Readings and Musings

What you’ll find

Welcome to my blog – a collection of summaries, musings and thoughts around educational books and readings.

It occurred to me that teachers often want to read educational books to develop their own subject knowledge and pedagogy through reading and engaging with books related to education. Unfortunately, teachers are often time-poor, have multiple commitments or simply don’t know where to start. It then occurred to me that a space where teachers can view summaries created by a teacher may be useful: they could expand their subject knowledge on a surface level or make a more informed choice regarding which texts they might choose to read themselves. And so, the blog was born.

There are a few caveats to this:

1. The books in this blog are those I have chosen to read. These may be recommendations or simply based on my personal interests and CPD needs. This is not an exhaustive list and may not relate to your CPD needs.

2. This blog contains my key ‘take aways’ from the reading and I hope that they are useful. However, it is important to recognise that they are my interpretations of what I have read and what I believe is key. It may not be what you take away from the text and of course that’s OK! I just hope they help you to make a more informed choice.

3. I am lucky enough to receive a few review copies, from John Catt and Crownhouse, as well as some books people send because they’re super generous. Point 1 still stands, however: I receive nothing for my reviews other than the books and all are books I’d choose for myself.

How to use this blog

I have tried to organise the reviews into categories which can be selected from the right hand side – if you want a particular book type, but not sure which to choose, this may be a good place to start.

Alternatively, use the hyperlinks to take you directly to the book you are interested in!

List of books (with hyperlinks)

Annsi Roiha & Jerker Polso – How To Succeed in Differentiation

Bradley Busch & Edward Watson – The Science of Learning

Chris McGrane & Mark McCourt – Mathematical Tasks

Craig Barton – How I Wish I’d Taught Maths

Craig Barton – Reflect, Expect, Check, Explain

Daniel H. Pink – Drive

Daniel Willingham – Why don’t students like school?

David Didau – Making Kid’s Cleverer

Doug Lemov – Teach Like A Champion 2.0

Emma McCrea – Making Every Maths Lesson Count