Things in Education

This is our repository of all our newsletters which are delivered to the inbox of our subscribers.

List of Published Newsletters

Edition 4.49

28 Nov 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 142nd edition of TEPS Weekly! In today's edition, we write about an important aspect of classroom management – discipline. Discipline is not putting fingers on lips or standing in a straight line. As you will read further, discipline is a state of mind. What can we, as educators, do to get students to this state of mind? This is the primary question we will answer. And it is important for students to have this state of mind for deep learning and understanding. If pedagogy and content is an airplane, discipline (and more generally) classroom management is the runway. If the runway is smooth, the landing is great, but if the runway is not maintained the airplane won't land or it will be a bumpy landing. Read More.

Edition 4.48

21 Nov 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 141st edition of TEPS Weekly! Observation-based assessments have been done semi-formally before the NEP 2020 came along, especially in the foundational grades. Now wih the NEP 2020, holistic progress cards and other recommended and support material, there is a need to understand how to ensure formal assessment through observation of all students for all developmental domains. It can seem overwhelming for educators. In today's edition, we write on how to structure observation-based assessment so that assessments are accurate and they do not over-burden the teacher. Read More.

Edition 4.47

14 Nov 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 140th edition of TEPS Weekly!

"Multiple choice questions should only have three options".
"Multiple choice questions makes it easy for students to score marks".
"Multiple choice questions are a treasure trove of student learning and teacher insights".

There are many opinions on multiple choice questions, or MCQs as they are called. We have heard all the statements listed above. And honestly, we agree with only one of them. Read on further to find out which one, as this week we explore how to create excellent MCQs! And there are some examples and non-examples through the piece. Read More.

Edition 4.46

7 Nov 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 139th edition of TEPS Weekly! Competency-based education helps make learning real for students. It gives context to what students are learning and is likely to help students understand why they are learning something. And with a very public push in India for teachers to use a competency-based approach to teaching, there is a need to ask if teachers are ready for it, and what are the first steps that they can take to move toward this pedagogy. Read More.

Edition 4.45

31 Oct 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 138th edition of TEPS Weekly! What parts of a teacher's job involves no communication? You would be hard pressed to find even a handful of tasks within a teacher's repertoire which entail no communication. But building communication skills in teachers is one of the most requested TPD sessions we are asked to do. We cannot pinpoint to the cause for this gap, but we write today about why and how communication makes a difference to students psychology, motivation, cognitive function and general well being. Read More.

Edition 4.44

24 Oct 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 137th edition of TEPS Weekly! Last week we asked whether teachers were leaving their jobs in India or not. And we saw that even though only a small fraction of teachers are leaving, there are still a large number of vacancies that need to be filled. In today's edition we write about teacher salaries, contracts, growth and working conditions. And by the end of reading it, we think that you will ask yourselves why teachers are not leaving. Read More.

Edition 4.43

17 Oct 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 136th edition of TEPS Weekly! Today's edition is a little different. We are stepping out of the classroom by stepping into multiple classrooms. We are zooming out and trying to understand the status of teachers and teaching in India. Today, we write about if teachers are leaving their jobs or if people are joining the teaching workforce.

We will dig into the nuances of the teaching workforce in India. We are planning to write more about teachers based on empirical data, either collected by us or publicly available. We are going to explore what the job satisfaction level of teachers is, if it is related to teacher performance, or if it is linked to student performance. We will also explore what type of vacancies exist in India – at what learning levels, in which states and in which geographical area. What are the main drivers of teacher motivation? For this we would love to speak to as many people or organisations as possible – be it on ground, policy makers, school leaders or even passionate people who are willing to share their information with us.

Things Education uses the phrase "research-backed" in its literal sense, unlike a lot of other organisations. Come, be a part of this great exploration. Read More.

Edition 4.42

10 Oct 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 135th edition of TEPS Weekly! There are some who like reading till the last minute before the test begins. Others like to close their books, relax and just try to recall what they had read from the books, in the minutes before the test. This is often cast away as differences in learning styles. Sure! The learning styles are different, but only one of these styles is going to help the student learn the content in the long-term. The other is mostly going to forget as soon as (or before) the test is over. Why so? Let's find out! Read More.

Edition 4.41

03 Oct 2025.

If you are a fan of any sport, you hear the players or coaches say, "It is all about the process, and the results will take care of themselves." As a fan of someone or a team that has just lost, this sentence may not make sense. However from a learning point of view, this makes perfect sense. In sport getting it right entails the player going through the process again and again. In the same way in classrooms, learning happens if students go through the rigour of practice, and more importantly repeated practice. This week we write about how learning is all about getting the process right, and the results (or products) will take care of themselves. Read More.

Edition 4.40

26 Sep 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 133rd edition of TEPS Weekly! The NEP 2020 suggested schools take up competency-based assessments for students. This was put into action through some documents that CBSE put out on how all chapters of all subjects now had competencies instead of learning outcomes. Given that we had a small role to play in creating these competencies, we thought we should write something about what these competencies are and how they relate to your classrooms. We start with writing about Competency-based Assessments (CBA), and we will write more deeply on this topic in the coming months. Read More.

Edition 4.39

19 Sep 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 132nd edition of TEPS Weekly! The question, why do students remember movie plots and song lyrics, but do not recall things that they learn in school, has been asked many times. A part of the reason is the story or an in-built narration that appeals to some emotion for people. That's why storytelling is so powerful as a communication tool. What happens if we use storytelling as an approach for teaching? As you will see in today's edition - it is easy to get it wrong, but it can be very effective if we can get the small things right. Read More.

