Class Teaching – Discover & Share Evidence-Informed “Bright Spots” in Secondary Education
Unlock practical, research-backed strategies that empower teachers and enrich student learning across the curriculum.
Weekly Highlights
Weekly Highlights — Stay Up to Date with Smart Teaching
Blog of the Week
Ben Rogers – Reading for Learning
Sometimes the short punchy blogs are the best. Though this is physics specific, it is a great example of disciplinary literacy in practical terms.
Class Teaching Focus
Chris Runeckles – Teaching PiPs – Bright Spots
An end of year celebration of the fantastic teachers we have at Durrington and the work they have been doing to enact our teaching principles.
Research School Insights
Ben Crockett – The Workplace Environment, Gallup and Retention
For this blog, Ben has completed a review of the teacher retention data for 2025 and explored how leaders may be able to influence this.
Weekly Round-Up
Each week we round up the most useful posts, classroom-ready ideas, smart routines, and research worth your time.
Bright Spots
Purposeful Reading
Practical ways we embed reading across the curriculum.
Feedback & Assessment
Make feedback work without overload.
Cognitive Load in Practice
Worked examples, modelling, and more.
Participation
Raising hands, voices, and engagement, what actually works.
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Featured Post
(editor-picked)
Written by the Durrington Research School Team in Worthing, West Sussex. Teachers sharing what’s working, so others can use it too.
Teaching PiPs – Bright Spots
As we head towards the end of our first year implementing our Teaching: Principles in Practice, it seems like the perfect time to celebrate the endeavours of our brilliant teachers who have been working hard to incorporate these routines into their practice.
About the Team
The purpose of this blog is to find and share the effective and evidence-informed practice that exists within our own school and others – the bright spots…
Shaun Allison
Co-Headteacher @DurringtonHigh
West Sussex, England. Author. Blogger.
Chris Runeckles
Deputy headteacher at Downlands Community School. Author, blogger, and advocate for evidence-informed practice.
Ben Crockett
Assistant Headteacher at Durrington High School. Deputy Director of Durrington Research School. Geography teacher. MA in Education 2019
James Crane
Assistant headteacher and Deputy Director of Research School
Deb Friis
Lead Practitioner for Maths, Sussex Maths Hub AMHL, Teaching & learning. Runner. Crochet, craft and sewing.
Andy Tharby
English teacher and leader. Education writer, trainer and consultant. Spurs fan. Runner of sorts.
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Get the latest “bright spots” by email
Weekly round-ups and practical, evidence-informed insights. No spam.
Latest From the Blog
Teaching: Principles in Practice
By Chris Runeckles
At Durrington we’ve been using our six principles of challenge, explanation, modelling, practice, questioning and feedback to codify great teaching for more than a decade.
Tea & Teaching – Drive Thought and Ratio
By Fahim Rahman
The foundation of our profession is rooted in encouraging children to pay attention to and think about the particular stimulus we want them to concentrate on.
How do we ensure reading in schools is purposeful?
By James Crane
This blog aims to outline how we as teachers can ensure reading in our lessons supports students to access our curriculum.