 Hello everybody. I bet you didn't expect to see me in one of these, but there you go. I'd like to take this off firstly to begin with, Season's Greetings. I thought I would go through a little bit of insight into what I see virtually through my website. So I've just gone past 60 million readers which is just ridiculous. And this year, three million teachers, which again is just crazy. And despite all the challenges, increasing people, mental health, teacher, mental health, etc. We know teachers are doing the absolute best, keep schools open, etc. And I'm trying to keep a broad perspective here beyond England where I'm streaming this from. But I just want to show the resources and some statistics and some demographics. So you kind of see the world of teaching from my perspective, which is always quite interesting. So I'd like to, if you're watching live, I'm going to be on for about 25 minutes. So this will be pinned to my profiles. You can watch it over the holiday season if you want to. I'm going to go through loads of great resources blogs that are really popular. So I'm going to do that there. And at the end, I'll go through what I'm up to. I might make a few predictions, some trends for 2022 we'll see. And then I'll finish things off. So what I'd like to start with, I'm going to put on my screen. I'm going to start with the 12 most popular blogs in Descending Order. So start with the one that's, you know, and these collectively about about 3 million readers. And then I'll signpost you to the resources so you can see what people have been clicking on. And what you can find are some of the headlines. You can bookmark them and maybe watch them or read them another time. So people watching live, if you log in, you can leave a comment. I appreciate everyone is desperate for the festive season, not released to log off. If you're in a classroom, I totally understand that. So thank you for watching. Thank you for watching. Recorded if you are. Let me just put stuff up on the screen. So this first one, if you've not seen this one before, this is seven tips for self and peer assessment. And what we've got in here is a little three minute blog about how best to pitch assessments, developing it with students, anonymous works, just different ways to get this work. And this has been the 12th most popular blog on the website throughout 2021. I'm reminded of Kate Jones on Twitter, cited a great piece of research from, or a strategy from Dylan William, which I also love. You know, 25% mark the work in detail, 25% skim read, 25% peer assessment, 12, 25% self assessment, four quarters, it's called is a great little methodology for trying to balance the workload burden with marketing and all sorts of things. So that's your most popular. Next one is dual coding theory, relatively new to most people. Something I've been aware of four or five years at new, but once you understand the theory, you realize you've been aware of this for probably your whole classroom career. And the great book here from my friend, Oli Kav, how I've used it subconsciously throughout my career. And now I guess when I show you the resources, how I conscientiously use this strategy to support teaching and learning and retention of knowledge. If you're not familiar with Joe's dual coding, have a look there. So that's the 11th most popular blog of 2021. Next one, Fermi questions. One of my favorites, how many balloons can you fit in this classroom, et cetera, based on the principle by Enrique Fermi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner statistician who posed vague questions to illicit creative responses. How it's works in the classroom. Find a bit of breathing space. I pose a Fermi questions. You've got lots of examples here. How many 10 year olds are in the UK? Kids discuss. I get some breathing time, fix a projector, whatever I need to do. And then the kids, you bring the kids back. We don't necessarily need to discuss the answer, but it's a great little discussion starter. That proves very popular this strategy and all these examples on my teacher training travels. And next one, I think we're up to number nine. Plenaries. Now the word here, plenaries, if you type that in Google for a long time, this blog, and it's an old blog. This has been trending on my Google searches for a long, long time. So it seems to just keep getting great resources. But here, four or five strategies, plenaries for people watching outside of the UK are an evaluation strategy, I suppose, to put in at the end of the lesson. So I guess, you know, thinking about retrieval practice. This methodologies are a useful way to summarize what has been taught to test the knowledge in the class to build in a retrieval method before you set your students off to their next lesson, particularly in a secondary context. Next one, a blog I wrote a number of years ago, differentiation over time, rather than trying to evaluate differentiation in a one-off lesson episode. So all my strategies here, here you'll see a bit of my dual code in starting to emerge in some of my resources. There's my 10 strategies, a little signpost, particularly very popular for newly qualified teachers, early career teachers who often find that the differentiation or the myths associated that you have to have a different strategy or a different resource for every child, of course you do. But that also includes how you respond to a student, as well as these recommendations also on this resource. So that's the next most popular. Where are we up to now? So we've got two, four, six, eight to go. So that's the six. OK, next one is behavior. Behavior is challenged from most teachers, particularly the end of each term, as well as the start, establishing routines, etc. So