PROGRESS

If a child becomes demotivated with their learning, it can become difficult for both teachers and parents to identify the cause. Children often behave differently at home than they do at school, and unfortunately this is not always understood by parents if there isn’t an easy way to see the progression trends themselves. Engaging parents with their child’s education is therefore crucial, so that they can work with teachers together to support child development. Although most will agree with this, there are a number of challenges and disagreements on how the process should be managed.

By improving both teaching and learning, effective teacher CPD is one of the greatest influences on student outcomes. Yet few schools evaluate its impact adequately, or even at all. However, unless you do so, it is difficult to know to what extent a CPD programme benefits a school or offers value for money. So how do you go about evaluating CPD? I would suggest the following basic framework:

A recent study by the National Literacy Trust has revealed a sharp increase in the number of pupils aged between 8 and 18 who read regularly outside of the classroom. In 2014, 41% of pupils read outside the classroom, a 32% year-on-year increase from 2013, and this is a hugely encouraging sign for literacy development.

Of all the buzzwords and key phrases that have been thrown at us in recent years, it is ‘High Expectations’ and ‘Stretch and Challenge’ which have plagued me the most. Who doesn’t have high expectations of their students? And just what is the difference between ‘stretch’ and ‘challenge’?

After Rory Gallagher’s recent piece on the meaning of education-innovation, Nicole Ponsford looks at the current state of affairs between schools and suppliers, and how both parties can work together for exciting progress.

With a background in marketing preceding my time in schools, I find this question of great interest. Schools and business are in the marketing game – schools to illustrate and celebrate the hard work and success of students and teachers alike, businesses to illustrate how innovative they also are, and to make a profit. As a former multimedia teacher, I have always been keen to provide my secondary school students with ‘industry-standard’ software and hardware. I want to prepare them for the world of business. However, working with technological giants like Apple, Sony and Vodafone, I have learnt a little about who is leading this innovation in terms of produce use – teachers or suppliers? Who is making the first move, and is this more about products or partnership?

Inspired by a recent Pedagoo teacher meet, Assistant Head and PE specialist Jon Tait puts into practice a strategy to encourage students to work harder and faster by giving them a creative visual tool which shows how far each one is progressing with the lesson objective.

The simple-to-draw circular board, which can be segmented several times into progressive achievements, could even be projected onto an interactive whiteboard. It's a great concept which makes each student more aware of their own learning pace, plus there's bags of potential for award schemes such as virtual stickers to be sent to a student's iPad once he or she climbs a 'ring'. Read his post to check the photos of his board - you might be surprised how well it worked!

Last weekend (18/5), I was lucky enough to be able to attend and present at the hugely popular Pedagoo Sunshine event at Joseph Swan Academy in Gateshead.

As well as presenting tips and tricks to other teachers from across the country, I was fortunate enough to be able to listen to Jim Smith from Hope Valley Technology College in Derbyshire. Jim was presenting on a range of different topics from his ‘Toolbox of Strategies’.

One of the ideas that I pinched from Jim was his lesson objectives target board that his technology department have had produced for all of their classrooms. See below:

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