Clevedon School

Making data meaningful: Pen Portraits

2013-10-13T19:39:53+01:00October 13th, 2013|leadership|

Most of what makes classrooms work is invisible. The activities that teachers and students enact are, by and large, irrelevant. I'm aware that this runs the risk of sounding like preposterous nonsense, but I think it's true. The here and now of lessons and classrooms is dependent on the routines and relationships that have been forged over time. If you're clear about what is and is not acceptable behaviour, firm and fair in applying consequences and provide meaningful feedback on how pupils' can improve it almost doesn't matter what you do in a lesson. And vice versa: if you neglect these things, no [...]

Live Lesson Obs: Making lesson observations formative

2013-07-19T09:22:37+01:00February 3rd, 2013|Featured, leadership, learning|

You can push and prod people into something better than mediocrity, but you have to encourage excellence. David Lammy We've all experienced the dread and agony of formal lesson observations, haven't we? We've sweated blood over our preparations, filled in inch thick lesson plans and obsessed over meaningless details in our presentations. Or is that just me? A while back now I read something (I forget exactly what) by Phil Beadle which went along the lines of "Be brilliant and they'll forgive you anything." This nugget has rattled around in my stony heart ever since with the result that I've started [...]

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