Edition 4.38

12 Sep 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 131st edition of TEPS Weekly! There has been emphasis on value eduation for a long time. Don't we all remember our 'Moral Science' classes, or the 'Value Education' class every week, or that one question that would suddenly pop up in our Mathematics exam which was about some ethical issue? With the NEP 2020, the effort is to make this part of education - the values - more structured and hopefully, mainstream. But the old ways of having separate 'value ed' classes may not be the best approach. In today's edition, we propose an alternative by integrating value education into our 'mainstream' curriculum. Read More.

Edition 4.37

5 Sep 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 130th edition of TEPS Weekly! It's Teachers' Day again! And on this, one of the Teachers' Days celebrated in India, we have come up with what we think is the best way to show our respect and support for teachers. We have a platform with ~100 courses, tens of thousands of teaching strategies, multiple teaching and learning materials (TLMs) for teachers. Respecting teachers is about moving teaching from being a "noble service" to a profession. We have taken the first step towards it with TEPS Staffroom. Read on further to find out what we think can be done to show our respect for teachers. Read More.

Edition 4.36

29 Aug 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 129th edition of TEPS Weekly! Historically, we have taken a subject-agnostic approach to pedagogy, classroom management and even cognitive science. However, in the last few months, we have moved to writing about pedagogical content knowledge or how to approach teaching for different subjects. We have written about history, mathematics, physics, grammar, economics, sustainability and english literature. And in today's edition we write about teaching biology how using inquiry to create cognitive conflict and opportunities for students to think actively. So dive in! Read More.

Edition 4.35

22 Aug 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 128th edition of TEPS Weekly! It is not easy to integrate any approach to one's unique style of teaching in the class. What generally tends to happen is that the approach is not really integrated, but used as a placeholder. For example, a question at the beginning of an 'Inquiry Lesson', which is then never thought of again in the lesson. Or a project that is done at the end of a 'Project-based Learning' lesson. We have written about how to integrate inquiry and projects into existing lessons before. Today, we write about another approach that doesn't tend to get integrated as well - Art Integration into lessons. We give you simple tips with a lot of examples to ensure that you can integrate art into academic subjects. Read More.

Edition 4.34

15 Aug 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 127th edition of TEPS Weekly! In our last edition, we wrote about how Gen-AI can help teachers brainstorm PBL ideas (Phase 1) and plan and design projects (Phase 2). In today's edition, we move on and think about what happens once the project starts. This is where the challenge inside the classroom begins. Students learn at different speeds, ask unpredictable questions, and sometimes get stuck. Teachers need to give support without giving direct answers. They have to keep the whole class moving forward and assess students' progress. Read More.

Edition 4.33

8 Aug 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 126th edition of TEPS Weekly! Project-based Learning (PBL) is an exciting pedagogical approach. It is not as intimidating as inquiry learning, and does not seem too embedded in theory like, say, the Constructivist approach. Something about PBL makes teachers feel that they want to try it out in the classroom. With PBL being one of the approaches that the NEP 2020 is also pushing for, this need to try it out in the classroom has only gotten intense for teachers. However, for most of the teachers, we find that they don't know where to start. What is a good project? How do I approach this? In this edition, we attempt to answer this question of how to start off planning a PBL lesson using GenAI. We will continue this thought next week, where we will dive deeper into how GenAI can help with PBL lessons. Read More.

Edition 4.32

1 Aug 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 125th edition of TEPS Weekly! Students are not given a chance to think in some of their classes – they are expected to just passively listen. In some other classes, they do not know how to structure or communicate their thoughts and thinking processes. This is where routines help. In today's edition, we break down Think, Pair, Share with you. We write about what each step of this routine should do to help students think, structure their thoughts and communicate their thoughts, and how a teacher should facilitate this process. Read More.

Edition 4.31

25 Jul 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 124th edition of TEPS Weekly! The CBSE has come up with a number of recommended courses for school teachers. The purpose of teachers going through these courses is so that they can implement the learnings from the courses in their classrooms. The list is extensive and publicly available. One of the courses on the list is Theory of Knowledge (TOK). All of us are familiar of TOK as something that the 'IB Board does'. In today's edition, we break down TOK and see how much closer we all to following the TOK philosophy. Read More.

Edition 4.30

18 Jul 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 123rd edition of TEPS Weekly! Literature, in general, is a great way to build knowledge, skills and attitudes. One can think of each story in literature as a project in science. There are so many threads that can be interwoven. Teaching and learning literature is unweaving the threads to understand how life was, how life can be or how I should conduct my life. In this edition, we see three ways in which teachers can approach teaching English literature. Read More.

Edition 4.29

11 Jul 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 122nd edition of TEPS Weekly! What if you could get students involved when you are teaching them slightly more theoretical or abstract concepts like sustainability? Can we make this real for students? This is what we write about in this week's newsletter. It is a deep dive into an actual classroom that we have experienced. Hope you like the level of detail! Read More.

Edition 4.28

04 Jul 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 121st edition of TEPS Weekly! Autumn is said to be just after the summer and before winter, say in September or October, right? There are students in India who have never been able to remember the autumn months. They remember summer, winter and monsoon, but not autumn. It is likely that these students have a difficult time remembering the autumn months because they have not experienced autumn in September or October in India. This is because in most of India, these months are characterised by rains and trees lush with leaves. So how can these be autumn months?

So, experience plays a huge role in learning. Creating meaningful experiences to learn from is what we write about today, why this is important, and how to do it in the classroom. Read More.

Edition 4.27

27 Jun 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 120th edition of TEPS Weekly! In today's edition we write about whole child development. Are there ways to ensure we teach, assess and give feedback to students not just on their marks, but also their attitude to learning, their patience, their confidence, and so on? We share tips on how to teachers can use everyday lessons to teach and assess students. This will become crucial in a post-GenAI world where the process of learning will become as (if not more) important than the product of learning. Read More.

