Exploring the Future of Education

Teaching has always been a balance between implementing new technology and respecting tried and tested traditional education tools. In a world where it seems a new device is invented every eight hours, this balance is becoming even more difficult to navigate. This is also a component in the Universal Design for Learning that we discuss…

Common exception words are words in English that have unusual spelling. They don't follow the usual phonetic rules or spelling rules. These words are often taught separately, for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 students, from regular words because they can't be sounded out phonetically. Here is a list of common exception words which…

Verbal reasoning vs nonverbal reasoning, what’s the difference? If you read the title of this blog and applied a bit of verbal reasoning, you may have deduced what nonverbal reasoning (NVR) is. If you guessed something along the lines of “nonverbal reasoning is the ability to understand and analyze visual information without relying on written…

As educators, we become familiar with dozens, if not hundreds, of different methods for teaching and testing our students. Even within the same subject, there are so many different kinds of aptitude tests that it can be hard to keep up sometimes! But, some testing styles survive longer than others. Verbal reasoning tests have been…

Anyone who has been in the education industry for more than a week will understand teaching is always evolving. As the world changes, so do young people, and the teachers’ standards and lesson plans need to change with them. Each year, more research and studies show different approaches and how each student is a unique…

In the current political climate, it can feel difficult to discuss political issues or your point of view in a professional setting. However, schools lay the seeds of learning critical thinking, and political issues and political views can provide a starting point to discuss issues in depth in a safe space. Ultimately, what students need…

Schools are a vital part of any community. They provide lessons and skills to the new generation and can shape their attitude toward participating in our political system. From middle school to high school students will be impacted by the education policy decision-making of politicians. So let’s explore how schools and politics mix a bit…

What are the political ideologies? Political ideologies are derived from political philosophies which explore and debate how we should live together in a society. In the United States, the political philosophy is democracy. From there, our government is formed from political parties. Political parties vary in their political beliefs. These political beliefs span the political…

Everyone knows an apple a day keeps the doctor away. But can an apple a day lead to better grades too?  Well, it might not be quite that simple, but good health and educational achievement are linked. According to data from the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, school students who had higher test scores…

Origin Originally established as an initiative of the EU SafeBorders project in 2004, Safer Internet Day (SID) was taken up by the Insafe network as one of its earliest actions in 2005. Insafe is a European network of Safer Internet Centres (SICs). Every national Centre is focused on online safety, media literacy, and cyber security.…

What Is UDL? Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a method of teaching and learning that focuses on accommodating the wide variety of learner variability in classrooms. UDL takes into account individual learners’ abilities, as well as any measures that help them to learn more effectively.  A teacher working with UDL in mind understands that,…

Now that you know what UDL is from reading our other blogs, What is UDL and Examples of UDL, you must be itching to implement it into your learning environment. The first thing to remember is that Universal Design for Learning is a broad category. The official Universal Design for Learning guidelines says it encompasses…