in here, you've got the power of routines, relationships, developing responsibility, contact with home, being in charge of your classroom and always sticking to routines. So good suggestions there, particularly for newer teachers. Next most popular blog, tutor time. Now, one of the things I loved doing in my teaching career was being a form tutor. And I was lucky enough, again, as a deputy head teacher to be a form tutor again. And it was great. And what I loved about that as a school leader was it allowed you to understand how policy immersed itself through all aspects of school life, particularly in the pastoral type areas of school. You've got all my ideas here to help people who are new to this role for the first time. That's been the seventh most popular blog on the site and trying to keep count of everything. Next one. This is really interesting research questions about education for the people watching here in England. These are the research questions that the Department for Education are currently researching. Now this link here, areas of research interest, I believe. Let's just open up 2018. Yeah, first published 2017. It's updated regularly. So you can see the last update, June 2021. So if you want to know what, and I've picked out ones that I'm interested in here. If you want to know what the Department for Education are commissioned in terms of funding for research and then reporting back to the general public or teaching profession on. You've got all your suggestions here. And then that link on the DfE link to their published recommendations. You can see how this then transfers into whole school kind of strategies or whole sector wide recommendations. Next one. Now this is an old one and I get a lot of feedback from this all the time and trade exercise. Now people that are regular readers to my site and my old social feeds, you'll have seen this before. And I get a lot of people that I meet on my travels say they've seen this or they went to an interview and they've had this too. So I hope for school leaders watching who do use this resource that you translate it to suit your own context or update it because soon everyone will have seen this example. Now I have mixed views about entry exercises for an interview process, but at least you can see here. I kind of thought process to unpick as a new school leader how you would approach a number of different scenarios. So it's particularly important to look at different times of the day, the different messages, the different pressure points, who can you assign different responsibilities to. And there's a couple more links at the bottom. So do check that out. But here it's a great little methodology for preparing for interview. And it's a really good kind of brain egg. I guess from sitting on the other side of the table at an interview process, it allows you if you've got a couple of front runner candidates to select the person that can articulate their decisions and unpick the nuance behind all those different different problems. And sadly, the third most popular blog of this academic year was this one teacher resonations. Now, again, from an English perspective, an English education perspective, the traditional times when you would hand in notice, I guess, in a kind of very mobile economy today and different ways of working or at least teaching. And, you know, given that there's COVID and all sorts of contracts and all every possible scenario, I can't cover everything. However, taking the kind of key landmark dates for a given resignation, this blog particularly talks to teachers about protocols, references and of course, there'll be lots of undercurrents in here. Relationships, bullying, permissions, consent, privacy, wanting to be secret about potential job applications, etc. So this goes through kind of the key things that you should consider doing and the things that you should avoid if you want to sustain a good relationship with your current, future or ex employer. However, you look at your job application process. So the third most popular blog. We're nearly there. Second most popular one. I wrote this at the start of the pandemic March 2020. So what can I do? Put out a few ideas. So I just published a list of resources here for pupils. A list of resources for teachers to use different videos and some resources for teachers to work more effectively. So there's 47 in total. And this blog is pushing at least so if you get a sense of statistics, all the different things I'm showing you this blog. Last time I checked and it's good a couple of months ago, 350,000 views just this blog alone. So it's just a list, but it was a list of resources that I'm familiar with in my life as a blogger, which are the top resources here, things that I've used myself in the classroom, things that I see through my blog. All the different videos and now we're in a much stronger place, you know, 18 months into the pandemic, a huge variety of online video resources that you can use. But these were the big ones. For me, I've been doing webinars for 10 years to switch and online straight away was pretty smooth. And thinking about my last leadership responsibility, deputy head of Google school, we're already established there. So I suspect I touch base in that particular context, the transition, you know, one or two headaches, I'm sure, but the transition to Google to online would have been relatively smooth, because all that was in place to begin with. And then the latter part here, loads of resources are used to work smart. Some that are useful for classroom some for personal circumstances, some for my work as a blogger. And another to kind of do a bit of a side hustle for people that want to, you know, share some