Terms come and go, and those good intentions to achieve all sorts of goals can easily fall by the wayside as you and your team succumb to a multitude of everyday activities and chores that need to be accomplished if your students are going to get the grades they need. Add to this the all-important planning and marking - which are integral to student success and which make you a more effective practitioner - it seems nigh on impossible to find the time to do anything other than teach, mark, give feedback and report. These are, of course, key elements of our job. However, what about the targets that are going to impact positively on these key elements? When do we get the time to consider these?

I have been meaning to write this article about my thoughts after watching the BBC programme Chinese School in the summer. The documentary is about having four Chinese teachers in Bohunt School (oversubscribed mixed comprehensive school rated as ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted) teach pupils the Chinese way. I feel that the Chinese teachers always had really high expectations of all the pupils they taught, and had sheer determination to see this through.

The performance management process is starting in most schools over the next few weeks.

It’s a crucial time for senior leaders who are responsible for performance related pay (PRP) - they need to be ready to make it clear to their colleagues what targets they will be measured against, and what they need to do in order to achieve a pay award in autumn 2014.

It sounds simple, but in fact it is a complex process with big implications for the running of our schools. The fundamental problem is that schools are being expected to lead on the processes and procedures of PRP when old frameworks have been replaced by vague national guidelines and shallow local guidance. All this – while the clock is ticking.

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: