This morning I enjoyed reading Ross Morrison McGill’s thoughtful “Top 10 UK Education Blogs Or Not?”. It was the or not part of his title that caught my eye. Ross is quite rightly talking about the validity of the ranking but Top Ten lists have interested me for some time.

I have often been wary of so called Top (insert number) lists particularly when said list is simply a blog post and there may be little validity behind the choices. You will see that I always preface my own favourite lists with a reminder that the choices are personal to me – I am not claiming any authority.

Others have written well on this subject. So I present in no particular order and with no authority whatsoever some of my favourite articles on hating top 10 lists!

• I Really Do Hate Top Ten Lists, The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum
• 10 Reasons I Hate Top 10 Lists, Chicago Now, Denise Williams
• Why People Hate Top 10 Lists, TopTenz, Tanya Bennett
• Audrey Watters makes some very serious points on education in Top 100 Reasons Why I Hate Lists
• Note Audrey’s reference to Dan Meyer’s “Stop Linking to ‘Top 100 Blog’ Lists,”

Returning to the list of Top 10 UK Education Blogs mentioned at the beginning of this post, regular readers will be aware I look regularly at Ross’s site – I’m a fan of the 5 Minute Series, particularly when it comes to Lesson Planning. On that list is a real personal favourite – David Didau’s The Learning Spy, a favourite because David constantly challenges my thinking. I am currently feeling guilty at the number of times I must have written about students being engaged when it comes to lesson observation! I try to be so aware of Robert Coe’s Poor Proxies for Learning. What I really mean by engaged is that students are indeed getting on with the task they have been set. I’ll only know more about their learning by

looking at other evidence. I recently noticed some of my own Year 11 students in a general revision session for the Year group successfully answering a GCSE question on Direct Proportion. I taught that topic to them some months ago and recall being pleased with the lesson at the time but it is so much more convincing seeing them answering problems some time later! (We have also picked it up again using resources such as Mr Corbett’s 5-a-day). I’ll be even more convinced of course when I look at the exam board question by question analysis later this year.

I read many Maths blogs of course, but think it is important to look at some of the more general education blogs too.

Happy Reading!