One of the barriers to improving the quality of teaching and learning is a lack of time to share good practice, develop ideas and reflect on our teaching. One of the ways we have overcome this at JRCS is through our very successful JRCS Teaching and Learning Group. We meet every half term and typically spend half the session sharing good practice and the other half looking at an area of whole school development around teaching and learning. Recently T&L Group members led very successful whole school CPD workshops. All staff are welcome – come along!
Impact of the T&L Group
CPD
Group members led workshops over two whole school CPD twilight sessions. Workshops included planning differentiated SOW, questioning, blogs and task-marking. The first workshop introduced the principles and the second was a follow and assess impact. A survey we carried out following the sessions showed that 95% of staff sad they learned something new in the sessions and that they had found it useful.
Teaching Squares
Out of the T&L Group came the JRCS ‘Teaching Squares’ programme, which ran twice in the academic year 2014-15. 80% of teaching staff volunteered to join in the programme, which ran over a half term. Over the two rounds of teaching squares colleagues was over 500 hours of teaching, in the spirit of developmental and sharing good practice. Feedback was enormously positive and we hope to run the programme again soon.
Sharing good practice
Since its inception there have been lots of examples of colleagues sharing new resources or ideas with the T&L Group and then other colleagues taking them back to their departments and using them. These include: literacy mats; ‘Plickers’ (a real time formative assessment tool); blogs; challenge boards.
Fun
Lots of the feedback we get from staff who attend the T&L Group is that it’s great to gather with colleagues from around the school and spend time talking about improving our teaching practice in a relaxing environment. It’s something we too rarely get the chance to do day to day in school!
If you have any queries or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the school office on 020 8270 6222 or contact Mr V McInerney at VMcInerney@jorichardson.org.uk