Edition 4.26

20 Jun 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 119th edition of TEPS Weekly! The invention and easy availability of the radio was the first time that questions on whether teachers and schools were redundant for student education or not, started being asked. More than 100 years later, we are still asking similar questions about teachers and schools in a post Gen-AI world. In today's edition we write about the paradigm shifts that Gen-AI will (or at least should) bring in our schooling system. Gen-AI will not replace teachers and schools, but it certainly will change the way we think about them. Read More.

Edition 4.25

13 Jun 2025.

Hello all. Welcome to the 118th edition of TEPS Weekly! One of the most common comments that we get from teachers is that parents demand a lot from them when it comes to their kids. Parents hold teachers responsible for their kids' grades, for their mental health, and often even for their misbehaviour at home. In today's edition, we write about how educators can suggest day-to-day activities to parents so that their kids are curious and learning. Spoiler Alert: Parents have to spend some quality time with their kids. Read More.

Edition 4.24

6 Jun 2025.

Welcome to the 117th edition of TEPS Weekly! This week's edition is a little different. It has a slightly different perspective. Not only does it have a lot of tips to set up the library, but also includes the on-ground information from people who have been setting up libraries all around Western India. So let's dive in to what we need to keep in mind to use libraries to build a reading culture in India. Read More.

Edition 4.23

30 May 2025.

Today we write on reading comprehension. This is not just a primer on the difference between reading comprehension and reading fluency. This is a deep dive into reading comprehension. We explore what are the different levels of reading comprehension that are possible to build and hence, also need to be assessed. Read More.

Edition 4.22

23 May 2025.

"Economics is boring, dry, full of technical terms that don't mean anything in the real world." This is what a student told a teacher on why she was not a fan of learning the subject. In today's edition, we try to correct this misconception and share tips on how to make teaching and learning Economics meaningful, fun and interesting. Read More.

Edition 4.21

16 May 2025.

In today's edition we write about how teaching grammar is not only about teaching the rules of grammar. Of course, the rules are important. But just expecting students to memorise them is not the only way to teach grammar. So dive into a fun grammar classroom with us. Read More.

Edition 4.20

9 May 2025.

Welcome to the 113th edition of TEPS Weekly! What happens when the conceptual understanding of a topic does not match with the day-to-day anecdotal experience of students? How do we get students to look beyond the obvious and understand the world around them. On one hand, the bicycle a student rides comes to a halt unless they keep pedaling (applying force). And on the other hand, Newton's First Law of Motion says that a body in motion will continue to be in motion unless external force is applied. We write about reconciling these apparent contradictions in today's edition. Read More.

Edition 4.18

25 Apr 2025.

Welcome to the 111th edition of TEPS Weekly! How's the summer going?

In this week's edition, we explore how to make mathematics less scary and more fun. We hope this helps teachers and a lot of students out there. Read More.

Edition 4.17

18 Apr 2025.

Welcome to the 110th edition of TEPS Weekly! Design Thinking is one of the more popular problem-solving approaches in the last few years. And it looks like it is going to remain that way looking at the importance given to Design Thinking as a problem-solving skill in our educational boards. In today's edition, we pair Design Thinking with Gen-AI. How can this new technology help teachers prepare for a Design Thinking class? Read More.

Edition 4.16

11 Apr 2025.

Welcome to the 109th edition of TEPS Weekly! In today's edition, we have written on creating questions for long-response answers. Why are the words that we use in a question important? Why does it become even more important if it a question for long responses? How can we create good long-response questions? These are the questions we explore in today's TEPS Weekly. Read More.

Edition 4.15

4 Apr 2025.

Welcome to the 108th edition of TEPS Weekly! Socio-emotional learning (SEL) and making students resilient or anti-fragile or emotionally intelligent is a core part of student learning and development. Often this part of student development is thought of as separate from the more 'academic' development. In this edition, we show how SEL can be integrated into a lesson. Read More.

Edition 4.14

28 Mar 2025.

Welcome to the 107th edition of TEPS Weekly! We have written about how active learning experiences are important for students. We have written that when students are actively thinking, they are likely to understand deeper and remember for longer. One of the ways to have students think actively is to engage them in discussions. In today's edition, we write about how a discussion-led class should look like and what the role of the teacher should be. Read More.

Edition 4.13

21 Mar 2025.

Welcome to the 106th edition of TEPS Weekly! oday, we write about what is helpful in student learning and what is not. When does it help to give students information? When does it help that teachers ask questions? Why is it important in making space for students to work hard? Read More.

Edition 4.12

14 Mar 2025.

Welcome to the 105th edition of TEPS Weekly! In today's edition, we write about the progression of writing skills right from the foundational stage to the secondary school. We answer questions like: What can we expect at the different stages of development? Are there some common strategies that we could use to develop writing skills across developmental stages? Can we use the same prompt for students of different ages and at different developmental stages? Read More.

Edition 4.11

7 Mar 2025.

Welcome to the 104th edition of TEPS Weekly! In today's edition, we write about the Waldorf approach in Indian classrooms. What? How can an approach that started after the Great War (as it was called then) have any significance or relevance in today's India? Well, we dug into the academics of it, and we found some very interesting ways to adapt the Waldorf approach for Indian foundational learning classrooms. Read More.

Edition 4.10

28 Feb 2025.

Welcome to the 103rd edition of TEPS Weekly. Yes! We are changing the name of our newsletter to TEPS Weekly. In today's edition, we write on how to teach history. Why is studying history 'boring' but India-Pakistan cricket games are the most popular? If history evokes emotion and empathy, then how can it be boring? These are some of the questions we are tackling in today's edition. Read More.

