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About

My name is Yousuf Hamid and I teach Economics and Business in London, and from September will be a head of department. I used to work in insurance in the city and in 2018 retrained to be a teacher with Teach First.

I started this blog as a way to record changes that I make to my practice following what I read. When I first started teaching, I had a steep learning curve as I kept learning from my mistakes and responding to feedback.

I try to read edu blogs, books and research as much as I can now to make sure that I can continue to make these gains (and in the name of the blog, avoid diminishing marginal returns to my improvement).

When I was in my first year, Teach First asked us to record a journal as part of our QTS evidence and I found the process really useful as a way of recording what I wass doing to develop my teaching and so I decided to continue this by blogging about what I am doing to continue to improve my practice.

I hope that by doing this and blog about successes and mistakes made when trying to become more research-informed in the classroom that it will help others who are on the same journey as well as provide an opportunity for me to reflect more deeply on how I am trying to improve my practice.

You can also follow me on Twitter if you are so inclined!

Popular posts from this blog

8 Lessons from using Booklets

  Over summer (and the March lockdown) I read blogs from BenNewmark and Adam Boxer on how to create and use booklets of practice questions as opposed to power points. It has been a real game-changer for me in terms of the amount my pupils are now practising content, the mental capacity I have during a lesson to focus on how pupils and it massively reduces workload which gives teachers time to plan for their explanations and questioning. The blogs linked above explain the advantages of using them far better than me, but I wanted to speak about the process of creating and using them for me. It has been a process of trial and error for me this year and some of the key lessons learned are: 1.        It is incredible CPD for your subject knowledge I underestimated how much creating booklets enhanced my subject knowledge. I thought I understood by subject well but when you create these booklets, you specify exactly the knowledge you want pupils to know to write questions about them
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The benefits of making pupils respond verbally in full sentences

 Since returning for Easter, one change I’ve been making is to insist that pupils answer questions in full sentences. I saw this on a Tweet from Lee Donaghy and Doug Lemov speaks about the ‘art of the sentence’ in Teach Like a Champion. In essence, the idea is that the more pupils practice speaking in a full sentence, the more able they will be to articulate their thoughts and improve their writing. It also highlights if pupils really understand what is being asked. A mumbled answer can mask a misunderstanding that whereas a full sentence often can’t as it requires a fuller explanation. One thing I have noticed is that even though the instruction is simply to answer in a full sentence, the outcome is that pupils expand the point they are making. In only a few weeks I’ve seen an improvement in both the amount pupils are writing as well as the quality of their essays. There are 4 points that I think are worth considering if you are trying to implement this in your own classroom:
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first thoughts on devising an economics curriculum

  I’ve kept slightly detached from some of the discussions around curriculum that I’ve seen on blogs and CPD sessions in the last 18 months or so. This is partly because I’ve found it slightly too abstract and also that teaching Economics, I don’t have pupils for as long as most subjects so cannot devise a y 7-11 curriculum and have far less choice about what to teach. Having said that, I have recently read Kat Howard and Claire Hill’s book ‘Symbiosis’ and 'Gallimaufray to Coherence' by Mary Myatt which has inspired me to rethink how I consider the curriculum. In particular for KS4. My school start key stage 4 in year 9 so I have pupils for 3 years for their Economics GCSE. Previously I have worked sequentially through the specification but pupils ‘symbiosis’ has got me thinking about what the golden threads are that link the subject together and what the big ideas are that I want pupils to consider and how they can build on this through their 3 years of study. Before I d
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