A tough one this – as outstanding can mean so many things. In a college it could be outcomes, in a school this could be technique. It varies depending on the educational context, the students, the year group and so on. That said let’s look at some common themes. I have had 26 years of teaching business and over that time, had many conversations in staff rooms facing OFTSED or ISI or even just at lesson observation time. It haunts us all throughout our careers – what does o

Find out why seating plans are an easy way to get a calmer classroom with improved pupil behaviour.

These are 10 ideas for a smooth start to the Autumn term with new business classes

I also wanted to use this as an opportunity to really showcase how Revisionstation’s business teaching resources can be used to support yo

In a nutshell a Padlet is a digital portfolio where students have the freedom to visually demonstrate their research and understanding. This can include students' own annotations and: links to websites voice recordings videos images uploaded documents plus lots of other widgets Padlet will give you (and your students) 3 free Padlets so you can try some of these ideas out but eventually you may want a subscription, this is called a ‘backpack’. Potentially a useful addition to

I have been teaching teamwork as part of the T Level Business Management and Administration course.

This is a quick read with some ideas for induction week activities that are free and that students don't hate (too much)

I started some research for this blog by doing a Twitter / X poll to find out what was the most important resource as voted for by business teachers. Final results showed that by a huge margin the mini whiteboards were considered essential. So here are a few others, I am not sponsored BTW these are items that I have used over the years and find really handy. 1. Craft bag (also search online for knitting tote) so that when you have to move from room to room you quickly h

I started to teach part-time in a college and I was given a group who were just about to start a module on team work. I had not taught this as a discrete subject before (only used it as activities in other lessons) so saw this as a fresh challenge. I carried out lots of research into potential team working activities that fitted the spec and the brief that I had been given. Six weeks later the module ended and I thought I would share some thoughts on how the activities went.

I put a poll out on Twitter to find out what New Year's resolutions teachers had for the new year. The options were: Now 62 votes is big numbers for Jan 1st, I was very pleased with the response. The result was that 77% of teachers were hoping to achieve better work-life balance, so here are a few tips gathered from 24 years of teaching. SAY NO A colleague wants you to take over the beekeeping club or hat-making class. Start of term, you may be still full of cheese and Bai

Introduction I have recently been busy training business teachers at CPD sessions and AI is the feature of these sessions that is having...

Introduction As GCSE business teachers our main aim is to help our students to understand the topics and to be able to apply them to given scenarios with confidence. One powerful technique being used successfully in many schools is interleaving. Interleaving involves mixing up different topics and concepts during learning sessions, as opposed to the traditional blocked learning approach where one topic is studied exclusively before moving on to the next. Will it revolutionise

A quick read on ways to help students use more context in their GCSE and A Level Business essays

Comparison. This is a forgotten topic often skated over, given scant attention or not focussed on at all. If you read the examiner reports (AQA and Edexcel flavours) you will see this is a common theme. They are clearly trying to help us to pivot towards this as a taught essay technique. The majority of questions over the 3 papers of the Edexcel have the “assess” command word. Often this is type of question is written as “assess the importance of X to Y”. The expectation

End of the Christmas Holidays, and your thoughts turn to getting back into your classroom. Time for a change? Don’t want to stand at the front talking? Want to introduce a new topic? Want to do retrieval on an old topic? Got a tricky group that you just want to try something different with? Something to try this year, take a risk with a teamwork carousel lesson. Carousel lesson 1) Put desks into teams format e.g. 4 team desks layout 2) Put one folder per table for

I have been reading a lot recently about teaching techniques and I keep hearing this new phrase the “Double Decker” lesson. The original idea was from Geoff Petty in his book ‘How to teach even better: an evidence-based approach’ (2018). So I thought I would find out what this might look like in the business classroom. Essentially the central concept of Double Decker lesson plans is that the lesson is divided into two sections. The Top Deck and The Bottom Deck. So if you

I had a year 9 business GCSE group that I was taking over. For my CPD I had chosen the topic of building pupil relationships in KS3. This would help with class management and raise attainment. If there is behaviour for learning due to sound pupil-teacher relationships then attainment follows as a happy consequence. Lessons flow better with fewer interruptions and more time can be allocated to teaching – but you know this. Let me tell you the story of the lesson… PLANNING PHA

If you google search term: exit tickets it joyously declares them to be “an ideal way to end a class”. In reality, it seems at the start of term that exit tickets are the last thing on students’ minds as they pack away eager for lunch, break or home. This quote was from an American University so I was curious to find out if they really worked, and if they did, what level of impact would it have on retrieval? In primary schools, exit tickets are given out with a problem to s

In brief: As teachers we all want students to engage with the topics and flipped learning has been gaining popularity since 2014. Traditional teaching gives students information during the lesson and they can then think it over after the lesson. Flipped learning seeks to give students information before the lesson and use the classroom time to apply the concepts learnt. Flipped learning is a methodology that is rooted in active learning where students are given materials and

You have somewhere you need to be. You have to set cover and the person covering is not a subject specialist. This is a familiar story where business is a small optional subject and there is only one teacher in the school. Anyone who covers is not going to be a specialist, so here are some tips to help you write a successful cover lesson. a) Make sure it is easy to give out, so write in the format of a one-page PDF that can be quickly photocopied. Even better if you write