COMMUNICATION FOCUSES Key word walls Look at your classroom… Do you have a reference wall that you refer to in lessons? A wall filled with useful words (tier 2 and tier 3). If not, consider displaying a word wall for September…

INCLUSION FOR ALL Use mini-whiteboards to challenge. Think - Ask ALL students to answer ever question that you ask on the whiteboards. Pair – ask students to check and add to one another’s answers Share -  ask one student to share what their partner changed on their board and to consider WHY they may have changed/amended it.

 

KEY FOCUSES: behaviour for learning, use of mini-whiteboards, expectations

This week:

• The thought for the week this week is ‘Thanks’.  Please ask your forms to consider the experiences that they have had in school this year and to be thankful for them. 
• NQTs – No meetings this week are due in
• CPD Today at 3:15 in the dining room – Please could SG Leads set up a laptop (ensure it is charged) or any other materials showcasing learning points in dining room after school.  One laptop per desk please. Bring a coffee!

Our T&L Targets

• Brilliant teaching and learning
  • Literacy – book looks will look at how well the literacy marking policy is implemented (i.e. sp, u, p, np, etc).                    
  • Challenge for all
  • Progress for students with low starting points
  • OM CLIPs – cross-curricular

Think about this…

 

Next year, vocabulary will be a focus.  The ‘Tiers’ of vocabulary are talked about regularly but it is worth making sure we all know where these words come from.  An Academic Word List of ‘Tier 2’ words has been included in the new staff planners.  These words will also be referred to in form times.  What exactly is the Academic Word List (AWL)?

‘The AWL was developed by Averil Coxhead at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

The list contains 570 word families which were selected because they appear with great frequency in a broad range of academic texts. The list does not include words that are in the most frequent 2000 words of English (the General Service List), thus making it specific to academic contexts.

The AWL was primarily made so that it could be used by teachers as part of a programme preparing learners for tertiary level study or used by students working alone to learn the words most needed to study at colleges and universities. The 570 words are divided into 10 sublists. The sublists are ordered such that the words in the first sublist are the most frequent words and those in the last sublist are the least frequent.’

 

Talk-Talk!  Three Structures

Please use these (or other) structures when doing anything other than teacher-led instruction:

• Think-Pair-Share OR Timed-Pair-Share
• Rally Robin
• All write round robin

The PowerPoint for this Top Tip is stored in the ‘WLD Teachers’ Team under ‘Teaching and Learning’.

Kagan Three Structures

Top Tips in Two this Half-Term    

Many thanks to those of you who have contributed to Top Tips this year.  There have been no less than 51 Top Tips in Two Minutes which equates to an extra 2 hours of CPD.

 

There have also been four Pastries and Progress sessions, which have enabled experienced professionals to share their craft, equating to another 1 hour of CPD.

 

Please ensure that you take the time to read the circulated rota for Top Tips for next year…emailed with last week’s edition of the ‘Digest’.

CPD Cascade

 

As we evaluate our CPD provision for next year, please take two minutes to complete the GoogleForm survey (emailed with the Digest) to share your thoughts (please let me know if this does not work).