ideas, make a pound here or there. The most popular blog wasn't written in 2021, but it's this one, no matter what I do, even by adding a little VIP logo here, which means you have to log in to read it for free. Obviously, you know, there's no charge to read this and even locking it behind the scenes. Still, people want to read it. So all I've done here is gather some 10 ed tech links to resources products that I think would make a big difference in any teacher's classroom. Obviously, USB assigned probably a bit of a dated bit of technology. And so that obviously includes the cloud today. So that number three here, Wi Fi access cloud is that strategy. But that's it. But this has been the most popular blog throughout the entire year of 2021. So there are blogs, 60 million readers, analytics, 90 seconds reading time. I tried to make sure my blogs for busy people are about a minute and a half to read. So that's approximately 500 600 words. So that's the blog. But let me just pop over now to the most popular resources that people have been downloading. And Barrett Rosen shines principles of effective instruction, totally swept all across the teaching profession here in the UK, not everywhere, but at least online, you would think differently. I've not met one teacher who knows all 17 principles. I suspect my friend Tom Sheraton does. But, you know, you read the original paper. There's a one from 1982, the original, which had six, then that went to 10 in 1992. I'm going to stick my neck out. And then it went to 17 in the latest paper, which most people are familiar with in 2012. I came across it in 2015, wrote about it, published this resource, a few blogs. And it's been really popular with teachers and it gives you a lovely methodology for effective instruction. No one can remember all 17. So what I've tried to do in this blog, or this resource is condense into four, explain, question, practice, feedback, repeat. And there is your effective teacher loop. So this is the 12th most popular resource throughout 2021. The second, an oldie, pose, pause, pounce, bounce. This is from my good friend Pam Ferney, who I worked with a long time ago. She called it this, Dylan William got wind of it, talked about it in a video. I created this little resource, I wrote about it in the Guardian newspaper here in England. This is a long time ago now. And it's now viewed as a really good question and methodology to get kids to process information for teachers to pause before seeking a response. Great ideas are always timeless. It's a great strategy, something I still talk about today in my teacher travels. Third most popular 10 questioning techniques. So I believe the greatest tool a teacher has is the ability to pose a wide range of questions. So having all these planned having all the different strategies up your sleeve as part of your teacher DNA code. Here are 10 techniques in this download. This has been the third most popular resource. Now next one, kind of in at number four, if we're going reverse order in at number eight, counting down to the top one is the verbal feedback project. So this is the summary of the findings, but the resource you actually want is this document here published with Mark Quinn University College London 13 teachers, seven disadvantaged secondary state schools across England, where traditionally you're told to mark once a week with a purple pen of progress. We wanted to challenge in a case study where teachers were action researchers in our classroom. Why do we perceive written feedback to be the best form. So this piece of research published in September 2019 was just starting to get out and about before the pandemic. It's had a bit of ripple throughout the pandemic. Certainly something I've been sharing. And I know some of the teachers involved in the study have also been sharing this too. But this report gives you a little bit of evidence to say, look, we don't need to write everything. We don't need to mark everything. There are other ways of providing feedback, verbal written nonverbal feedback, we don't need forward and at least 16 different influences that determine how effective my feedback is. We don't just need to do written and here lies the challenge for some schools. Many schools are moving away from this burden of always having to record tick and flick and everything else for whatever purpose. Yes, you want students respond, but there are maybe potentially other ways to do this alongside the concept that the belief that we can always have to write things down. So that's been losing count here. The fourth most popular resource download of 2021. And again, remind you, 16 million readers this year, 3 million people access the site. These are the most popular. I'm signposting them here just in case you find something you might want to download over the festive period. Right, I want to finish in seven minutes. So wish me luck. Next most popular resource is this one. So we've got question techniques. Now we've got different types of question structures. So how to frame a question so that you can elicit different responses from a group or a single student. So that resource in there talks about different, you know, set start research questions, meta questions, open, close questions, lots of different types of methods in here all explained. Next one curriculum planning. So this is draws upon inspection systems across the UK. So England, Ireland, Wales, Northern Ireland and looking at broad questions that inspectors would use to test curriculum intent implementation and impact. It's a great starting point. You can adapt this for your life if you're a middle leader watching and you can use this to evaluate your curriculum. You can obviously think of the