Peter Williams

Hi #EduSky - it's time for my #Saturday3 and since I am now back in Asia, UK readers can get it first thing in the morning. The online discourse this week seems to have swung back from DI / Sold a Story to Alpha Schools (again). However, that's all a bit irrelevant to what's happening in schools...

I created a Minute Cryptic for you to solve: Confusion in the 90s award? (5) I'm not 100% on how fair this is, so I have a couple of tweaks in my head, would be interested in feedback! www.minutecryptic.com/custom/79ba1...

I created a Minute Cryptic for you to solve: Confusion in the 90s award? (5) I'm not 100% on how fair this is, so I have a couple of tweaks in my head, would be interested in feedback! www.minutecryptic.com/custom/79ba1...

It's half term, we booked a holiday last night, travelling tomorrow morning. My car decided to break. Yay!

My friend Bruce Boyer is fond of saying that "style is being yourself on purpose." Thus, to develop a wardrobe that lasts 10+ years, the first question isn't "Who makes quality clothes?" It's "Who am I?" In 2022, WSJ put Stephen Colbert on the cover of their magazine, styling him in trendy clothes.

Setting aside just a small amount of time to chat to @mathsimpact.bsky.social has been invaluable. The use of a simple ‘ : ‘ has been transformative in how I teach learners to tackle any questions that come down to ratios. Now to action those next steps.

On using AI to create posters in schools: Don't. The kids can tell (it's obvious), and it's basically just openly saying to them "AI is fine to use for your schoolwork"

The traitors are so unbelievably bad at playing the game 🤣 #traitors

37 AMAZING I think you might like this book – "Shroud: A gripping first contact story from the Arthur C. Clarke Award winner" by Tchaikovsky, Adrian. Start reading it for free: read.amazon.co.uk/kp/kshare?as...

Network - I'm trying to track down some photography A-Level experts! Is this you? Or a colleague, perhaps? I'm looking to support a trainee teacher, bringing them resources and further PD opps to support their practices. Can you help?

"I've declared myself a traitor by mistake!"

He's just so perfect! 😍

Everyone needs more Richard E Grant in their lives. #traitors #celebritytraitors

Would you be able to put a FREE Japanese language edition of The Mathematicians' Library to good use? I'll send it out to the first person who gives me a good reason why they should have it, and I'll even cover postage (anywhere the UK). 1/n

Monday's TGT looks at 2008 Crashgate scandal. Was it the greatest scandal in sport? If so how come hardly anyone seems to have paid a price? bit.ly/TutorGroupThink

Ok, great, over half of teachers don't want Ofsted. I get that, but what would you do instead? Schools need accountability, and they're never going to like it, no matter what form it takes.

Quote this with a picture of the aircraft you'll accept as a bribe.

UPDATE: I've just added a pen overlay tool to the Algebra Tiles. It needs a bit of tweaking (rubber tool etc) and once I'm happy I'll roll it out to the rest of the manipulatives. mathsbot.com/manipulative...

I don’t usually engage with things that don’t have alt text, but I am nerdsniped by this one. So I will #TryMathsLive on this problem from @ridermeister.bsky.social: Rationalise the denominator of 1/(√2+√3+√5).

Good grief, that's an awful lot of schools doing ice breakers as part of their inset. Here's what teachers responded yesterday on teachertapp.co.uk

You should only take a shortcut if you know the long way around well enough to know what you've missed, and where you will be picking up the familiar route after the shortcut. Or, if you're just exploring, and then it isn't really a shortcut at all.

NEW on #ArtHistoryEtc 🎨 This morning's reflections. Regional and local museums and galleries are often seen as less worthy than national institutions, but behind the ‘provincial’ label is a wealth of expertise, knowledge and connection to place. arthistoryetc.co.uk/the-power-of...

Stop Making Them Copy. My latest blog post for @knowledge-hub.bsky.social Why asking pupils to copy is almost always a bad bet and what I do instead. theknowledgehubuk.substack.com/p/stop-makin...

My wife told me how she used excel to randomise her class list for a seating plan by adding a column next to their names with a random number in, and sorting by that column. Excellent #ExcelToday work, couldn't be more proud of her nerdiness!

It's back to school this week for many, so this is your annual reminder about draustinmaths.com. There are now over 1200 free maths resources, including over 100 resources for A-level Maths and Further Maths. And when you've exhausted all of those, there are a few paid-for resources too!

Can I set up child accounts on Amazon? Yes. Can I set up child accounts on Spotify? Yes. Can they be linked together in any way? No, of course not. 😡

I have come to accept that no matter how relaxed my holiday is, I will always come back tired, because I cannot sleep well the night before term starts. It's fine.

It's always a good day when you find out there's a Bobby fingers diorama video you haven't seen yet. (Fair warning, it's pretty sweary, but totally worth your time) youtu.be/vGt7-WnWdhE?...

Ash, Blur, The Cure and Daft Punk decide to go on tour. They play 4 different venues, Aberdeen, Belfast, Cardiff and Dorking. Each night they rotate their venues, so Ash play in Aberdeen the first night and Belfast the next and so on... Daft Punk start in Dorking then go to Aberdeen and so on...

The indicator doesn't feel right to me... Minute Cryptic - 26 August, 2026 "0 = no value, inherently" (4) ⚪️🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣🟣 🤝 1 hints – matched the community par (177,085 solvers so far). Time: 3h 33m. www.minutecryptic.com?utm_source=s...

Two days of inset done. Spent far too much time wrestling with office furniture instead of planning. Kids are back tomorrow, and I'm so ready for it!

Sixth form teachers! On 18th September we're putting on a special FREE 75-minute show in Dulwich about maths and Civil Engineering. It's aimed at Year 12s. You MUST email to reserve places, see poster below. It'll be brilliant for students who are considering their options for university.

Some news. To some of you this will be no surprise. To some of you it will.. bennewmark.wordpress.com/2026/08/22/s...

If you see this cat, post a cat 🐾

This is terribly reassuring. I kept telling my wife this is normal, but I have no concrete evidence of this because everyone always tidies up before we visit. (We can't be bothered, we get around it by not having guests over)

Fun sidebar to this, we consequently had double glazing installed for better security. My brother was so fascinated by the whole thing he collected all the offcuts of material and created a weird shrine/museum out of them in our room. It was still there years later.

"They should really teach X in schools" is almost always shorthand for "I really ought to teach X in my line of work, but it's hard, and I don't want to."

1/6th of all Britons stared directly at the sun during the partial eclipse. 🤦

As a teacher, this is entirely unsurprising. If you ask AI to do your homework, it's worse than not doing it. You've learnt nothing, practiced nothing, but come away with such a sense of achievement that you're now even less likely to do any other form of revision.

What a miserable summer we're having... 🌧️

Who wants some exciting news? @chrisbaker108.bsky.social and I are taking Tutor Group Think to a Mailing List. If you like the daily slides but forget that they're there, or need a daily reminder, or an easy way to share with your pastoral leads, then this is the answer. buttondown.com/TGT

With three boys running riot, our house is rarely quiet. Except for a couple of hours after we get back from the library. After the library there is always silence. 📚😍

You can't run in a campsite, you can only ran because it's past tents.

Game of Life on Penrose tiles

40 year old me listening to The Presidents of the United States of America. Oh... Is peaches a euphemism?