Edition 4.09

21 Feb 2025.

Welcome to the 102nd edition of Things in Education. In today's edition, we write on phonics. Specifically, we peel the layers of building phonemic awareness and how learning to be phonemically aware is a structured and step-wise process. Read More.

Edition 4.08

28 Feb 2025.

Edition 4.07

7 Feb 2025.

Hello all. This is our 100th edition of this newsletter! And we are very proud and happy about how consistently we have put up quality material weekly. But your support and encouragement have been instrumental in giving us the energy to write even on difficult days. This week’s edition is about how teacher professional development should look if it is well rounded, accountable and supportive. We lay out our model of a good teacher professional development ecosystem. Read More.

Edition 4.06

31 Jan 2025.

Hello and welcome to the 99th edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. In today's edition, we continue deeper into the understanding of classroom management. Specifically, we write about the reactive measures that teachers can take to manage student behaviour in the classroom. What is a reactive measure? How will it manage student behaviour? Does the teacher change their behaviour or practice? We answer these questions in today's edition. Read More.

Edition 4.05

24 Jan 2025.

Hello and welcome to the 98th edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. In today's edition, we write on classroom management. When we think of classroom management, the first thing that comes to mind is maintaining discipline in the classroom. As we point out, there is a lot more to it. In fact, we could not fit all of it in this edition and we will need more editions to write about this. Read More.

Edition 4.03

10 Jan 2025.

Hello and welcome to the 96th edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. In today's edition, we write about our good friend - the working memory. I am sure as a constant reader you remember our friend. We focus on another technique to lower the cognitive load on students' working memory so they learn more easily. Read More.

Edition 4.01

27 Dec 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 94th edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. In today's edition, we reflect on a year of Teacher Professional Development (TPD) at Things Education. Read More.

Edition 3.40

13 Dec 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 92nd edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. In today's edition we go deeper into understanding how memories are made and how us, educators, can leverage this knowledge to ensure learning which is deep and lasts for a long time. Read More.

Edition 3.38

29 Nov 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 90th edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. Think the trip that you had taken with your family and cousins. Think of the time that you had an embarrassing conversation. Think of the time when you were so happy because you got some good news. Today's edition is about the part of the brain which allows us to have these memories and thoughts - long-term memory (LTM). We introduce LTM and will continue to write about it in the next few editions. Read More.

Edition 3.36

15 Nov 2024.

We hope you had a good festive season. Our team took a well deserved break. And we are back! We are continuing with our series on information processing. And today we write about not just how to ensure that the cognitive load on working memory is not too high, but also on how to increase the capacity of working memory. Read More.

Edition 3.35

25 Oct 2024.

In this edition we write about a part of the main character in most of the discussions on information processing for student learning - working memory. Specifically, we write about the need to optimise the load on students' working memory and how too little load on the working memory is equally bad for learning as too much load! Read More.

Edition 3.33

11 Oct 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 85th edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. In this edition we write about a part of the Cognitive Load Theory that gets overlooked - Sensory Memory. How do our brains pay attention to some things and ignore some other very obvious things? Read More.

Edition 3.31

27 Sep 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 83rd edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. This edition we write about the cognitive science of learning--specifcially the way we process new information and remember it. This is a precursor to multiple editions in the future, in which we will write about classroom practices, time tables, yearly planning and its links with how we process new information. Read More.

Edition 3.29

13 Sep 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 81st edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. This is a special edition because we are drawing connections between human evolution, human psychology, educational psychology, cognitive psychology, and a little neuro-biology to give you a simple strategy for when you plan your next lesson. Maybe it becomes a cheat code for predicting what the students will find hard to learn and what will be relatively easy. Read More.

Edition 3.27

30 Aug 2024.

Are the assessments you are doing next week formative or summative? We think that after reading today's edition you will know for sure. So please dig in... Read More.

Edition 3.25

16 Aug 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 77th edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. Isn't it ironic that almost everyone in India can enjoy this long weekend, but teachers need to come to school even on Independence Day? Teachers go above and beyond! This edition is about critical thinking. And we have written about it earlier, but this time we really get into the nuances of how this would look in a classroom. Hope there is something for everyone in this one. Read More.

Edition 3.23

2 Aug 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 75th edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. We hope you are staying safe with the weather taking over almost the whole of India. In today's edition, we examine the multiple intelligences theory. We take a look behind the curtain and bust myths with scientific arguments. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this. Read More.

Edition 3.21

19 July 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 73rd edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. In today's edition we do a deep dive into what scaffolding is. And as you will also realise, by the time we are done with the thousand words, we want to write another thousand on the nuances that emerge. We will be writing more on these in the coming editions, but for now let's get our thoughts on how scaffolding works. Read More.

Edition 3.19

5 July 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 71st edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. We've had many interesting conversations with teachers over the last few months. And as we reflect on our learnings, we will periodically share our learnings and thoughts with you. We did the same a couple of editions ago, and today too, we are going to write about student understanding. Read More.

Edition 3.17

21 June 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 69th edition of our weekly newsletter, Things in Education. Today's edition has a few reflections on teacher professional development in India, based on our experiences over the last year. We would love to hear from you if your experience has been similar or dissimilar. Read More.

Edition 3.15

7 June 2024.

The NEP 2020 and various other guidelines emphasise the need for educators to transition from traditional lesson formats to project-based learning, inquiry-based classrooms, and experiential learning. We believe that at the foundation of all of these is the fact that students should be actively engaged in learning. And in this edition, we write about what it means to actively engage students in learning. Read More.