questions and use them as inspiration to conduct your own quality assurance process of your curriculum intentions. And again, that question from me is, you know, do your schemes of work exist? Do you have to reinvent the wheel if the curriculum plans there the scheme of work? Sometimes it's just a matter of refining it with the latest thinking or cognitive science research. So that's all in there. What are we? We're into the last six, the last six most popular resources downloaded on teacher toolkit. So people that sign up to my newsletter to see all this information all the time and they get everything first. If you're watching on Twitter, YouTube or Facebook, you probably get these things last. And now this is another old resource, but you can see the need. This is an old MP QSL, a national professional qualification school leadership project that I did with one of the colleagues that I used to work with. It probably needs updating. I probably should hide it away, but it at least gives people a template under the old framework here in England of how to conduct an action research project, provide a body of evidence for this formal qualification. Obviously, MP Q's now in England have been revamped or a big thing, more funding, more training aside for people to take part in these. For me, getting these little things under your belt is a little qualification that adds another feather to your cap. So always something from me that I would advocate to anybody. Now I mentioned feedback earlier. Again, this is the fourth, note fifth most downloaded resource on the site, whole class feedback. Now, many people have seen, at least if you're active on social media, the whole class feedback tool or resource template that was probably maybe shared on social media and probably just shy 10 years now. I went back to John Hattie's original research, Visible Learning, unpicked the definitions, the duplicate case studies, and redefined them as feedback, feed up, feed forward. So this looks at three groups of students in your class, the high flyers, whatever you want to call them, the high middle, low attainers, the kids with misconceptions or the kids that need support, and also another three pronged attack, the feedback, feed up, feed forward, and what do they mean? We can't just assume that it's always feedback, which means feeding back on work that has been completed and to the point where they aren't now, it's other different types of feedback. So this template, there it is there, just put it up on the screen, gives you a little framework to do things differently or take that resource a bit more forward if you're already familiar with it. Okay, the most fourth most popular downloaded resource, gathering all the interview questions I've seen in my career, in my interview experience on both sides of the table, as well as observations of different documents online, pulled together in a giant resource. What is it, a 12 page resource, a ridiculous number of themes, good as a revision tool, but also very good as a tool for school leaders who need a resource to use for inspiration to frame some questions for an interview. I suspect in a number of years, everyone will have seen this and will need an updated version in keeping with the changes across the system, but there you go. That is the fourth most downloaded resource. Number three, again, another oldie, great ideas always stand the test of time. The question matrix inspired by pose, pause, pounce, bounce, and one of my couple of colleagues are connected with online, probably 10 years ago, actually, we designed the question matrix framework and people that will be familiar with this. Let me just put that bit bigger for you so you can see. And again, here, scripting questions, I think there's 48, 42 boxes here, if we just take the top line across, what is, what has, what can, what should, what would, what will, what might, already there are eight different ways I can frame a question. And having these up your sleeve puts you in a very strong position in front of your students. The top resource I recommend all teachers use it. Other ways you can use it, put an image in the middle picture of the Mona Lisa. And then you can pitch questions along the framework to suit the image. Kids put post it notes on virtually or physically in the classroom. If you're teaching art and drawing still life, you can cut this out, look at it, have a group discussion. There are so many different ways to use this. Now, so that's top three, top second one, remote teaching approaches. Now going back to the start of the pandemic, doing lots of research for the first six months on research on remote teaching, what was most effective. I unpicked all these. So we've got five ideas for curriculum delivery. So we're in a much stronger place 18 months later than we were in March 2020. Instructional leadership training, ICT teaching that middle row. So ideas six to 10 and then the bottom one teaching and learning ideas. So inside the resource, you'll just get this in a bit deeper in various different links online, YouTube channels, etc. You'll hear me on to explain this a little bit more. But for people that are still and I know one or two people are still struggling with the technology and the remote teaching approach, that blended approach and potentially at least here in England. I dare say, maybe, you know, another another phase of online learning, who knows, but fingers crossed. And then I hate to say it everyone, but the most popular resource still, and this is going back now 14 years for me. No matter what I do, hide it, reincarnate it, whatever else. Yes. Many of you have seen this before. And I'll go back to what I always say. Lesson planning will never go away. All