Categories
Coordination Personal Resources

NPQSL project: IBDP Curriculum Coherence

In January 2019, after starting a new job in China in September 2018, I began my NPQSL through UCL IOE’s Beijing Cluster. I guess I am a glutton for punishment. Not only had we uprooted the family and moved from Switzerland to China with our two daughters, to a new continent, city, house and jobs, I just had to undertake a large CPD project!

My job was a new role for me, and, while I felt very prepared for it, the challenges of adjusting professionally and personally to a whole new culture were significant. Reflecting now, going through my project and thinking about everything I achieved last academic year, despite such challenges, I am proud and that somewhat alleviates the shame I have been feeling this week over being made redundant.

Anyway, as I was scouting around for ideas for my NPQSL project, I could not find or connect with another IBDP Coordinator who had done the training, which is a UK qualification but open to (some) international schools too. Therefore I have decided to share a version of it on my TES shop for free (like all my resources that are slowly being populated to the site).

You can find my NPQSL project and appendices through the link below and you will also find my assessors feedback to go with it. I scored 20/28 which is the passing mark. Not the best score I have ever achieved, but I am pleased to have made it through despite all the other things going on in my work and personal life at the time.

I hope that it can help someone else when they are struggling with their own project.

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/ibdp-npqsl-project-and-feedback-completed-feb-2020-12306245

Categories
Education Personal Resources Teaching & Learning

PGCE Research: Teacher Understandings of Educational Neuroscience

Below is the pdf of my research project that I completed as part of my PGCE top-up course. It followed from a fuller literature review that can be read here.

Completed in 2015, I only just realised that I didn’t have a link to it.

Download (PDF, 387KB)


Categories
Books Resources

The Parenting Bookshelf

Through the threshold library

The parenting bookshelf

Books that I have read and that have informed my thinking as a parent. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, they have also influenced the way that I have thought about education too.

  1. A parent’s guide to raising kids Overseas (Volume 1) – by Jeff Devens
  2. Raising babies – by Steve Biddulph
  3. How to raise an adult – by Julie Lythcott-Haims – my review.
  4. Raising girls – by Steve Biddulph

Categories
Books Resources

The guidance bookshelf

Through the threshold library

The guidance bookshelf

Useful books that I use for university guidance.

How to raise an adult – by Julie Lythcott-Haims – my review.

There is life after college – by Jeffery Selingo

College (un)bound – by Jeffery Selingo

Colleges that create futures – by Robert Franek

So you want to go to Oxbridge? Tell me about a banana – by Oxbridge Applications

Thinking skills: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving (CIE) – by John Butterworth (I bought this for students planning on taking the TSA).

Looking beyond the Ivy league – by Loren Pope

Colleges that change lives – by Loren Pope

HEAP Guide – updated each year

Fiske Guide to Colleges – updated each year

Good university guide – updated each year

Strength finder 2.0 – by Tom Rath

Global Nomad’s Guide to University Transition – by Tina Quick

What should I do with my life (card game) – by the school of life

Categories
Books Resources

The biologist’s bookshelf

Through the threshold library

The biologist’s bookshelf

One of the first things that I did when I started this blog was to publish the bio reading list, basically a list of books that I considered useful for biology teachers and their students to read. That post is a little tired now, so I update it to the biologist’s bookshelf and include all the books that I have read since it was published.

You can add to this list by commenting on the tweet above, or leaving a comment below.

  1. Bad Science – by Ben Goldacre
  2. The sixth extinction: an unnatural history – by Elizabeth Kolbert
  3. Thirteen things that don’t make sense – by Michael Brooks
  4. The magic of reality – by Richard Dawkins
  5. The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks – by Rebecca Skloot
  6. Creation: the origin of life/the future of life – by Adam Rutherford
  7. The language of life – by Francis Collins
  8. The rational optimist – by Matt Ridley
  9. Quantum evolution: the new science of life – by Johnjoe Mcfadden
  10. The diversity of life – by E.O. Wilson
  11. Impossibility – by John Barrow
  12. Collapse – by Jared Diamond
  13. Thinking, fast and slow – by Daniel Kahneman
  14. The self illusion – by Bruce Hood
  15. The selfish gene – by Richard Dawkins
  16. Genome – by Matt Ridley
  17. Your inner fish – by Neil Shubin
  18. The secret life of trees – by Colin Tudge
  19. The man who mistook his wife for a hat – Oliver Sacks
  20. The Handmaid’s tail – by Margaret Atwood
  21. The Inheritors – by William Golding
  22. The Baroque cycle – by Neal Stephenson
  23. Seveneves – by Neal Stephenson
  24. Aping mankind – by Raymond Tallis
  25. Getting Darwin wrong – by Brendan Wallace
  26. The vital question – by Nick Lane
  27. Life Ascending – by Nick Lane
  28. The greatest show on earth – by Richard Dawkins
  29. The song of the Dodo – by David Quammen
  30. The lives of a cell – by Lewis Thomas
  31. Why evolution is true – by Jerry Coyne
  32. Faith vs fact – by Jerry Coyne
  33. The Serengeti rules – by Sean Carroll
  34. Being mortal – by Atul Gawande
  35. Patient H.M. – by Luke Dittrich
  36. A brief history of everyone whoever lived – by Adam Rutherford
  37. I contain multitudes – by Ed Yong
  38. Neanderthal man – by Svante Paabo
  39. The serpents promise – by Steve Jones
  40. The book of humans – Adam Rutherford
  41. When breath becomes air – Paul Kalanithi
  42. This is going to hurt – Adam Kay
  43. Stiff – Mary Roach
  44. I, Mammal – Liam Drew
  45. Superior – Angela Saini
  46. Parasite Rex – Carl Zimmer
  47. What is life? – Erwin Schrodinger
  48. The Demon in the machine – Paul Davies
  49. The body – Bill Bryson
  50. The incredible unlikeliness of being – Alice Roberts
  51. The Epigenetics Revolution – Nessa Carey
  52. Junk DNA – Nessa Carey
  53. The Tangled Tree – David Quammen
  54. The Gene – Siddhartha Mukherjee
  55. A Crack in Creation – Jennifer Doudna
  56. Factfulness – Hans Rosling
  57. Life on Earth – David Attenborough
  58. 10 million aliens – Simon Barnes
  59. Biology as ideology – Richard Lewontin