Edition 3.13

24 May 2024.

With the new academic year beginning and teachers preparing for their classes, we thought that we could summarise the different pedagogical approaches and what needs to be kept in mind while using different pedagogical approaches. Read More.

Edition 3.11

10 May 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 63rd edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. Our organisation started with the question, "What can we do so that teachers can upskill themselves?" So when we write about continuous teacher professional development, it is very close to our heart. In today's edition, we go into why continuity is important in teacher professional development and what the different ways are in which professional development can occur (hint: there are more things apart from hands-on workshops). Read More.

Edition 3.10

26 Apr 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 62nd edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. In today's edition we try to explore why Direct Instruction is so maligned as a pedagogical approach. Is it that there is no pedagogical upside to Direct Instruction? No. Are there some misconceptions about what Direct Instruction should look like in a classroom? As we find out, maybe. Read More.

Edition 3.9

12 Apr 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 61st edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. Today we write about something that a lot of experienced teachers do intuitively. But we think that writing about it makes it concrete for the experienced teachers, as it is no longer just intuitive, but also research-backed. For teachers with fewer years in the field, knowing that you can blend two approaches while teaching comes as first, a surprise, and then a relief. Imagine that you didn't have to only follow the Reggio Emilia approach for foundational learning, but you could also take elements of the Montessori approach. Life becomes so much simpler for teachers! And dare we say better for students' learning outcomes. So let's dive into the what and how blending of approaches. Read More.

Edition 3.8

29 Mar 2024.

As we wind down yet another academic year as teachers, principals, school leaders, owners we thought this would be good time to post something that can help with self-reflection, building better hiring processes and just cooler ways to plan professional development. Today we write about how content knowledge is different than pedagogical knowledge and the ramifications of these in our approaches to teaching. Read More.

Edition 3.7

15 Mar 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 59th edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. In this edition, we have tried to uncover the basics of what teachers need for the best chance of ensuring students meet their learning outcomes. We think that constant and frequent feedback on students' thoughts and actions are key to better planned and customised lessons. However, students' thoughts and actions are not easily seen. We write about a model of how to make students' thoughts and actions visible. Read More.

Edition 3.6

1 Mar 2024.

In today's edition, we write about which topics teachers find difficult to teach or are at least, not interested in teaching. Over the last few years, we have been meeting with teachers and we have seen that teachers find some topics harder to teach effectively than others. So we tried to make sense of it by asking: Are there any patterns to the topics that teachers don't like to teach? Are not good at teaching? And many more. Tell us if you agree with our model. We want to know if you have had different experiences. Read More.

Edition 3.5

16 Feb 2024.

In this edition of the newsletter, we annouce the launch of our Data-Informed Teacher Development. We have been doing teacher professional development for private schools and teachers from various government schools. Finally, after a year little more than a year of building, we think we have a solution that supports teachers and schools in the best possible way. And it exists as a combination of online and in-person intervention, and a combination of support and accountability in equal measure. And our favourite part is that the entire solution is modular. You only want the online part? Okay! You only want the in-person sessions? Okay! So dive in and have a look at our solution. Read More.

Edition 3.4

2 Feb 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 56th edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. This In the last edition, we wrote about what is STEM in the foundational years and why it is important. We now explore the other side of exploring STEM in foundational years - the pitfalls. But before that, as promised in the last edition, we share examples how technology and mathematics can included in foundational STEM. Read More.

Edition 3.3

19 Jan 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 55th edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. Does STEM have a place in a foundational learning classroom? Is it just a fad? Does it really help foundational development of learners? This edition explores these questions and hopefully shows why STEM is crucial in early education. Read More.

Edition 3.2

5 Jan 2024.

Hello and welcome to the 54th edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. This edition is on foundational numeracy, specifically focussing on how an innately present number sense can be leveraged to teach mathematical operations. We hope that today's edition helps our readers pinpoint specific reasons why hands-on activities are important in teaching and learning foundational numeracy skills. Read More.

Edition 3.1

22 Dec 2023.

Hello and welcome to the 53rd edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. Today we reflect on our work with teachers. We took the plunge to support and help in-service teachers, so what did we learn in the last three years? Read More.

Edition 2.26

8 Dec 2023.

We, at Things Education, have been working with teachers, teacher trainers, school leaders and sometimes students over the last three years. We have been reading, understanding and implementing some of the best practices of teacher professional development over these years. We thought that it would be a good idea to reflect on the process and see where we have reached as an organisation and also the area of teacher professional development in school education, in general. Read More.

Edition 2.25

24 Nov 2023.

Today we write about a critical component of teacher development – breaking of ineffective habits and creation of effective ones. Breaking old habits and creating new ones is not an easy task, and definitely not one that can be achieved in a single TPD session. How can we use evidence from neuroscience and social science to make TPD more effective? We write today about this specific issue, based on a paper by Hobbiss, M., Sims, S., & Allen, R. (2020). Read More.

Edition 2.24

10 Nov 2023.

Today we write about a part of teacher professional development which a lot of us tend to forget or maybe ignore. Classroom observations. Classroom observations are subjective, difficult and effortful. No wonder they are avoided. We write today about how one may be able to approach classroom observations without it being a pain in the neck. Read More.

Edition 2.23

27 Oct 2023.

The Things Education team is made up of teachers – teachers who have taught in different situations, taught different subjects and grades, and taught using different approaches. Over our several years of individual and combined teaching and teacher training experiences, we believe we have a fair understanding of what kind of support teachers will benefit from – and all our expertise has now taken the form of a fantastic new teaching tool, TEPS. But what do we think is the right kind of support? And why? Dive into this summary edition of our newsletter to find out. Read More.