teachers need to arrive with a clear lesson intention, whether it's in your head or on a piece of paper. And it probably proves why the five minute lesson plan is just one of those timeless resources. And again, on that five minute brand, it's a five minute thinking process, not a form for an exercise. And I think for new teachers watching this video, who are either using it or never heard me explain it in this and on a video on YouTube, you'll hear me go through this whole methodology to help bring curriculum plans to life and to make that burden of planning lessons. I mean, how long does it take you to plan a lesson? Whether it's five minutes or an hour, if you're a new teacher is going to take a couple of hours, doing that 25 lessons a week is going to take you a long time. So trying to smarten up that process and improve your thought processes so you can get a bit of your life back. And so that's it. That's your top 12 blogs and your top 12 resources of the year. And there's a quick little peek at my analytics and you can kind of see those stats there. So let me just turn that off and just wrap things up. So there I'm going to log off this week. I'm still behind the scenes. I'm back in schools in January, fingers crossed back on the road all throughout 2020. Yeah, tons of work online, but physically only two schools. Some hope that we're getting back together back back to some normality, not yet. And I know the struggles that all school leaders that I work with are telling me, but I've probably been to about 15 physical schools this term, not many, but I'm also taking a conscious step back, trying to do other things, which I'll explain in a moment. Yeah, it's a sign that things are getting back to normal. And as ever, I love being in schools with teachers trying to help them do a better job. So for me, I suppose just to wrap things up where I'm at. So I'm, I think the pandemic set me back no doubt, you know, the struggle, the mental health, the financials, all those types of things. But my doctorate is what I want to talk about. I'm a bit behind. And I think it's that pressure of pandemic mental health work. Moving to lots of different webinars scenarios and then always chopping and changing and never really getting getting the headspace to think deeply in research. But I'm in a better place now. And I think I'm close to drafting my upgrades and get back on track. And hopefully I'll be able to report back on that in a bit more detail early next year. In January, another book out. So number nine, The Revision Revolution with the wonderful Helen Howell, AST English teacher here up in the Northwest of England. So I'm very excited about embedding these study skills from day one at secondary school. And I've got my own book. Now, people on Instagram know what that is, but no one else necessarily does. And if, you know, people watching this, people do their digging on the site, they've probably seen it. But in my new book, I'm being brave enough to enter the world to cognitive science and cognitive psychology. I'm trying to unpick my own journey with working memory cognitive load. And I found myself over the last two years in particular getting into parts of the brain. The question I've asked myself throughout the whole of this research is how would it make me a more effective teacher. So my book, The Teacher Talk at Guide to Memory is out in June 2022. And I'm super excited about it. This week I've been editing what I've already written and hopefully get that sent off ready for final tweaks. Going to be endorsed by the wonderful Patrice Bain and Kripper, who is also going to be doing a bit of fact checking from a cognitive scientist perspective. So I'll introduce you to those two guys in the new year. We're going to have a couple of live online sessions where you can hear more. And that's it. So Doctorate, a couple of books, tons of resources, the membership where people log in and use all the resources. That's going really well. That's also keeping me busy. You know, 3,000 to 4,000 people downloading VIP resources behind the scenes where I spend a lot of time researching new material and widening my knowledge and then sharing that. So thank you to those people for doing that. And loads more. The website is a full-time job as ever. So I'm just going to finish with best wishes for the festive season. I know that you will be feeling super exhausted. I also know that connecting with you is more of a challenge because of that exhaustion. We're all going, all of us in some capacity, we're all going through some kind of struggle and stress at the moment. And at least here in the UK, there's no immediate end in sight to all this. So I guess we're still digging deep. That mental health alarm radar for teachers still rings in my bell, rings in my head, I should say, all the time. And I will do without trying to turn my social channels too much into a political spectrum. It's trying to hold government to account, share good ideas, expose bad ideas, etc. To try and make the classroom a better place for all of us. I'm well over time. I'm going to leave it there. So best wishes for the festive season. Get some rest. I am logging off this weekend to be with my family. And I shall see you virtually or physically. Gosh, it's 2022. When you're born in a certain year, every time we get another year, it gets a little bit more interesting. Anyway, that's all for me. Thank you for watching. If you've watched this long to this point, do keep in touch. You know where I am as ever. And if you've got any questions and good faith or any support or any challenge, then do send them my way. I'm going to leave it there. Bye for now. And I shall see you next year. All the best. Bye for now.