1. The OECD have just published Teachers Getting the Best out of Their Students, based on data from this year’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) report and described as taking “a view of teachers and school principals across all levels of compulsory education and the similarities and differences in the issues they face”. You can read it online here https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/5bc5cd4e-en/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/5bc5cd4e-en# and I’ve presumed to make a PDF of the (short) executive summary, below.

2. Three pieces gleaned from the latest Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) newsletter:

one blog post by Sarah Green on Shining a spotlight on reading fluency https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/eef-blog-shining-a-spotlight-on-reading-fluency

a second by Julie Kettlewell on Structured support for independent learning https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/eef-blog-structured-support-for-independent-learning

and a podcast hosted by Alex Quigley on Effective Professional Development https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/news/new-episode-of-evidence-into-action-effective-professional-development

3. Google know lots of things about us, many more than most of us can imagine. Here’s a piece by Dorie Clark about something else Google knows, Google’s ’20% rule’ shows exactly how much time you should spend learning new skills—and why it works https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/16/google-20-percent-rule-shows-exactly-how-much-time-you-should-spend-learning-new-skills.html

4. Here’s seven months’ notice of next year’s Trinity-Regent Future of English Language Teaching (FOELT) conference, so you have no excuse whatsoever for missing the 31^st March deadline for submissions https://learn.trinitycollege.co.uk/foelt/events/2022

plus, on the same page, recordings of all the sessions from this year’s FOELT. How about ‘A tale never loses in the telling’: Challenging hegemonic worldviews and decolonizing the EFL classroom with Erika de Freitas Coachman and Izabelle da Silva Fernandes from Argentina? https://resources.trinitycollege.com/teachers/english_language/webinars/a-tale-never-loses-in-the-telling-challenging-hegemonic-worldviews-and-decolonizing-the-efl-classroom-erika-de-freitas-coachma-1625139275175?__hstc=140353068.32e4c39214a3f2ddd0a15bcc9f879020.1639685435308.1639685435308.1639762963482.2&__hssc=140353068.1.1639762963482&__hsfp=1456151666 That’s a long link but I’ve decided not to give it the Bitly https://bitly.com/ treatment!

5. And, finally, Forty Names by the Afghan poet Parwana Fayyaz:

text here https://www.forwardartsfoundation.org/forward-prizes-for-poetry-2/parwana-fayyaz/parwana-fayyaz-forty-names/

and video with Parwana here https://youtu.be/wYTYwADxVrE