Welcome to Tips for Teachers – the site that helps you supercharge your teaching one idea at a time.
There are over 100 tips below, each available in audio and video.
But the fun does not stop there. You can also:
- Order my Tips for Teachers book
- Access on-demand or face-to-face Tips for Teachers CPD
- Sign up for the free Tips for Teachers newsletter
- Become a Patreon to get lots of lovely goodies
I really hope you find this site useful
Tips for Teachers – Top 5s
These collections of tips are all taken from my Tips for Teachers book
Habits and routines
- Build habits, not one-off things – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
- Willpower is overrated – Peps McCrea – video
- Consistency before challenge – Peps McCrea – video
- Be aware of the Valley of Latent Potential – Craig Barton – video
- Don’t just describe a routine, justify it – Craig Barton – video
- Don’t just introduce a routine, retrieve it – Craig Barton – video
- Teach students what to do when they are stuck – Tom Bennett – audio – video
- Beware the distraction addiction – Jamie Thom – audio – video
- Interruptions leave a wake – Peps McCrea – video
Behaviour and relationships
- Validate introverts – Jamie Thom – audio – video
- Three reflections on behaviour in schools – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
- Teach behaviour lesson one – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
- Use the school behaviour policy – Tom Bennett – audio – video
- Use non-verbal gestures for better behaviour management – Mark Roberts – audio – video
- Students need to know you are in charge of the classroom – Tom Bennett – audio – video
- Be clear and follow through – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
- Think creatively when attempting to improve engagement/performance of boys – Jon Mumford – audio – video
- Enjoy the kids’ company – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
- To develop resilience you need both high challenge and high support – Bradley Busch – audio – video
- Teach students how to behave in a supply or cover lesson – Tom Bennett – audio – video
- Teach students how to have the right equipment – Tom Bennett – audio – video
- Make detention work fit the crime – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
- Ban mobile phones – Bradley Busch – audio – video
- Some behaviours are more important than others – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
The means of participation
- Find a tool that tells you what’s really happening – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
- To reduce “choppy time” in lessons, use a Front Loaded Means of Participation and wait for Golden Silence – Adam Boxer – audio – video
- Ask the whole class questions – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
- To make sure your students are ready to practise, use mini-whiteboards – Adam Boxer – audio – video
- Mini-whiteboards: go deep on the routine – Craig Barton – video
- Mini-whiteboards: start from the back – Craig Barton – video
- Keep spare mini-whiteboard pen lids – Emma Turner – audio – video
- Use partner work as a chance to recruit quiet kids to share their thinking – Michael Pershan – audio – video
- When doing group work, make clear the group is responsible – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
- Lesson phases and formative assessment strategies: an exercise – Craig Barton – video
Checking for understanding
- Be aware of student bias – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
- Three reasons students don’t know the answer – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
- Check for understanding – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
- Always build from what they know – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
- Always check for understanding – Clare Sealy – audio – video
- No hints before a check for understanding – Ollie Lovell + Craig Barton – video
- Planning the checks for understanding – Craig Latimir – video
- Ask a question at the end of every lesson that every student should be able to get right – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
- Planning the end of a lesson – Craig Latimir – video
- Consider lengthening wait times to maximise retrieval – Bradley Busch – audio – video
- How to ensure questioning involves all pupils – Jade Pearce – audio – video
- The Tick Trick – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
- Ask students to make a pre-topic mind map – Alex Quigley – audio – video
- Use talk cubes to encourage students to contribute – Emma Turner – audio – video
- Start with whoever got 8 out of 10 – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
- Use Post-it notes to find out what they don’t understand – Mark Roberts – audio – video
- Play “Just a minute!” – Alex Quigley – audio – video
- Provide explicit scaffolds for verbal responses – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
- Pick the student least likely to know – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
- Foster cross-class accountability – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
- Trick your students to test if they really understand – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
- Depressurise learning – Chris Such – audio – video
Responsive teaching
- Don’t forget the “respond” part of responsive teaching – Jo Morgan – audio – video
- Planning responsive teaching – Craig Latimir – video
- Modify your lessons as you go – Jake Gordon – audio – video
- Responsive teaching: what to do when some students understand, and some don’t – Craig Barton – video
- Don’t let “Don’t know” be the end of the conversation – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
- End every conversation with the student saying something smart – Michael Pershan – audio – video
- Rephrase to amaze – Mark Roberts – audio – video
- Diagnostic Questions – the perfect exit ticket? – Craig Barton – video
- How to design good multiple-choice questions – Kate Jones – audio – video
- Share photos of students’ work – Jake Gordon – audio – video
