What we’re doing during INSETs and CPD (Continuous Professional Development)

We use our CPD time to ensure your child receives high quality teaching and learning in every lesson. The EEF reports that this is one of the most valuable ways to reduce the disadvantage gap.

Our focus for the year is: finding out and responding to what students know

At St Hilda’s, your child is taught using the following curriculum system:

This focus targets the blue sections of the system and looks at ways we can

  1. check, feedback and respond to what your child knows at a given point in a lesson
  2. ask the right questions to find out what your child has and hasn’t understood, live in the lesson
  3. adapt these principles depending on the stage of learning: early on, teachers might ask more closed, specific questions to your child. Later on, they might ask your child to apply their knowledge.

The year is divided into four units:

  1. Increasing your child’s participation in lessons
  2. Designing diagnostic questions
  3. Creating a culture of error
  4. Responding to different success rates

Below we have outlined how each of these units will affect your child’s experiences, and what your child can do to ensure they make the most of their lessons. In every unit, we focus on how we adapt these teacher tools for our students with additional needs.

  1. Increasing your child’s participation in lessons – September

Your child learns when new knowledge is stored in their long-term memory. This can only happen if your child is paying attention. Please encourage your child to pay attention in their lessons.

What teachers will do

Teachers will look for signs that your child is attentive during lessons, and design their lessons to increase your child’s participation, making attention necessary.

Your child may be:

  1. cold-called: this is when a teacher poses a question to the entire class, and asks everyone to think of the answer. After a pause, they will then state the name of the child they want to answer the question. This ensures everyone is thinking hard and paying attention.
  2. asked to write answers on their mini-whiteboard. This has proven very popular with students as it allows all of them to contribute their answers/thoughts and let their teacher know what they have/haven’t understood.

We have not banned ‘hands-up’. However, we have outlined the significant benefits of having all students show their answers on a whiteboard, compared to hearing from one student in the class.

You can support us by:

  1. encouraging your child to look after their free mini-whiteboard packs
  2. highlighting the importance of paying attention
  3. encouraging your child to share what they do and don’t know using their whiteboards- the more they share, the more easily their teacher can help them.

2. Designing Diagnostic Questions – October

What teachers will do

We have looked at ways in which we can design questions that allow us to diagnose precisely what knowledge your child has and hasn’t understood, or can or can’t apply.

Many of these questions are multiple-choice. The benefits of multiple-choice questions are that we can pin-point exactly what your child’s misunderstanding is.

For example, when we mark a paragraph of writing your child has produced, they may have omitted an apostrophe. However, we don’t know from this whether your child simply forgot to use it, or where the knowledge gap lies. If instead we ask a multiple choice question, designed to check your child’s knowledge of when to use apostrophes, and then ask them a follow-up question where they have to correctly use them, we can more easily pin-point exactly what your child needs help with.

The danger with multiple-choice questions is that sometimes your child might just guess the right answer, and then the teacher thinks they know something they don’t. We have looked at ways we can make the questions more difficult to guess to combat this.

Your child ‘s experience

Your child should now experience very targeted questions in the classroom. They may be asked to write their answers on the mini-whiteboards. If they get the answer wrong, their teacher should explain and address why immediately. This provides students with a faster response compared to collecting in and marking books.

They may also be asked to complete diagnostic questions for homework, using online platforms.

You can support us by:

  1. ensuring your child completes their diagnostic questions as directed, and without asking you for help. Your child’s teacher will decide what to teach next using their answers so it’s important they are an accurate reflection.
  2. encouraging your child to design their own multiple-choice quizzes for the key knowledge they’ve learnt. Online platforms such as Quizzlet are ideal for this.
  3. quizzing your child on these key questions regularly helps them to retain the information and be able to apply it more successfully.

3. Creating a Culture of Error- November to February

This is split into 2 parts.

  1. how to pre-empt what students might get wrong in a lesson
  2. how to create a culture in lessons where students:
    • feel safe to make mistakes
    • understand that making mistakes is a valuable part of learning

What teachers will do

For the first part, we focus on ensuring your child gets the best possible learning experience by teachers pre-planning their what-ifs? What if X doesn’t understand Y? What will I do next? What will my explanation be? What additional questions can I ask?

For the second part, we focus on creating a safe environment for your child – where mistakes are the norm and an accepted part of learning, and where a teacher can discuss different answers and unpick why some are incorrect. These are positive learning experiences for the whole class.

Your child’s experience

Your child should feel they are in safe hands when they get something wrong in a lesson, and that their teacher feels fully prepared to support them towards the right answer.

They should feel it is safe to make a mistake in front of the class, and that through unpicking the mistake they are helping their peers to learn. They should feel these mistakes are the norm, and expected by the teacher. Your child should be thanked and praised for supporting everyone else’s learning.

You can support us by:

  1. attending a parent event: this will be during spring term 1. We feel it’s important to engage your support with this culture of error: we appreciate that your child’s self-esteem and confidence is delicate during the teenage years and we want to support you to support your child with this.
  2. encouraging a similar culture at home during personal study: mistakes are discussed, unpicked and learnt from.

4. Responding to varying success rates – February and March

Let’s imagine a class holds up their mini whiteboards in response to a multiple-choice question. 30% have said A; 20% have said B; 30% have said C and 20% have said D. What does the teacher do next?

What the teacher will do

This unit looks at strategies to sustain attention of all students, and use their answers to develop the learning of the whole class. As part of this, your teacher may ask your child:

  1. to support the learning of others
  2. to discuss how they came to their answer
  3. to re-evaluate their answer
  4. to share their thinking with a partner
  5. to learn from others’ answers

Your child’s experience:

Being able to contribute to the learning of others via the possible steps above will hopefully instil an appreciation of the process of learning – and that setbacks are the norm. They will hopefully feel a collaboration with their peers and a sense of a shared journey.

This can only happen when a strong culture of error has been created, and your child is confident to discuss their thinking and knowledge gaps. It’s important that we all work together to make your child feel safe to do this.

By the end of this year, your child should feel:

  1. that what they know and don’t know is valued by their teacher
  2. they are given a chance to share what they know to their teacher regularly
  3. confident to make and discuss mistakes
  4. their mistakes are valuable and help their teacher to help them
  5. their teacher knows how to help them when they misunderstand something
  6. they can support their peers by sharing what they do and don’t know

If you have any questions regarding our CPD and your child’s experiences in lessons, please email me, Miss Bird, at cbird@st-hildas.co.uk