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Insights, tips, and resources for parents, teachers, and learners on their educational journey.
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Help your child revise without needing to know every answer. Join Julian for four practical 15-minute sessions on getting started, asking useful questions, trying better techniques and noticing progress.
Rachel Dance
AI can answer questions, but can it teach? Discover why SideCog puts pedagogy, adaptive teaching and lasting learning at the heart of educational AI.
When a school has excellent behaviour but still receives a “Needs Attention” judgement because of attendance, it raises an important question: how much can schools really control? After 20 years in education, Julian Dance reflects on attendance, curriculum relevance and whether we need to look more closely at why some young people disengage from learning.
A 658-day Duolingo streak doesn't necessarily make you confident enough to order dinner. A family holiday in Sardinia got Julian thinking about context, confidence, retrieval - and the difference between completing activities and actually learning.
Adaptive teaching has never been about willingness. It's about capacity. Julian reflects on the growing complexity of today's classrooms, the teacher's "fourth sense", and how technology should support, not replace, great teaching.
Britain's recent heatwave has left many of us saying the same thing: "I just can't think." But what if that experience reveals something important about how learning works? In this article, Julian explores the surprising parallels between cognitive performance in extreme temperatures and the challenges students face when misconceptions, knowledge gaps and cognitive overload get in the way of understanding.
Julian Dance explains why he became an advocate for Oak Academy and how its curriculum architecture aligns with SideCog's mission to help students identify misconceptions, connect ideas and become more confident, independent learners.
A child can pass tests, repeat facts, and still misunderstand how the world works. This article explores why misconceptions in science matter far beyond one lesson, how they affect learning across the curriculum, and why understanding matters more than memorisation.
A simple hand-drawn comic about Argon and Lithium turned a chemistry tutoring session into an engaging learning experience. This article explores how drawing, storytelling, and dual coding theory can help students better understand and retain complex concepts.
Learning is not exposure-it is memory. This article explores why thinking, retrieval and spacing are essential for building lasting understanding in education.
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