Planning lessons
- The crucial role of curriculum – Ollie Lovell + Craig Barton – video
- Lesson planning mistakes – Craig Latimir – video
- Lesson planning principles – Craig Latimir – video
- The first thing to think about – Craig Latimir – video
- Make question planning part of lesson planning – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
- Focus on explanations, not resources – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
- Plan sequences not lessons – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
- Backwards plan. ALWAYS backwards plan! – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
- Be super clear about what you want children to learn – Clare Sealy – audio – video
- Do less, but better – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
- We should all be focussing on doing fewer things and greater depth – Mary Myatt – audio – video
- Review every lesson plan in terms of what the student is thinking about – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
- Plan for error – Emma Turner – audio – video
- Take a low effort, high impact approach to task and question design – Kate Jones – audio – video
- Teach what you mean to teach – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
- Focus on the concepts and the Big Ideas in our curriculum – Mary Myatt – audio – video
- Learning doesn’t start in Year 7 – Craig Latimir – audio – video
Examples and modelling
- Beware the curse of knowledge – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
- Set out the big picture – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
- We know more and remember more when we’ve heard it in a story – Mary Myatt – audio – video
- Planning the exposition – Craig Latimir – video
- Planning the modelling – Craig Latimir – video
- Mind your modes – Peps McCrea – video
- Question, don’t tell – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
- Use explicit instruction for novice learners – Jade Pearce – audio – video
- Model techniques live – Jo Morgan – audio – video
- Try teaching from anywhere in the room – Jake Gordon – audio – video
- Begin your explanations as a series of questions that everyone can answer – Michael Pershan – audio – video
- Use, where possible, dialogic teaching – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
- Encourage students to say “stop!” if they are confused during an explanation – Emma Turner – audio – video
- Avoid the Split-Attention Effect during worked examples – Craig Barton – video
- What you say matters – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
- What you don’t say matters – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
- Don’t ask students to listen and read simultaneously – Craig Barton – video
- Explicitly teach the skills an expert in your domain uses – Craig Latimir – audio – video
- Use visual aids, including props and online tools to bring explanations alive – Jo Morgan – audio – video
- Reduce clutter from everything students see and hear – Jake Gordon – audio – video
- Beware of seductive details – Craig Barton – video
- Use examples, not definitions, when teaching & assessing – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
- Get used to asking “what if” after explaining something – Michael Pershan – audio – video
- Provoke curiosity in our students – Mary Myatt – audio – video
- Use related examples and non-examples to explain a concept – Craig Barton – video
- Further thoughts on the Myth of Copying Things Down – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
- Hone your public speaking – Jamie Thom – audio – video
- Feign enthusiasm when necessary – Chris Such – audio – video
Student practice
- Planning the practice phase – Craig Latimir – video
- Teach in small chunks and fool kids into doing lots of work initially – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
- Make sure students know whether they are right or wrong, and don’t wait until it’s too late – Jo Morgan – audio – video
- Provide answers so pupils can check their work in real-time – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
- Set occasional open-response tasks – Tom Sherrington – audio – video
- Two frameworks for learner-generated examples – Craig Barton – video
- Use SSDD Problems to improve students’ practice – Craig Barton – video
- How to help students avoid “silly” mistakes – Craig Barton – video
Memory and retrieval
- We have little insight into our learning – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
- Challenge students on what they like versus what’s best for them – Bradley Busch – audio – video
- How to overcome the limits of working memory – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
- Have a robust culture of retrieval – Clare Sealy – audio – video
- Understand the active ingredients of retrieval practice – Jade Pearce – audio – video
- Retrieval practice is worth investing time to understand and use – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
- How to make retrieval practice work – David Goodwin – audio – video
- Try using a collage collection to stimulate ideas – Alex Quigley – audio – video
- Show your students the Forgetting Curve – Craig Barton – video
- Show your students a model of memory – Craig Barton – video
- Show your students that being familiar with something is not the same as knowing it – Craig Barton – video
- Develop systematic revision – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
- Planning the Do Now – Craig Latimir – video
- Give worked examples with retrieval starters – Jake Gordon – audio – video
- Get your students to assign confidence scores to their answers – Craig Barton – video
- How to organise the disorganised – Jon Mumford – audio – video
- Make corrections quizzable – Craig Barton – video
- Sometimes it is better to review than retrieve – Kate Jones – audio – video
- Make use of the Encoding Specificity Principle – Kate Jones – audio – video
- How to make the best use of technology for retrieval practice – Kate Jones – audio – video
- Choose the purpose of your Do Now… and tell your students! – Craig Barton – video
