Biology by Mr Bradford
The teaching notebook.
Tales from the teaching trenches and insights from my battle wounds. New entries when there's something worth writing down.
The data booklet is a tell.
IB Biology's first-ever data booklet is half filler, half tell. Cut the peristalsis, keep the chi-squared table: the marks just moved from reciting a formula to knowing what to do with it.
read →Using AI to disconnect.
The TV moved to the corridor and the kids stopped fighting over it. The same logic applies in the classroom: use AI to generate printable, tactile resources, and put the devices away.
read →The slide deck is dead. Long live the slide deck.
Fifteen years in, the slide deck still earns its keep, not as a performance, but as a live lesson plan. Plus the WebSheet, the format I'm replacing decks with where it actually helps.
read →Internal Assessments in action: caffeine, lipase, and playing the game
A student's IA on caffeine and lipase. Why the messy endpoint isn't the problem you think it is, and why the IA rubric pays out for honest limitations, not tidy methods.
read →I sat IB Biology exams. It was humbling. You should do it too.
Parsimony. Sieve tubes. FACE experiments. Cocaine. And the gas that ripens a banana. What sitting the May 2026 papers reminded me to teach better.
read →The three-week loop
A three-week overlapping cycle built around the science of memory: preparation, application, assessment, running concurrently across topics.
read →Banter, bribery, belonging
The league, the snacks, the British sarcasm: the warm half of running a classroom, and why rapport sits on top of the three-week loop.
read →