ResearchED 2016 is what inspired me to start a blog on teaching. This is the second year that I have gone and one again, each talk proved to be thought provoking, inspiring and useful to my teaching.
You can see what delights the conference had to offer on the timetable here.
In fact, I was spoiled for choice. There were seven sessions and each one had 12 possible talks, making that 84 different things to visit for those of you without a calculator to hand (OK, some talks took 2 sessions, but it's still over 80). It's times like this I wish I could clone myself. However, I don't need to because the sessions were filmed and I can watch the ones I missed on video.
I'd also like to point out that I think the timing of the conference is very shrewd. It's on a Saturday after the first week of term. This means no cover requests, no marking and everyone is still fresh and enthusiastic from their summer holidays. It's the perfect time for receptive teachers.
I immediately put one of the talks into action as soon as I got home by emailing a couple of parents about the especially hard work their children had put in at the beginning of term. This was inspired by Kathy Weston's talk about parental engagement (in a nutshell - parents and carers are more influential than school over their child's education for the entirety of their child's time at school, so engage with them).
I'll be writing a blog post about each session I visit, but in the mean time, you can have a look at the website and watch videos of the sessions.