- Revision should start from day one of a course, not at the end – Julia Smith – audio – video
Data and assessment
- To make good use of data, compare to other subjects – Adam Boxer – audio – video
- Know how to effectively assess – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
- Stop talking about grades – Mark Roberts – audio – video
Homework
- To make homework more effective, integrate it with classwork – Adam Boxer – audio – video
- My favourite homework activity – Craig Barton – video
- Rebrand homework as practice – David Goodwin – audio – video
Marking and feedback
- Don’t give negative managerial feedback – Mark Roberts – audio – video
- How to improve feedback – Jade Pearce – audio – video
- Choose the right feedback type – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
- Don’t do written comments – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video
- The best feedback is a learning activity, and it’s much better than written feedback on the page – Michael Pershan – audio – video
- No feedback, more teaching – Clare Sealy – audio – video
- Make feedback into detective work – Dylan Wiliam – audio – video
- Consider the impact of audio feedback – Jon Mumford – audio – video
- Use D.I.R.T. as a post-assessment formative tool – Jon Mumford – audio – video
- How to get students peer-assessing with group critique – Jon Mumford – audio – video
Improving as a teacher
- Use tips when they act as solutions to problems you face – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
- Ask students “What was the most useful thing I did today?” – Emma Turner – audio – video
- Inquire into mechanisms – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
- Study the teachers you respect – Charlie Burkitt – audio – video
- Have your coffee whilst sitting in the classrooms of effective teachers – Femi Adeniran – audio – video
- Work out why things work – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
- The power of teachers reading research – Jade Pearce – audio – video
- Ask yourself “what evidence would change your mind? – Bradley Busch – audio – video
- Use research on learning not as a prescription but as a compass – Sarah Cottingham – audio – video
- Ignite the CPD culture – Sarah Donarski – audio – video
- Leave space between reading and implementation – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
- Treat the act of teacher development like teaching – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
- Read for pleasure and read for progress – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
- Be clear about your career pathway – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
- Make use of the NPQs – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
- You can learn something from everybody – Ollie Lovell – audio – video
- Go out and visit other schools – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
- Nobody really knows what they are doing – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
- Ask “who is this for?” – Mary Myatt – audio – video
- What’s happening in AI right now, and what does it mean for education? – Peps McCrea – video
- Rethinking To-Do lists – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
Observations and coaching
- How to observe a lesson – Adam Boxer – audio – video
- How to give a colleague feedback – Adam Boxer – audio – video
- Diagnosis in coaching – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
- Develop competing hypotheses when observing teaching and learning – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
Leadership and culture
- To lower workload and build a better team ethic, make culture explicit – Adam Boxer – audio – video
- Think about implementation – Sonia Thompson – audio – video
- Be explicit when modelling for colleagues – Kieran Mackle – audio – video
- The principles of Cog Sci apply to humans (not just students) – Craig Latimir – audio – video
- Leave a legacy – Craig Latimir – audio – video
Health and well-being
- Maintain perspective – Harry Fletcher-Wood – audio – video
- Remember the tortoise and the hare – Jamie Thom – audio – video
- Tackle the negativity radio – Jamie Thom – audio – video
- How to get better sleep – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
- The secret to a happy life – Craig Latimir – audio – video
- End the day on a positive – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
Maths, Maths, Maths!
- Use the same questions, with different numbers – Sammy Kempner – audio – video
- Use calculators with students from the earliest opportunity – Jo Morgan – audio – video
- The power of a slideshow for teaching mathematics – Ollie Lovell and Craig Barton – video
- Doing maths is not the same as teaching maths – Jemma Sherwood – audio – video
- Practice, practice, practice…not until you can get it right but until you cannot get it wrong – Julia Smith – audio – video
- It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it…and that’s what gets results – Julia Smith – audio – video
- Fluency in the four operations is a cornerstone of developing mathematical understanding – Julia Smith – audio – video
- How to deal with students who say they hate maths or are no good at maths – Julia Smith – audio – video
Reading, literacy and oracy
- Learn about reading development – Chris Such – audio – video
- Provide opportunities for students to read in lessons – David Goodwin – audio – video
- Every teacher should make the teaching of literacy a high priority – Clare Sealy – audio – video
- Analyse words using morphology and etymology – Chris Such – audio – video
- Focus on developing keystone vocabulary – Alex Quigley – audio – video
- Develop vocabulary – David Goodwin – audio – video
- Assess reading difficulties and respond – Chris Such – audio – video
- How to improve students’ ability to write – David Goodwin – audio – video
- Support your students using sentence expanding – Alex Quigley – audio – video
- Get your pupils to spell their name backwards – Daisy Christodoulou – audio – video