Blooms' resources

There are a lot of resources for using Blooms' Taxonomy in the classroom as a tool to develop pupils thinking skills at this website here.

Thanks to Zoe Newbery for the link.

Thinking skills online

Futurelab have produced an online resource that they describe below:

Exploratree is a free web resource where you can download, use and make your own interactive thinking guides. Thinking guides can support independent and group research projects with frameworks for thinking, planning and enquiry. We’ve provided a set of ready-made guides which you can print out or use online. All of the guides are completely customizable or you can start from scratch and make your own! You can share them and work on them in groups too.

You need to register first. Check it out here.

Distributing innovation

Professor David Hargreaves has been writing perceptively about education for many years and has recently been focused on the changes linked to the new curriculum and personalised learning. For him one of the key factors is sharing the responsibility for innovation amongst as many people as possible. Below is one example of his common sense approach:
Those who pioneer radical innovations need to keep track of
the lessons they learn during the innovation, and these lessons need
to be transferred to the recipient as an inherent part of the innovation.
Distributed innovation is effective in part because members of the
innovation network are constantly sharing the lessons learned and so
easing the innovation and transfer processes. There is always a
danger that innovators offer an innovation in too polished a form to
others. When innovations are 'good enough' , with some rough
edges, and not too far from a recipient's current practice, they are
easier to transfer.
Read more here.

New curriculum resources

The DSCF has provided a new website to support teachers planning the new curriculum.

You need to register to use it but it is worth it.

It has some useful resources including videos and a curriculum planning wizard which offers support with planning.

Check it out here.

Learning and Teaching Update

The Teaching Expertise website produces a monthly newsheet called Learning and Teaching Update. The April issue has some useful articles on

• Creativity and the new cuuriculum


• Teachers views on pupil achievement

Download a copy here.

Developing and accrediting personal skills and competencies

Futurelab is an organisation that aims to develop innovative resources and practices that support new approaches to learning for the 21st century.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) commissioned Futurelab to carry out a review and consultation project which aimed to:

• draw together a review of current projects and initiatives which provide insights into different approaches to developing young people’s skills and competencies (broadly classified as ‘21st century skills’) through non-subject led approaches
• identify how these different approaches might be developed and supported at a national level by QCA
• make recommendations as to assessment and accreditation practices which could be used to promote and develop personal skills and competencies.

The project ran between January and March 2007 and comprised desk research, meetings and interviews with lead practitioners. They have produced a report that provides guidelines and strategies for delivering and accrediting the Personal Learning and Thinking Skills that are a key part of the new curriculum at KS3 and beyond.


Download the report by clicking here.