Our Inset Day on 21st November 2008 focused on the quality of Teaching & Learning and how to raise lessons from Good to Outstanding.

The whole staff session at the start of the day gave everyone the opportunity to look at the criteria for judging outstanding, good, satisfactory and inadequate lessons. Everyone was issued with a laminated Aide Memoire that they then used to judge the quality of a Year 10 Citizenship lesson that was shown on a DVD. Interestingly enough discussions after the video were really diverse with some staff judging the lesson to be outstanding, others to be good and even one group thought it was inadequate!

The main message for staff to take away from this session was that for a lesson to be outstanding there needs to be clear evidence of all groups of learners making exceptional progress – for all pupils to be able to do something at the end of the lesson that they could not do at the start. The emphasis on new learning was also emphasised.

The next part of the day involved staff becoming pupils and for them to sample three lessons being delivered by staff we consider to be good/outstanding practitioners. The “teachers” had been asked to deliver a 25 minute activity that they would normally teach as part of their schemes of work. We had a Year 8 Geography lesson, a Year ………………………….

The “teachers” were asked to include examples of AfL and transferable tools that other colleagues could use in their own faculty areas at a later date. We saw opinion lines, eight way thinking tools, Bloom’s Taxonomy, De Bono’s Hats to mention just a few.

At the end of each short lesson a discussion followed amongst the class of “pupils” about what they had seen and how they could adapt or use some of the ideas on show.

Harper’s Bazaar was a really innovative display of tools for teachers pulled together from different faculty areas by Jo Harper, our Head of Geography. All faculties were invited to look at the materials on display and to use their allocated budgets (given to them on the day in the form of a cheque book) to order sets of tools for use in their own faculty areas.

The evaluation of the day was hugely positive. Almost all staff commented that they had really benefitted from seeing other staff teach and to see lessons in action. It was hugely useful to feel what it is like for a pupil to go from lesson to lesson within a short time span and to have to switch from one subject area to another without much thinking time!

My thanks go to Jo Harper, Dave Hanks, Sheila Claxton and Peter Morris for the time they gave up in planning the day with me and to the fourteen staff who kindly agreed to act as “teachers” for the day.

For our Inset day in June we have decided to disaggregate the day and we have invited staff to observe four colleagues (in their own time), two in their own subject area and two across the wider school. We believe that watching other people teach is one of the best forms of individual training. Following the observation the observer will meet with the teacher to discuss the lesson and to highlight their own development points as a result of what they have seen.

Materials from the day can be downloaded here: