Melissa Bowes

Heading to Birmingham for two days at #digiFest #digiFest25 tomorrow morning. Anyone else attending? 👋🏼

Classroom with delegate packs arranged on tables. On each desk there is a textbook, notebook, pack of materials and a reusable coffee cup.

Photograph of staff attending a training on marking Edexcel 2.0 Paper 1. The photo is taken from the back of the room, so you cannot see the faces of people attending. The trainer, Julie Hughes, is standing at the front of the room. You can see a display titled ‘Welcome to English!’ at the front of the classroom.

Fantastic Staff Development Day today! A brilliant opportunity for English teachers across Luminate Education Group to come together for CPD.

In the morning, Edexcel experts led marking training ahead of mock exams, boosting confidence. The afternoon featured a carousel of SEND-focused sessions.

2/5 🫠

After a public consultation, protests and a public meeting held last weekend, Leeds City Council have announced they will not close Abbey House museum.

👉 Read more in the @wldispatch.bsky.social : zurl.co/JsZJs

Visualisers are used in most classrooms now - but when it comes to deciding which one to buy – what do teachers say are essential features? And what do you need to avoid? 🤔

Over 1,500 teachers shared their thoughts on their visualiser must-haves – and this is what we learned…

Ofsted’s report cards: everything you need to know The new school report cards will launch in November, with plans to scrap ungraded inspections and subject deep dives

🚥 #Ofsted has explained in detail how its planned new inspections and report cards will work, including judgements in at least 8 key areas and a 5-point grading scale.

Here's everything you need to know ⬇️

‘Bad Sisters’ is brilliant! I wish I could watch it for the first time again. You’ve got so many great episodes to come in season two!

Children’s white t-shirt with numerical signs + - / x written on in brightly coloured pen, with the word ‘maths’ underneath.

Numeracy day design number two!

Current favourite child = first born for accepting a simpler design.

White children’s t-shirt with numbers drawn on in bright colours in bold. Across the bottom ‘+ - x / =‘ has been drawn on in gold pen.

Dear maths teachers,

Please can we not make numeracy day a thing? Or if you must, have a word with the supermarkets and see if they can start selling clothing with numbers on!

Sincerely,
Tired parents on a Sunday afternoon with two children so they’ve got another one of these to do yet 😫

Screenshot showing ‘visits’ and a list of eleven dates in January. The price £24.95 per month can be seen.

Got the gym membership down to £2.27 per visit in January.

(Pleased, even though that’s mainly because it’s been too grim to run outside.)

Orange square image with a cartoon owl that looks on fire. The text says I’m on a 365 day learning streak! The Duolingo logo is at the bottom.

🎉

Picture of my son sitting next to me reading a book. We’re sharing a grey blanket. He’s using his finger to track the text. You can see the edge of my book in the image, but the words are not in focus. His face has been hidden by a blue heart.

This makes my English teacher heart happy. Mr 7 is working on reading in his head! He’s reading ‘How to Train Your Dragon’. He read a couple of chapters before wondering off and leaving me to finish my book by myself.

Paperback book: Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin. The cover says ‘The Sunday times bestselling author of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’. The title is in rainbow coloured text, all in capitals, with a blue sky as the background. There is a large blue gate in the centre of the cover, behind which is a house. Three palm trees on the right hand side cast shadows on the driveway in front of the gate. The shadows look like the shape of three women. In the photograph, I am holding the book and you can a grey blanket is behind it.

Book 2 of 2025 completed
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#BookSky

YouTube video by Peps Mccrea (Why And How) We Made A Documentary Unpacking Great Teaching

🚨🚨 NEW TODAY

For the last 18 months, I've been working on a top secret documentary to capture & deconstruct some of best teaching in UK.

Why We Made It & How To Access It (For Free):

↓

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SQ0...

Image showing a big piece of paper with ‘farm’ written in the middle. Around the page is various contributions in different coloured pens and with different highlighting.

Image showing a big piece of paper with ‘weather’ written in the middle. Around the page is various contributions in different coloured pens and with different highlighting.

Image showing a big piece of paper with ‘extra details’ written in the middle. Around the page is various contributions in different coloured pens and with different highlighting.

Had a great lesson today with my GCSE English resitters, starting our new topic of creative writing. It always amazes me how much magic there is in big pieces of paper and felt tip pens! #TeamEnglish

Screenshot from Duolingo. In English at the top, it says ‘The vase is pink.’ Individual words in Greek have been put in the right order: Το βάζο είναι ροζ. At the bottom of the screen it says ‘nicely done!’

Holiday to Greece booked. Thought Duolingo could teach me some useful phrases. I was thinking please, thank you, good morning etc.

The vase is pink. Super.

The Traitors: how trustworthy is a Welsh accent? A sociolinguist explains Mercedes Durham, Professor of Sociolinguistics, Cardiff University One of the more unexpected plot twists on the latest series of the BBC’s The Traitors was contestant Charlotte revealing that…

🔗 Useful link 🔗

This article from a sociolinguist from Cardiff University explores how accents are perceived. Useful for A Level English Language students looking at language diversity.

🔗 https://buff.ly/3DSz4Ph

#litdrive #teamenglish @Team_English1

A page from a children’s illustrated cooking book called ‘Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street’. The recipe shown is for banana and blueberry bread. Every ingredient is illustrated in an aesthetically pleasing way.

This afternoon’s activity is baking with the boys. I don’t even care if it turns out nice or not, when the recipe book is this pretty!

My son’s homework from Beavers this week is to learn a telephone number off by heart. It’s made me realise I don’t know any other than my own!

So, after 12 years, I’m trying to memorise my husband’s number.

Is reflexive pronoun abuse mandatory on The Traitors? The word you’re looking for is ‘you’.

Teacher Tapp We believe that the voices of those on the ground should be at the heart of positive change within education.

We’ve got a bit of a controversial question on @teachertapp.bsky.social today…

If your school told you to leave your mobile in a locker/staffroom and not have it on your person in your classroom, how happy would you be?

Answer by clicking onelink.to/teachertapp

Picture of a Starbucks cup with the label ‘grande pistachio velvet latte for Melissa’. The background of the picture shows Leeds city centre, looking dull, grey and cold. The coffee is being held in a hand wearing a pink fingerless glove.

Little treat on the way to work for GCSE results day.

35 years old and my favourite Christmas present has been a new colouring book! Finished my first page today.

Not loving the background or the flooring. Don’t know why I thought I could freehand stripes 😬

Book: Girl Moments by Coco Wyo
Markers: Ohuhu

Front cover of ‘The Teacher’ by Frieda McFadden. The background is navy blue with white text. In the middle of the cover is a red apple with a sharp knife sticking out of it.

About to start my first read of 2025 - a present from my mother in law, who chose it purely based on the title.

Teacher tapp survey with the question: what colour do you think students’ English exercise books should be? The results are: Blue 14% Red 9% Purple 6% Orange 1% Yellow 18% Green 4% Another colour 1% 46% of people had no feeling about what colour the books are. 10,900 teachers answered the question.

Can’t believe so many people can be wrong. English is definitely green! 📗

Screenshot of Goodreads reading challenge showing 20/20 books read and the three latest books being The Housemaid trilogy by Freida McFadden.

20 books read in 2024, thanks to three speedy read Christmas presents to finish off the year just in time #GoodreadsYearInBooks #BookSky

(The Housemaid was good, but the other two are basically the same story again - save yourself the bother!)

Text reads “5-star reviews all around! I loved these books this year.” The books are ‘The People on Platform 5’, ‘Strange Sally Diamond’, ‘I Will Find You’, ‘Black Cake’, ‘So Lucky’ and ‘Blood Orange’.

Didn’t meet my Goodreads reading challenge this year, but these were my 5 star reads #GoodreadsYearInBooks #BookSky

Feeling so lucky I could see both of my sons' Christmas shows: Wriggly Nativity & The Inn-Spectors! 🐛🔍 Primary teachers are heroes for pulling off such amazing shows with little ones.

I considered leaving teaching to get this flexibility. I'm so grateful I got to be there.

#EduSky #FlexibleWorking

2024 was our second cohort through and we were disappointed by the number of learners who fell victim to the grade boundary shift. However, we are sticking with it this year as our learners find it accessible and have made a lot of progress.

Hi. We teach Edexcel 2.0.