Why isn't all CPD like this?
I recently took part in a CPD session with the fantastic English team at Kingsdown School in Swindon, which comprised a talk-through and discussion of how to teach an upcoming unit on teaching Macbeth to Year 10.
I feel a little behind the curve on this as I know that other schools and MATs do this regularly, but I was struck by how much more useful it felt than a lot of other training I've received or delivered over the years.
The content of the session was this:
- Introduction to the philosophy / principles behind the unit. This included elements such as: teach first, then question (not the other way around), knowledge leads to skill, be the expert in the room, do a limited range of core activities repeatedly (more on the approach is here if you are interested.
- Talk through of the medium-term plan, which the head of English had prepared meticulously, including dates, assessment weeks, core knowledge. It was only a side and a half of A4, with no further paperwork, so simple enough to process.
- Focus on core knowledge - here the emphasis was on ensuring we had a consistent understanding in the room of the main elements we needed to teach. We used the knowledge organiser, covering features of tragedy and a tragic hero, specified elements of social historical context, and the rich ideas underpinning the play.
- Look at some lessons. It was so helpful to get into detail - we were able to discuss specific approaches, opportunities and potential pitfalls. For example, we considered how to get students to complete a story map without it taking ages, what to do if they mess it up (photocopy someone else's and stick it over the top), which modern examples work best to exemplify the features of tragedy.
One lesson contained a talk-through of Star Wars, which works well to illustrate the various elements of a tragic hero. However, a pitfall here is the scandalous revelation that today's youth have very limited knowledge of the series - lots of them don't know their Darth from their Jango quite frankly - leading to my lesson stalling badly when I tried it a couple of years ago. It was helpful to air this and talk it through - alternatives were considered, and teachers left better informed about whether to adapt or dump the activity.
- Agree best approaches to activities - in particular, annotating quotations and modelling writing. This had a useful combination of the technical - eg choosing the quotes for the students (usually) so that they can focus on the quality of analysis, the liberating and transformational wonders of sentence level modelling - as well as the very practical, such as how big to print the models and where exactly on the page to stick them.
That was more or less it - lasting just over an hour, and flew by. It worked for these reasons:
- obvious relevance and applicability
- the chance to get collaboratively excited about the content
- a real sense of team, coherence and 'doing this together'
- a winning combination of the subject, the pedagogy and the practical
- a chance to articulate and discuss underpinning philosophies, addressing the tricky questions: will this lead students to be independent? Is it spoonfeeding? Is it too hard for the bottom end? How do you actually pronounce 'hamartia'? (Ans: yes, no, no, opinion is divided)
So why don't we do this all the time? Why isn't every unit prefaced with a talk-through and discuss session, ideally led by someone with experience of teaching the unit in the past? There are many answers here - time of course - but for me the single most significant factor is curriculum. Five years ago, we couldn't have done this session because the structures and resources around the curriculum were fundamentally not strong or clear enough. Access to high quality CPD around specified content is just one more of the many opportunities and benefits repaid by investing deeply in curriculum and resourcing over time.
I feel a little behind the curve on this as I know that other schools and MATs do this regularly, but I was struck by how much more useful it felt than a lot of other training I've received or delivered over the years.
The content of the session was this:
- Introduction to the philosophy / principles behind the unit. This included elements such as: teach first, then question (not the other way around), knowledge leads to skill, be the expert in the room, do a limited range of core activities repeatedly (more on the approach is here if you are interested.
- Talk through of the medium-term plan, which the head of English had prepared meticulously, including dates, assessment weeks, core knowledge. It was only a side and a half of A4, with no further paperwork, so simple enough to process.
- Focus on core knowledge - here the emphasis was on ensuring we had a consistent understanding in the room of the main elements we needed to teach. We used the knowledge organiser, covering features of tragedy and a tragic hero, specified elements of social historical context, and the rich ideas underpinning the play.
- Look at some lessons. It was so helpful to get into detail - we were able to discuss specific approaches, opportunities and potential pitfalls. For example, we considered how to get students to complete a story map without it taking ages, what to do if they mess it up (photocopy someone else's and stick it over the top), which modern examples work best to exemplify the features of tragedy.
One lesson contained a talk-through of Star Wars, which works well to illustrate the various elements of a tragic hero. However, a pitfall here is the scandalous revelation that today's youth have very limited knowledge of the series - lots of them don't know their Darth from their Jango quite frankly - leading to my lesson stalling badly when I tried it a couple of years ago. It was helpful to air this and talk it through - alternatives were considered, and teachers left better informed about whether to adapt or dump the activity.
- Agree best approaches to activities - in particular, annotating quotations and modelling writing. This had a useful combination of the technical - eg choosing the quotes for the students (usually) so that they can focus on the quality of analysis, the liberating and transformational wonders of sentence level modelling - as well as the very practical, such as how big to print the models and where exactly on the page to stick them.
That was more or less it - lasting just over an hour, and flew by. It worked for these reasons:
- obvious relevance and applicability
- the chance to get collaboratively excited about the content
- a real sense of team, coherence and 'doing this together'
- a winning combination of the subject, the pedagogy and the practical
- a chance to articulate and discuss underpinning philosophies, addressing the tricky questions: will this lead students to be independent? Is it spoonfeeding? Is it too hard for the bottom end? How do you actually pronounce 'hamartia'? (Ans: yes, no, no, opinion is divided)
So why don't we do this all the time? Why isn't every unit prefaced with a talk-through and discuss session, ideally led by someone with experience of teaching the unit in the past? There are many answers here - time of course - but for me the single most significant factor is curriculum. Five years ago, we couldn't have done this session because the structures and resources around the curriculum were fundamentally not strong or clear enough. Access to high quality CPD around specified content is just one more of the many opportunities and benefits repaid by investing deeply in curriculum and resourcing over time.
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