Making the most of INSET
I'm currently involved in planning a full INSET day for the first day back in January, and would appreciate any feedback on our thinking at this stage. General attitudes towards INSET expressed online would suggest that teacher experiences are patchy at best, and I'm very aware of our responsibility in school to get this stuff as good as it can be. Partly, I'm writing this just to get my own thoughts clear; partly to ask any teachers with the time or inclination to comment whether this sounds like a decent use of time. I'd be particularly interested to know if there are any glaring omissions in the proposed content - what's missing? Does it seem like content which would be helpful for all subjects, or is more domain-specific content required? If this was emailed round as a plan at your school, what would be your response?
Focus
Our focus for this day is on teaching disadvantaged students. Whilst being a generally high performing school, we have a sizeable gap in the performance of our 'disadvantaged' and 'others', as designated by the DFE. It's worth stating here an awareness that being one of the 20% or so of our students who receive this designation doesn't mean that these students are all the same - far from it - and we can therefore only talk and think about this group in terms of tendencies and trends. Many of our students who are officially on the disadvantaged list absolutely fly through school, and of course many who aren't, don't. Nevertheless, our data shows historic underachievement of this group compared with the rest of the cohort, alongside some recent improvement, suggesting it remains a sensible area on which to focus our attention.
The other great advantage of choosing this as a focus is that effective teaching of 'harder to teach' students is no different to any other type of teaching; it just requires a heightened level of expertise, refinement, attention to detail and nuance. Once these features are in place, then of course all students benefit, as do teachers who feel the heightened satisfaction and fulfilment of teaching with a greater understanding of, and control over, the techniques they employ.
Anyway, here we go - how does this sound?
Structure of the day:
Morning:
A whole staff gathering to begin the day, going over the key issues and previewing the day.
This followed by a series of workshops on various different aspects which come into play (see below), aiming for maximum relevance for each teacher.
Afternoon:
TLC time in faculties, in which teachers work in loosely collaborative, subject-specific groups or pairs (or on their own if it's more helpful to do so), applying what's been covered in the morning sessions to active preparation for the term's teaching to come. I'd see this as a form of 'risk assessment' - teachers reviewing their teaching intentions for the term, with a view to spotting where the risks of underachievement may lie and taking action to refine and polish plans and resources.
Suggested session content:
Whole staff Session - Morning:
- Reminder of our situation as a wide-intake comprehensive in terms of intake and achievement profiles
- Reminder of need for caution in labels such as 'disadvantaged'; therefore we need to talk in terms of tendencies rather than absolutes, 'some' rather than 'all'
- Reminder of the 'Pockets of Poverty' report; reflection on the particular moral / social justice elements which come into play in our school and city
- Reminder of our principles of professional learning: we learn as we teach, we focus our thinking on the things that make the most difference, we value autonomy.
Subsequent morning sessions - 'The professional challenges of teaching disadvantaged students'.
Teachers to choose 2 or 3 to attend.
Clarity in the Classroom
- The role of focus in lesson design - working memory capacity, focused / diffuse thinking
- Modelling and Explanations - principles and practice
- Clarity and efficiency of feedback
- Common impediments to clarity - assuming knowledge, over-preparation and too many activities, unclear task-setting, over-complicated lesson design, pointless low value tasks
Knowledge and Cultural Capital
- 'How does thinking work?' - Willingham-inspired look at thinking as making connections between new and existing knowledge
- 'The Matthew Effect' - the 'knowledge rich get richer...'
- 'Reconsidering when to puzzle' - the value of front-loading explanation and the dangers of the pointless starter
- Practical applications - knowledge organisers, retrieval practice and regular low stakes testing
Supporting Literacy - When and How?
- 'teach the literacy your subject needs for excellence' - key message.
- strategies for modelling literacy effectively
- Strategies for vocabulary development
- Reading strategy number ONE - teach them what the words mean!
- Common pitfalls - confusing subject literacy with SPAG, literacy at the expense of the subject
Teacher and Student Mindsets
- Review of main messages and literature - how does growth mindset apply to this issue?
