Blog Post Two
The journey of the teaching from RI to Good: a framework
How a Teaching and Learning Framework was designed: RI - Good.
The teaching and learning framework ultimately was used as an 'anchor' to move the teaching from RI to Good
Here is the teaching and learning framework that has been in place for over three years now at my school. In this blog, I will explain how I came to this design in the hope it helps more leaders in education.
Teaching and Learning Framework - a larger version can be found in the tab ‘documents’
As a school, we were graded as 'requires improvement', and the teaching and learning needed an overhaul. The headteacher had tasked me with designing a teaching and learning framework and had recommended several books alongside my own that I was already engaged in. I have attached my favourite books of all time underneath and will explain how I used these to shape the teaching and learning framework that ultimately was used as an 'anchor' to move the teaching and learning forward. This was also referred to throughout the Ofsted inspection, and conversations repeatedly returned to our teaching and learning framework.
Firstly, as we know, it is important to assess the teaching within the school and be really clear about the practices occurring. For us, and with having an RI grading at the time, we needed to go right back to the planning element. While reading the Making Every Lesson Count book, I particularly liked the diagram on page 7 for the pedagogical principles. I found this is one of the easiest ways to refer to a lesson structure for consistency of lesson structures throughout the school. This informed the framework of the titles and what was expected for every lesson.
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Following this, I then needed to show teaching staff 'how' we can show these principles in action in the classroom. Now, this teaching and learning framework was designed for the children in my school, so if you are thinking of developing a framework for your school, I would recommend choosing strategies that will benefit your children. As my school was once 'special measures' and had a huge turnaround with behaviour, some of our children became 'passive learners' or entirely compliant; however, they showed little engagement with the material presented. Therefore, children were being misdiagnosed in the teacher assessment and given work pitched too high. To ensure that teachers had an accurate reflection and teacher assessment of the children's abilities, I ensured that quite a few strategies that were chosen were related to gaining some data from the children at particular points in the lesson so that no children went under the radar.
I referred to the Teach Like a Champion book (Doug Lemov) and Rosenshine's principles in action (Tom Sherrington) to research which strategies were best for us as a school to implement and reach the '6 core principles' of our lessons. In the following framework, you can see which techniques I selected from both books that I felt would enhance the teaching and ultimately benefit the children.
Books recommended
I may do a further blog on how I rolled out this as a framework, as it did take the best part of 6-8 months. I used the leverage leadership and an approach known to me from the sporting world as 'marginal gains' to monitor and adjust accordingly. If the process of rolling this out is something you are interested in, please let me know!
Key takeaways:
- Don't just assume that even your best teachers know how to plan with all the pedagogical principles
- Initial teacher training and teachers' previous experiences will always show surprising gaps, and this is no fault of the teacher.
- Be sure to partake in lots of reading before the development of your framework
- Design your teaching and learning framework as is fit to your school
- Be super sure it is the framework for your school and your pupils before you roll it out
- Be sure to choose the correct techniques based on your school's needs to improve teaching and learning
Comment your thoughts below! I really do hope my ramblings are somewhat helpful 😊
Siobhan Sanders