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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!

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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 ...
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How do you make pupils think deeply?

If learning is a change in long term learning, then planning time should be devoted to ensuring this change. In order for this change to take place first pupils need clear explanations, then they need to think deeply about a concept for it to enter their long term memory and then there needs to be regular retrieval to ensure it stays in their long term memory.
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3 mistakes going from concrete to abstract in my explanations

The blog that has had the biggest impact on my teaching this year has undoubtedly been by Pritesh Raichura on explaining a concept by going from concrete to abstract. In simple terms, starting an explanation with an example that pupils will be able to grasp easily and then when more abstract terms are used, pupils have the anchor of this concrete example to give meaning to the abstract term. Instinctively most of us would start explaining a theory or definition and then use an example to explain it rather than the other way round. I’ve become convinced of the merits of going from abstract to concrete, I think it’s especially helpful when teaching subjects like economics and business where there are so much jargon that it can seem like we are speaking a different language.
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