- A look at issues around resilience and reflectiveness - promoting healthy and manageable responses for students and teachers when it gets tough
- Teacher responses to failure - our students' and our own
- Implications of student and teacher attitudes towards ability (care needed here - needs a positive and optimistic overview of the theory without being unthinking / crass)
Attitudes, Behaviour and the Adolescent Brain
- A review of recent research from Sarah Jayne Blakemore on teenage brain development and teenage sense of the social self
- Managing adolescent-typical behaviours and tendencies in the classroom
- Unpicking of specific implications for some disadvantaged students, eg the social implications for students from unsettled homes
- 'The comparison effect' - working with disadvantaged students in comprehensive classrooms
So that's where we are at the moment, but trying to get this planned in advance in order to give time to evolve our thinking. I'm also very conscious of the difficulty in translating training into genuine evolution of practice in the classroom. This is for good reasons of time and capacity to change habits in the context of such busy and demanding working conditions. Phil Stock writes in characteristically articulate and thoughtful fashion about this issue here, and raises the question which should dominate any attempts to channel teacher time and attention in particular directions: will it do any good? Is it relevant enough for all? If not, what needs to change? Thanks for sending any thoughts my way. @tomboulter
Focus
Our focus for this day is on teaching disadvantaged students. Whilst being a generally high performing school, we have a sizeable gap in the performance of our 'disadvantaged' and 'others', as designated by the DFE. It's worth stating here an awareness that being one of the 20% or so of our students who receive this designation doesn't mean that these students are all the same - far from it - and we can therefore only talk and think about this group in terms of tendencies and trends. Many of our students who are officially on the disadvantaged list absolutely fly through school, and of course many who aren't, don't. Nevertheless, our data shows historic underachievement of this group compared with the rest of the cohort, alongside some recent improvement, suggesting it remains a sensible area on which to focus our attention.
The other great advantage of choosing this as a focus is that effective teaching of 'harder to teach' students is no different to any other type of teaching; it just requires a heightened level of expertise, refinement, attention to detail and nuance. Once these features are in place, then of course all students benefit, as do teachers who feel the heightened satisfaction and fulfilment of teaching with a greater understanding of, and control over, the techniques they employ.
Anyway, here we go - how does this sound?
Structure of the day:
Morning:
A whole staff gathering to begin the day, going over the key issues and previewing the day.
This followed by a series of workshops on various different aspects which come into play (see below), aiming for maximum relevance for each teacher.
Afternoon:
TLC time in faculties, in which teachers work in loosely collaborative, subject-specific groups or pairs (or on their own if it's more helpful to do so), applying what's been covered in the morning sessions to active preparation for the term's teaching to come. I'd see this as a form of 'risk assessment' - teachers reviewing their teaching intentions for the term, with a view to spotting where the risks of underachievement may lie and taking action to refine and polish plans and resources.
Suggested session content:
Whole staff Session - Morning:
- Reminder of our situation as a wide-intake comprehensive in terms of intake and achievement profiles
- Reminder of need for caution in labels such as 'disadvantaged'; therefore we need to talk in terms of tendencies rather than absolutes, 'some' rather than 'all'
- Reminder of the 'Pockets of Poverty' report; reflection on the particular moral / social justice elements which come into play in our school and city
- Reminder of our principles of professional learning: we learn as we teach, we focus our thinking on the things that make the most difference, we value autonomy.
Subsequent morning sessions - 'The professional challenges of teaching disadvantaged students'.
Teachers to choose 2 or 3 to attend.
Clarity in the Classroom
- The role of focus in lesson design - working memory capacity, focused / diffuse thinking
- Modelling and Explanations - principles and practice
- Clarity and efficiency of feedback
- Common impediments to clarity - assuming knowledge, over-preparation and too many activities, unclear task-setting, over-complicated lesson design, pointless low value tasks
Knowledge and Cultural Capital
- 'How does thinking work?' - Willingham-inspired look at thinking as making connections between new and existing knowledge
- 'The Matthew Effect' - the 'knowledge rich get richer...'
- 'Reconsidering when to puzzle' - the value of front-loading explanation and the dangers of the pointless starter
- Practical applications - knowledge organisers, retrieval practice and regular low stakes testing
Supporting Literacy - When and How?
- 'teach the literacy your subject needs for excellence' - key message.
- strategies for modelling literacy effectively
- Strategies for vocabulary development
- Reading strategy number ONE - teach them what the words mean!
- Common pitfalls - confusing subject literacy with SPAG, literacy at the expense of the subject
Teacher and Student Mindsets
- Review of main messages and literature - how does growth mindset apply to this issue?
- A look at issues around resilience and reflectiveness - promoting healthy and manageable responses for students and teachers when it gets tough
- Teacher responses to failure - our students' and our own
- Implications of student and teacher attitudes towards ability (care needed here - needs a positive and optimistic overview of the theory without being unthinking / crass)
Attitudes, Behaviour and the Adolescent Brain
- A review of recent research from Sarah Jayne Blakemore on teenage brain development and teenage sense of the social self
- Managing adolescent-typical behaviours and tendencies in the classroom
- Unpicking of specific implications for some disadvantaged students, eg the social implications for students from unsettled homes
- 'The comparison effect' - working with disadvantaged students in comprehensive classrooms
So that's where we are at the moment, but trying to get this planned in advance in order to give time to evolve our thinking. I'm also very conscious of the difficulty in translating training into genuine evolution of practice in the classroom. This is for good reasons of time and capacity to change habits in the context of such busy and demanding working conditions. Phil Stock writes in characteristically articulate and thoughtful fashion about this issue here, and raises the question which should dominate any attempts to channel teacher time and attention in particular directions: will it do any good? Is it relevant enough for all? If not, what needs to change? Thanks for sending any thoughts my way. @tomboulter
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