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 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.