Dr Sarah Comfort

Our Secondary Reading resource Take a look at our resources

We are continuing to share our Secondary Reading resources on our website: 1B - Pre-teach vocabulary and the subject knowledge that is required to access the main ideas researchschool.org.uk/greenshaw/ou...

Love reading to my tutor group. It feels really special. They’re in Year 9 and I’m conscious that some will not have had much experience of being read to and every little helps!

When I have set a class questions to complete independently, I spend around 10%-20% of the time at the start standing at the front of the classroom. Seemingly doing nothing.

I mentioned this to a colleague who asked "but shouldn't you be circulating?"

No. 🧵

I work in the highest performing state secondary in the UK according to the list in the Times. Definitely face fewer problems than in any other school I’ve worked in tbh! Happy to DM some thoughts.

Survivor Series 1: The Separation of Tasks An irregular series of posts with advice on how to help leaders, particularly school leaders, survive and thrive in their roles.

Hi #Edusky

How can we deal with those Sunday night blues? Often they are caused by things outside our control. New post with some practical advice.
open.substack.com/pub/mrarobbi...

😂😂 well now we’ve cleared that get up prepare for more ill-informed waffle from me. Most of the time I just want to ask questions to better understand tbh.

Are Students Really Learning or Just Busy? Do a learning walk around any secondary school and you will often see students writing quietly in exercise books. At first glance, this looks like a well-controlled classroom where learning is taki…

New blog by a new blogger!!

It's all about the value of writing notes

Read, enjoy, share!

ramblingfromtheclassroom.wordpress.com/2025/12/06/a...

Not at all. Our in-house CPD is fantastic. So much better than I was getting 10-15 years ago. I personally still like to know about what’s going on in other schools/ edu-research, but not with the same hunger I had when my CPD was poor.

Yes sadly. Or perhaps in-house CPD has improved so much that teachers aren’t looking for a platform to find like-minded teachers. Also there isn’t the obvious problem to solve I guess.

Yes I do agree. Tbh as a full time HOF I frequently just don’t have the time! I have been trying much harder to engage since this post as I’d love Bluesky to be more lively. On a side note- where are the younger, new voices hanging out? Do they engage anywhere?

🤭😂

Oh now I’m embarrassed. I was using you as an example of someone who I wouldn’t spark up a conversation with online as I see you as being so much more well read than me and I’d fear looking like an idiot! I guess I proved my point 😂

New recycling tech recovers nearly pure nickel and cobalt from old EV batteries Researchers have developed an eco-friendly recycling tech that extracts 99 percent pure nickel and cobalt from waste batteries.

If anyone cares at all, EV battery recycling is now hitting 99% recovery for important metals

Please remind me again what the recycle rate for fossil fuels is

interestingengineering.com/energy/recyc...

🤭

1. A speech I give to every class before I give back assessments.
"I know how much you want to know what you got and how you did compared to everyone else. That's natural. However we are absolutely not going to share scores in this lesson. I expect absolute silence when I give them back to you..

I really like this. Makes me realise how I’ve just accepted the behaviour despite how uncomfortable it makes me feel. I’ll be using this from now on and will share with my team. Thank you for sharing.

Not been on here for months but someone on X said people were missing blogs. I am now writing on substack for anyone interested. My latest post is here.
open.substack.com/pub/richardw...

Interesting read. This well-known finding should be discussed (acknowledged?) more often in discussions about large-scale achievement testing and accountability systems.

doi.org/10.3390/educ...

#Edusky #teachlearnsky

Love this. We have started to think more about those students who aren’t happy to speak up and like your framing of this. We can’t just accept it I’m sure of that. It’s great that we have a greater focus on oracy - I need to think more about this. 🤔

Every student, every lesson When we allow the loudest voices to dominate classroom conversation, we neglect to show respect and dignity to all our students, forgetting that every voice needs to be heard.

NEW POST

On questioning, respect, and hearing the voice of every child.

Link in reply, please share if you can! 🙏🙏

open.substack.com/pub/carousel...

I'm in between projects so tentatively looking at what's next. I've been bowled away by the success of my KS3 books so looking at doing the same for Physics GCSE.

Some sample sheets can be found here:

sciencedoctor.school.blog/ks4-project/

Feedback welcome!

Yes this! It feels so much easier to include him in the lesson than a laptop somehow. Bizarrely you accept it as ‘him’ more.

I guess it might make someone feel more connected and make it easier to get back in to school 🤷‍♀️
But I can’t help thinking it maybe enables non-attendance.

Yes I have one in one of my classes quite regularly for a student too ill to attend school. It’s wonderful! We love it when he is well enough to ‘join us’.

Here I’d have to disagree. I don’t think it’s done to annoy adults. They do it when there are no adults present. I think it is an ‘in joke’, to feel part of a group, to get attention from their peers. The fact it annoys us may be an added bonus but is entirely a byproduct not the main reason imo.

As ever it is probably context dependent.

Yes true! But I guess it will just be replaced by something else and this one is pretty harmless as far as I’m aware.

Wonderful! I will definitely look up more words! I didn’t know so many of those mentioned here. Thank you for writing this!

Chlorine is Green, Zoos Have Life and Kings are Killed: Using Etymology in Science It started with a happy accident. I had finished a lesson with my Year 8s and, surprisingly, we had powered through the material with 15 minutes to spare. My plan for the next lesson was to introdu…

New Blog Post 📝

Etymology in science usually stops at just photosynthesis, but I use it almost every single lesson.

Here are a few stories of some of my lessons and the impact teaching etymology has made on pupil understanding and literacy.

inquestion.co.uk/2025/11/28/e...

The national gap between

"What SLT think happen in their schools"

And

"What actually happens in their schools"

Is huge

carouselteachlearnlead.substack.com/p/autonomy-a...