Effective Papers For learning

There have been some fantastic blogs appearing recently on what seems a bafflingly marginalised topic in much teacher training and INSET: the techniques and strategies behind constructing clear, effective and memorable explanations. Having taught lower attaining English GCSE groups for the last five years, I've gained plenty of experience in the challenges of constructing effective explanations. Many of the students I've taught have not been well-equipped to independently resolve ambiguity in the explanations that they hear, so I've had to learn to move in the direction of clarity and focus, improving the quality of my explanations in various ways. I don't feel I've got much to add to the increasing body of advice in this area, beyond promoting blogs like this from Andy Tharby on analogy, this  and  this  from David Didau and Tom Sherrington on explanation generally, and this from Alex Quigley on the power of metaphor. What I do have, however,  is some example...