Edition 2.22

13 Oct 2023.

Imagine this situation: You are a Grade 3 English teacher in India, and you are following a manual of standardised lesson plans to teach skills of reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary. This week, the lesson plan requires you to read the poem ‘Bed in Summer’ by Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish novelist and poet. This poem comes highly recommended, because it forms part of the poet’s collection called “A Child’s Garden of Verses”, it is at just the right reading level for Grade 3 students, and it uses endearing imagery and rhyme. Read More.

Edition 2.21

29 Sep 2023.

Many times when we are having conversations about assessments or lesson plans or even specific activities in lesson plans, we ask a question to teacher, "What is the learning outcome of this lesson?" It is uncanny how many times we don't get a specific answer to the question. So in today's edition we break down the components of learning outcomes and give you simple do's and don't's of creating a learning outcome. We believe that having clearly defined learning outcomes are the first step to any teaching-learning plans. Read More.

Edition 2.20

15 Sep 2023.

We live in an age when information is available at our fingertips. AI has made looking for the information easy. There are approximately infinite resources which can be used as learning aids. Social media has been a great platform to look for and share the best ideas. So when an educationist looks at an interesting teaching tool, questions about how to use this tool, when to use this tool and more importantly when not to use the tool come up. Today's edition is about one of the decisions that an educator needs to make - does the learning outcome need students to explore deeply or do they need to build skills or procedural knowledge? Read More.

Edition 2.19

1 Sep 2023.

We are growing up. And we are growing. Growing up - we completed two years of being an officially registered entity earlier this week. Growing, because of two reasons - one we are writing about topics that are highly debated. Last edition was a breakdown of IBL, PBL and constuctivism and today we are writing about role of AI in a teacher's life. Secondly, this edition was formed with the experiences of our Academic Lead, Shristi Singh. Today we write about what Shristi has learned from using AI. What have been the advantages and where she needs to be careful and use her own judgement and expertise. We are sure this will help a lot of educators. Read More.

Edition 2.18

18 Aug 2023.

Hello and welcome to the 44th edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. Phew!! Today we do it. We specifically show, write and summarise the difference between constructivism, inquiry-based learning and project-based learning. Through the course of reading it, you may see a lot of things overlap between these approaches. This may lead you to ask, "What is really different?" We have tried to at least write that one defining feature that makes a pedagogical approach inquiry-based or project-based. Read More.

Edition 2.17

4 Aug 2023.

This edition was inspired in part by some experience that Things Education team members had at a few schools and also in part to an amazing discussion on Twitter. In this edition, we talk about what we usually get right and wrong about Problem-based Learning - the other PBL. Two studies have recently been published on PBL which help make sense of the effectiveness of PBL at different grades and different circumstances. Hope you enjoy this summary of the research in the field and our experience on ground in schools. Read More.

Edition 2.16

21 July 2023.

One of our early editions was about why teacher professional development (TPD) programmes fail in Indian schools and what can be done to ensure more effective TPD programmes. That edition was more than one and a half years ago. Today we revisit the topic of TPD and schools to see where we are with TPD. With the increasing awareness of the need to have TPD programmes in schools, more schools are opting for TPD programmes. This is a great first step. We delve deeper today into what schools have been doing, what they may be missing and what more they could do. Read More.

Edition 2.15

7 July 2023.

We have somewhat of a masterclass on Constructivism today. There is some debate on whether constructivism is an effective pedagogical approach for student learning or not. In today's edition, we conclusively take a side in the debate, and at the same time we also caution the readers on how not to approach constructivism. In one of our follwing editions we will also delve into what is the right time to use construtivism as a pedgogical strategy. Read More.

Edition 2.14

23 June 2023.

Today's edition is a little different than normal. We have attempted to put our other editions in the context of what policy, research and practice are telling us to do when it comes to foundational learning. We are not really surprised that there we could call back almost 10 different editions to help bring context to our fortnightly editions. It is especially pleasing for a fledging organisation like ours to see that we are thinking and creating foundational learning solutions which are aligned with not just policy, but also backed by research in classrooms. Read More.

Edition 2.13

9 June 2023.

Today we write about a fundamental dichotomy when it comes to teaching in inquiry classrooms or taking the project-based learning approach. The dichotomy comes from the fact that through these pedagogies we expect students, who are learning the discipline, to act as experts in the discipline. We say it is a dichotomy, but as you read on, you will realise there is no dichotomy. Read More.

Edition 2.12

26 May 2023.

In a previous edition, we wrote about what phonics is and why phonics instruction is one of the foundations of strong reading abilities. “Cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham has often emphasised that "the alphabet is a code that puts sounds into visual form." As we read, we turn these random shapes on paper – letters – back into sound! In that sense, this week's article is about how reading leads to better reading. Read More.

Edition 2.11

12 May 2023.

This week we are back with our foundational learning series. And as we had promised at the beginning of the calendar year, we have an edition on foundational numeracy. More specifically, we write today about the intiutive number sense that we have and how it needs to be developed to deepen students' sense for numbers. Read More.

Edition 2.10

28 Apr 2023.

Hello and welcome to the 36th edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. What does policy change in education mean for you as an educator, a school leader or a content creator? Today, we try to partially answer this in the context foundational learning. Read More.

Edition 2.9

14 Apr 2023.

Hello and welcome to the 35th edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. In this edition we write about how the role of the educator may be changing in the weeks or months to come. It is a little different. Can you find out what is different as you go through the article? Read More.

Edition 2.8

31 Mar 2023.

A teaching strategy is the approach a teacher uses to teach something new to students. Teaching strategies that involve active learning - that is the students' brains are actively engaging with the material instead of passively listening - are the most successful strategies to enhance student learning and remembering.

