16 October 2020

WoW – fluctuations CPD Focus – Reading and Vocabulary

This Week:

Thanks for putting so much energy and thought into this first half term’s planning.

Trainees – in timetabled lessons within subject areas this week. Observations this week.
New staff and trainee CPD – Wednesday after school in B7 (30 mins) – RLO – T&L.
Reminders:
- Continue to add lesson resources into weekly folders for each class in Teams. This is really working well for those in isolation.
- Use Oak National Academy (or other online lesson bank) for cover lessons.
Study Groups – Please forward remaining Study Group into for RLO
Year 7 teachers – please use the ‘golden rules’ emailed out last Friday morning with ALL year 7 classes.
Year 10D teachers – please use the ‘golden rules’ emailed out last week in EVERY lesson.
T&L Student Voice questionnaires – these will be sent to all year groups this week. Questions attached for your information.

RLO’s T&L update (circulated in JHA’s bulletin) here.

Reflect…

Link to this term’s CPD focus – Reading for Understanding

As I said in last week’s Digest, one of our priorities is reading for understanding. It is a fundamental element of our ‘Brilliant Teaching and Learning Toolkit’ and of our ‘Teaching and Learning Policy’. Last week, we reflected on the role of questioning as part of promoting reading for understanding.

One of the questioning techniques promoted was ‘Say it Again, Better’. This technique is quite self-explanatory as you are basically allowing students to offer half-formed answers as they think through your question. You then press them to refine their answer. The key principles of this are:

Patience
Focus on vocabulary
Reframe the answer by saying ‘say it again, but better’
Give specific feedback: ‘okay, try saying it again but this time add in x and y’.
Ensure maximum participation – use mini-whiteboards so that everyone answers the question
Always return to the original student to ensure that they can explain their answer fully and in a refined way.

The questioning CPD session offered last week was based on the work of Tom Sherrington. Resources are saved in the CPD Library here and there are also useful resources from the ‘Walkthrus’ book.