Isabel Allison

I love that (according to The Telegraph) I live on the island of gin! I knew there was another reason, other than great quality of life, beautiful beaches and friendly folk, that I live here ❤️ telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink…

@XpatEducator ROSENSHINE

🎁 FREE GIFT: FULL ROSENSHINE CPD PACK! To celebrate 50 consecutive weeks of ⚗️DistillED, I’ve put together something quite cool… Over the past year, Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction has been one of the most requested topics from teachers and school leaders. So I’ve put together a complete, ready-to-run CPD pack to help schools explore and implement all 10 principles. The download includes: → 10 CPD PowerPoints (ready for 30–45 min sessions) → 10 strategy checklists (practical classroom actions) → 10 planning templates (put principles into action ) → Covers all 10 of Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction Everything you need to run ten focused CPD sessions — one for each principle. 👉 REPOST and comment ROSENSHINE and I’ll DM you the link. Cheers! ⏰ Available until Sunday 22 March!

📚 Happy World Book Day To celebrate the launch of Reading Steps, we’re giving one school the chance to win: 📖 Primary Reading Simplified by Christopher Such (@Suchmo83) 🎟️ £500 in Amazon vouchers for your school library To enter: ✔ Follow Steplab ✔ Like ✔ Share Closes 10:00 am, Mon 9 March. Winner announced the same day. Good luck!

🚨BOOK GIVEAWAY🚨 To celebrate the release of Leading Secondary English from @BloomsburyEd on 12 February, I am giving away not one, but TWO FREE COPIES. To be in for a chance of winning, simply 'like' and 'repost' below. 👇 Winners will be chosen on Monday 2nd February.

Everyone’s been to school. If you’re a confident celeb, you may mistake mere experience for expertise. Teachers who look at the “Learners remember 10% of what they read; 20% of what they hear…” poster should dismiss it as myth & turn to better evidence theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Just a few more votes needed to get a LEGO Shakespeare’s Globe… beta.ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/…

@K2SR7 Congratulations! A fantastic achievement.

🥹😍!! Four years of chipping away and now I'm happy to say that KS4 GCSE English is fully resourced with standardised, academic reading booklets which explicilty develop on the skills and knowledge of KS3!🙏Evidence-informed and evolving each year, I truly believe in these!💪

@FunkyPedagogy Happy Birthday! 🎂

@blodwyn22 @FunkyPedagogy @Team_English1 Hi Nicki. We taught Edexcel iGCSE for 8 years. Moved to AQA 2 years ago but happy to chat about the former. DM me.

@Team_English1 we are thinking of moving over to Eng Lit IGCSE. Is there anybody on here does it already?

I’ve recently written about my experience of introducing booklets to our maths curriculum. @fantasticmaths/note/p-171765680?r=4h6e8b&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@fantasticmath…

@missgeog92 🤣

@IsabelAllison2 My hand may fall off in the process of cutting it all out 😅

255 slides and I think we’re done. Can someone please remind me of how I currently feel before I take this display down next summer 😅

@FunkyPedagogy Many congratulations! He is beautiful 😍

@DHE_teach I love the book wraps. Would you mind sharing the template?

Getting September ready. MTPs complete. Overviews complete. Book wraps redesigned.

The Things We Carry He carried a bergen heavy with mission essentials and the small, private weight no one sees. He carried a name stitched to his chest and names he would not say aloud. He carried the habit of scanning horizons, and the quiet rule that you serve the person to your left and right. He carried numbers folded small, like a prayer in a pocket: risk that doesn’t reset, only compounds. He carried the radio voice that says, “Stand by,” and the steadiness to do it. Service before self. When he came home, he carried different kit. A lanyard. A gate key. A corridor at 08:25 that hums with possibility. He carried the same lesson the desert taught him: survival is a discipline; service is a team sport; success is a system. In this town, children carry other weights. They carry postcodes they didn’t choose. They carry planners signed by hands that work nights, shoulders stiff from the production line, eyes red from the early shift. They carry the grit of parents who never had the luxury of quitting. They carry grandads who went underground in the pits, their lungs black with a wage packet’s worth of dust. They carry nanas who kept the house going through blackouts and ration books. They carry great-grandparents who stood on beaches and in fields in a world at war, who came home to rebuild brick by brick. Generations of graft, handed down like DNA. And yet they also carry a spark—the sentence that nearly lands, the diagram almost finished, the poem line that bites. They carry the possibility of changing the odds, if someone will show them how. What changes the odds? On operations: kit checked and rechecked; orders crisp; each person serving the mission so the mission can serve them back. In school: routines that free the mind; curriculum with a spine; practice that turns shaky to sure. Silence becomes kindness because it gives every voice a fair hearing. Expectations feel like care because they say: meet them, and we will meet you with opportunity. Grades are not decorations; they are passports. A string of strong GCSEs, A-levels that hold their nerve; these are visas stamped to places that let you serve bigger: on a ward, on a site, in a lab, in a boardroom, in a classroom. Opportunity compounds too. One good lesson becomes one good grade; a grade becomes a course that fits; a course becomes a mentor; a mentor becomes a first job that faces forward. And when you get there, you pay it forward properly with mock interviews for Year 11, a bursary, a Saturday talk, a hand on the shoulder that says, “I was you. Come on.” Picture Aisha annotating not by guess but by knowledge; her confidence serving the row beside her. Picture Callum, who didn’t think books were for him, tracing a route through a war memoir, learning patience, the kind that later serves a team on shift at 3 a.m. Picture the quiet boy who answers once, and the room tilts towards his future; next week he’s the one explaining it to someone else. Service as a reflex, not a slogan. An outstanding school doesn’t remove grit; it aims it. It lends what money buys: expert teaching, a sequenced curriculum, feedback that is cool and exact and then asks for something in return: Use what you gain to lift someone else. Student leaders and ambassadors. Alumni come back for mock panels. Staff rehearse in practice clinics so children never pay the price of chance. This is how culture moves: the help you received becomes the help you give. In assembly we do not promise ease. We promise clarity. Behaviour is a form of care. Literacy is power; numeracy is freedom; attendance is the simplest superpower—turn up, serve your own future, and the rest can happen. Your grades will be earned. Your pride will fit you. Your tomorrow will feel like yours and useful to others. He carried two tours into this building and set them down as standards. Register taken. Books marked. Doors greeted. A day shaped so that talent has something sturdy to stand on and somewhere generous to go. And one day, quietly, a pupil sends a photo back. A master’s hood. A salary that buys choice and the decision to fund a scholarship, to run a club, to mentor the next kid in line. Service, returned with interest. We are not taking anything from anyone. We are returning what should have been there all along: a fair route, a trained team, a door that opens on time and a duty to hold it for the person behind you.

@engteacherabro2 This made me smile! I love that you’re always pushing boundaries and challenging yourself - even for fun! 🤩

I am so scared of water but we are doing this!

*NEW* for AQA: 2026 exam date posters for Language and Literature, with 23 posters covering most of the set texts, like these 👇 #teamenglish Retweet and help yourself 😊 dropbox.com/scl/fo/sp8bie2…

🎉 Steplab Summer Reads #4 Win "Developing Expert Teaching "by Peps Mccrea + a Steplab bundle (mug, pen & notepad)! Peps is Steplab’s Director of Education & author of the "High Impact Teaching" series. ✅ Follow ❤️ Like 🔁 Share 🏆 Winner announced Friday!

@engteacherabro2 Happy Birthday Freya! I hope your 45th year brings all you wish for! 🎈🎁🎂🎉

Happy birthday to me! 44 has included lots of laughter and tears. It's meant Hong Kong, Hoi An, Japan, Rome, Helsinki, Vilnius, Tallin. 45 is about going into recovery for work addiction. Enough is enough. 🎉

**New blog** - It's been a while so retweets hugely appreciated. The Most Common Reason Why Children Don't Become Fluent Readers... And What We Can Do About It ⬇️⬇️⬇️