Tom Carson

My son’s first day at high school he came home buzzing. He’s learned that Democritus ‘invented atoms’ - by just thinking about sand and water. He imagined water was made of ‘atoms’. Blew his mind. Later studied philosophy at uni. He may have practised ‘lining up’ too but that wouldn’t have lit any fires!

30 years old now, but Mike Askew and I did a review of research on Mathematics Education 5-16 and one of the topics we discussed was the use of non-examples (pp. 14-15), which appear to be more important in mathematics than other subjects: bit.ly/2xx4Zm0 (pdf)

Reading @teacherhead take on Rosenshine with the original was powerful. The question isn’t “Am I doing these?”—we all are. It’s “How well?” Every teacher, myself included, can do better. One principle at a time. Here’s my principle threads.🧵Which one do you want to focus on?👇

I am bothered by 799999999 being prime

I'm back to the blogging. Here's my recent output. Five Ways: Tackling Common Learning Barriers.  Five Ways: Focus on Teams and Team Leaders to Drive Improvement.  Precision. Because hopeful vagueness isn’t (good) enough. Links below...

@EducationScot Yes, I am signed up. Will look out for it. Thank you.

@trcarson1 Hi Tom. We are working on finalising this now. Have you signed up for the Curriculum Improvement Cycle news bulletin? We are going to send out a first-look exclusive to subscribers before promoting it more widely. Here’s the link: ow.ly/yoX550VpQrJ

Early work on the Curriculum Improvement Cycle has begun. In this video Education Support Officer Yvonne McBlain shares her reflections on the work to review the Literacy and English curriculum so far. Find out more – ow.ly/GB5T50UcNUk

Two core ideas underpin effective inclusive teaching: 1. Cognitive similarity 2. Instructional sensitivity Let’s dig into both… ↓

Non-euclidean geometry

If everyone used footnotes instead of endnotes

Andrew Wiles on being smart

Ayr fans celebrate Mark McKenzie’s opener.

In the fall of 1972, President Nixon announced that "the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing". Probably the first time a sitting president used the 3rd derivative to increase the chances of reelection.

Don’t make me tap the @ProfCoe sign again *taps the sign again*

@theepicmap A visualisation of the Mercator projection with Antarctica A map projection that distorts the size of landmasses

This parking lot generation software is the most American thing. It's like an eagle flying a fighter jet over a french fry factory.

@PaulSkallas one word : Atmosphere

Our son, in year 7, has complained about not doing much art in art lessons, with focus on learning about artists/”doing quizzes”. Said similar in primary. I wonder if this is a legacy of M Gove’s drive to make all subjects more “academic”.Continue to have questions about this...