Hello and welcome to the 34th edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education. Today, we write about teaching strategies in vocabulary that involve active learning. Things that teachers can do in the class to make building vocabulary more than just a passive outcome of exposure to different and newer words. Read More.

Edition 2.7

17 Mar 2023.

After a brief pause on our series of editions on foundational learning, we are back with a special edition on foundational learning. We are sharing not just our thoughts and experiences, but we have also incldued parts of our own preschool offering. Read More.

Edition 2.6

3 Mar 2023.

In the previous two editions of our series on assessments, we wrote about how formative assessments are a key part of teaching and how we can successfully assess for understanding. This week we focus on what we misinterpret as student understanding. Read More.

Edition 2.5

17 Feb 2023.

In the previous edition of our series on assessments, we wrote about the need for formative assessments during teaching and how these assessments must inform teaching. The focus of the piece was that assessments must help us answer the question: Have students understood what I have taught them today? In today’s edition, we go deeper into how to assess for student understanding. Read More.

Edition 2.4

3 Feb 2023.

Today's edition is not related to foundational learning. It is about formative assessments. We write about how misunderstood formative assessment may be and what changes can we make in them to improve student learning. Read More.

Edition 2.3

20 Jan 2023.

This Friday we have a selection of writings on alternate pedagogies and assesments that we wrote about in the last year. And what we mean by alternate pedagogies is just pedagogies which are different from the traditional lecture-based instruction. We summarise the different difficulites that educators face while conducting inquiry classes, project-based learning lessons and flipped classrooms. We also give some quick tips and some deeper tips to overcome these challenges. We end the newsletter with summing up our thoughts on how to use assessments in the most effective way and also how to not overwhelm a student when asking a question. We hope you enjoy this journey! Read More.

Edition 2.2

6 Jan 2023.

As we continue our anniversary celebrations, today's edition brings you the highlights of how a human mind learns and how knowledge of this can be leveraged in classrooms. Students can be motivated, kept engaged with the lesson and learning goals can be achieved more effectively when we know how the human mind is going to learn and what are the ways the human mind can trick teachers and students into believing that they learned something, without really learning it. Read More.

Edition 2.1

23 Dec 2022.

There has been a great push for strengthening foundational learning practices across the country, thanks to the policy statements of the NEP 2020, the guidelines for implementation by NIPUN Bharat, and the curriculum framework set out by the NCF 2022. And this edition is a good summary of our thoughts on how early learning practices should be approached. Read More.

Edition 1.26

9 Dec 2022.

Today's edition of Things in Education is us sharing what we have learned from seeing our philosophy and curriculum in action in preschools. We understand it is nice to talk about what could work, or what may work. Today, we focus on what works and what are some essential things we need to do as educators to make it work. You may wonder, "What is 'making it work'?" 'Making it work' for us is ensuring student learning. Read More.

Edition 1.25

25 Nov 2022.

Today's edition of Things in Education explores a rather debated topic in early learning - phonics and its relevance in learning to read the English language. We focus on arguments from a data-driven point of view rather than the memories of our early learning. This is a continuing series on Foundational Learning that we are running. Read More.

Edition 1.24

11 Nov 2022.

In today’s edition we try to understand what an application-based question really is. Does an application-based question really exist? Or is it just some mythical thing? We have all heard the phrase ‘application-based questions’. We have also been asked numerous times to check whether the students are able to apply what they have learned. So how do we ask a question that tests students’ ability to apply the knowledge that they have learned and understood? Read More.

Edition 1.23

28 Oct 2022.

This edition is part of the Foundational Learning Series and talks about the need for motor development as an important stepping stone to learning writing. We already spoke about why writing is essential in developing a literate brain and we also saw that writing develops from what we may think is gibberish, but are actually important pre-writing levels. Taken together a slightly bigger picture on the development of writing emerges which includes crucial development of the brain alongwith development of other parts of the body. Read More.

Edition 1.22

14 Oct 2022.

Assessing student learning is as straightforward as you want it to be. Decent questions give a good superficial understanding of student learning. But there are many nuanced layers to making excellent assessement questions. Today's edition is the beginning of a new series on Making Excellent Assessments.

The first part of the series talks about how not to make recall questions and why context, cognitive load and the testing objective need to be balanced while making a question. Read More.

Edition 1.21

30 Sep 2022.

We started our Foundational Learning series a month ago, and we hope that you’ve found it useful. The first edition in the series suggested reasons why handwriting is not as redundant as it may seem in the present times. And the second edition was a deep dive into what actually constitutes writing at the Kindergarten level. In today’s edition we highlight points to understand to ensure student learning happens and the student is motivated to learn. We have written about these earlier in our newsletter. Read More.

Edition 1.20

16 Sep 2022. This is the second article in our Foundational Learning series of Things in Education. And in this edition we get down to the bedrock of what writing is. And writing is much more than writing. And today's edition is even more special as it includes contribution from Vani Balasubramanian, who has worked in the education sector in direct and indirect capacities for the last 4 years. She is currently pursuing her master's in education from Azim Premji University. Vani's educational interests include classroom literacy practices, library spaces and the role of children's literature in early language acquisition. Read More.

Edition 1.19

2 Sep 2022. This edition is a special one because it launches our series on Foundational Learning. Seasoned readers would recall that we have written about foundational learning before. And we agree. WIth this series, we aim to discuss specific questions or issues that teachers, principals and school leaders encounter often. For example, we kick off this series by asking what happens to reading if we remove writing from the foundational curriculum. If the need for a writing syllabus has not been questioned yet in your school, it will be soon. Hopefully this article can help you articulate some of the arguments against it. Read More.

