plays before a performance. Nobody plays a concert of scales, but the fingers don't work without them.

👉🏼 Retrieval practice.
Three questions on the board about last week, or telling the person next to you what you remember. Two minutes. I know there's already so much to cover and we don't have tiiiiime, but daily practice and cumulative review is what makes things ACTUALLY stick.

👉🏼 Greeting them at the door. ​
Thirty seconds each morning, and both engagement and behaviour shifted (Cook et al, 2018). Easiest thing on this list by a mile.

👉🏼 Reducing what's on the walls. ​
Kids in heavily decorated rooms are off task more, not less (Fisher, Godwin & Seltman, 2014). Still love decorating? Keep loving it, I do too. Just make sure everything up there has earned its spot, rather than going up because you saw it online.

Notice what's not on the list. Anything you have to buy. Anything that needs a subscription. Anything that takes a weekend to set up.

E = Education Tip 💡

Every one of these is a change to something you already do, not an addition to your to-do list. Which is exactly why they last.

So my tip for this week? Pick one of the above areas where you feel you could strengthen your classroom practice, and try to incorporate it a bit more over the next few weeks?

Want to be kept accountable?? Hit reply and let me know which one you're going to incorporate! I'd LOVE to hear!

R = Resource Spotlight 🔦

Roald Dahl Day is September 13, which falls on a Sunday this year, so why not bring a bit of Roald Dahl magic to your classroom the next day??

The reason Dahl is so good for reading is that he invented words your students can read but have never seen. Snozzcumber. Frobscottle. Whizzpopping. ​
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There's no guessing from the picture, so the only way through is to sound it out. Which is exactly why phonics checks use nonsense words... except Dahl makes children absolutely desperate to have a go, out loud, in front of everyone!

Our free Roald Dahl Day pack has poster templates, writing activities and craft ideas! ➜ [Download your free Roald Dahl Day pack here]

Have a wonderful rest of the week, and good luck with your one thing!

Love,

Tam

P.S. Teaching trends that are research-backed and have stood the test of time is basically what my new book is all about! The Classroom Playbook comes out early next year, and it's all about what actually makes the biggest difference in a classroom, done in a way that's survivable (and joyful) for you.
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​Join the presale waitlist here if you'd like to know the second it's available - and nab a sneaky discount!