Edition 1.18

19 Aug 2022. In this edition we discuss one of the most often encountered concern of teachers. Teachers who think newer methods and pedagogies may be helpful. But they believe that there is no time to complete the curriculum in time. "An inquiry learning classroom takes longer to cover the topic than a traditional classroom", they say. Our point of view is simple: don't cover everything in the curriculum! Read More.

Edition 1.17

5 Aug 2022. This is the part two of a two-part series on how the process of scientific thinking can be used to engage students in active learning. In this part we give you an idea of how we approach designing a class to engage students in the process of scientific inquiry. We hope that this helps you integrate inquiry as a way to actively engage students in the classroom. Read More.

Edition 1.16

22 July 2022. This edition is the first of a two-part series on how the process of scientific thinking can be used to engage students in active learning. In this part we try to show how the process of scientific inquiry can lead to active engagement and hence deeper understanding in students. The next part will focus on the challenges while using the process of scientific inqury in class. Read More.

Edition 1.15

8 July 2022. Today's edition is a little different. It is a type of an experiment. This edition tries to summarise information on different aspects of lesson planning that we have written about over the last six months. Lesson planning is an important skill and needs to be built over time and experience in the classrooms makes lesson planning more refined. Sometimes teachers say, "I had a great lesson plan. I knew what I was going to do every minute of the class." Lesson plans are not only about preparing material for every minute of class. It is about engaging and motivating students. And what better way to introduce it, than to paraphrase the boxer Mike Tyson... Read More.

Edition 1.14

24 June 2022. In today's edition we have written about motivation - specifically motivating students to learn. Motivation is one of the most difficult aspects of child (or adult) psychology to deal with. There are multiple factors which feed into one's motivation. Here we present one framework by which we can understand student motivation. Read More.

Edition 1.13

10 June 2022. Thinking creatively need not be an in-born trait which cannot be taught. There are ways to encourage creativity in classrooms and help students build this vital skill. To understand how one can do this, Read More.

Edition 1.12

27 May 2022. Flipped learning has gained some momentum in the last few years given the advent of online learning and asynchronous learning. In this article we talk about the dangers of doign flipped learning wrong. This is meant as a caution and we will share tips on how to avoid this in upcoming editions. Read More.

Edition 1.11

13 May 2022. Inquiry-based learning is a powerful pedagogy which allows for the democratisation of education. Students have a bigger say in what they would like to explore and learn rather than being told to do something. However inquiry classes are not straightforward to manage for some teachers, especially early on. In this edition of the newsletter we take a look at the challenges that teachers face and how we can ovecome these challenges. Read More.

Edition 1.10

29 Apr 2022. Why is it easier for us to remember all the characters of our favourite TV show and their history but when it comes to history of the world, we struggle to recall? This edition of our newsletter suggestes that the answer may lie in how our mind rebels against remembering things that it deems unimportant. As educators we need to get our minds to stop rebelling against the learning matter. Read More.

Edition 1.9

15 Apr 2022. Engaging lesson plans are important, but what is more important than engaging students? Engaging students so that they learn and understand. We write about how to go about approaching lesson plan creation by keeping student learning at the centre. We also have a couple of great teacher professional development courses - details in the newsletter. Read More.

Edition 1.8

1 Apr 2022. In today's edition of our newsletter we decipher why it is difficult to think critically. And once we know why it is difficult, we can find ways to make it easier for students to develop critical thinking as a skill. Read More.

Edition 1.7

18 Mar 2022. In today's edition of our newsletter we focus on project-based learning (PBL). Specifically, we share our experiences of working with educators who are interested in conducting PBL classrooms in their schools. We hope that this edition helps you understand the basics of PBL and gives you options on how to start the transition to PBL classrooms. Read More.

Edition 1.6

4 Mar 2022. It is that time of the year again! The final examinations are upon us in most of the schools in India. And they will soon begin in the rest of the world, as well. Creating the final examination is an important process. One, it can assess the students' progress in the year. A subtle but more powerful aspect of creating final examinations is to allow teachers to reflect on the year of teaching and learning. Reflecting on the focus of teaching during the year can be a powerful tool to know what a teacher taught during the class, and hence what to focus the final examinations on. Further it helps teachers understand what teachers got right and what changes they should try in the next year. We hope that this edition helps you with the reflection process. Read More.

Edition 1.5

18 Feb 2022. Our core interest and expertise lies in Teacher Profesional Development and we help schools and governmental organisations to upskill teachers. From our experience we have come up with some common pitfalls that educators may fall into while thinking about professional development. Though this edition comes from our experience with schools, these are easily applicable to individual educators and parents. Read More.

Edition 1.4

4 Feb 2022. Reading is a difficult activity for the human brain. Depending on the language we can fluently read, our brain develops differently. What does this mean as digital devices replace books as primary reading resource? In the fourth edition of Things in Education, we dive into answering this question. And not surprisingly, the answers may come from the early days of writing in Western Asia and Egypt. Read More.

Edition 1.3

21 Jan 2022. In the third edition of Things in Education, we focus on how challenging it is for educators and students to transition from lecture-based classrooms to inquiry classrooms. We also write about scaffolding and how it helps in student learning not only in inquiry classrooms, but also in any type of classroom. Read More.

Edition 1.2

7 Jan 2022. In the second edition of Things in Education, we talk about one of the main reasons why reading levels in India are so low and what are small changes that educators or parents can make to help build reading skills in students. Read More.

Edition 1.1

25 Dec 2021. In this first edition of Things in Education, we talk about why our brain is quick to lose motivation to learn, and how relevance, rigour and fun can make learning easier as well as deeper. Read More.