CPD and Training
With 18 years of experience in higher education, working with student teachers, I can provide schools with extremely high quality professional development and training sessions. My first love is primary and early years communication, language and literacy and all aspects of the primary English curriculum, but as a polymath with wide interests I can provide sessions which link this crucial element of learning and development with any subject to meet your school improvement priorities.
Short CPD and training sessions can be included in a day or half day of coaching and curriculum development work or can be delivered as a stand-alone.
In every case, a meeting with the appropriate subject leader to agree the specific focus and its place in your school improvement or staff development plan, and follow-up contact to support implementation and positive impact after the training session, is included in the fee.
The list below is just an indicative starting point of potential focuses - please use the contact / query form to share your requirements and start a conversation. If you're interested in developing something more complex than a one-off session please get in touch for a conversation.
Systematic Synthetic Phonics
Refresh the professional knowledge and understanding of your whole staff team, teachers, teaching assistants, reading volunteers, to give your chosen SSP scheme a confident pedagogical underpinning.
I can also provide an evening session for interested parents, carers and grandparents. I've very successfully done this for several years for an independent prep school's new reception parents.
Poetry
I can help colleagues to overcome the fear and distrust of poetry that I have so often encountered in student teachers.
Build a clear definition of poetry for your English curriculum and develop confidence in supporting children's reading and writing of it.
Defining, Developing and Assessing 'Quality' in Writing
Take your school's approach to writing well beyond the constraints of the statutory teacher assessment frameworks. Return to a consideration of audience and purpose across the full range of text types and genres as your assessment benchmark; reconsider the nature of the writing tasks you present to your children; map children's authentic writing experiences across the whole curriculum.
A Writing Community: Children and Teachers as Authors
Many schools have fully embraced the approaches suggested by the Open University / UKLA Reading for Pleasure projects, but writing can sometimes have some catching-up to do! Explore the UKLA-led research into Teachers as Writers and your own attitudes to writing as a process.
Plan next steps for your own classroom practice and your school's writing curriculum and improvement plan.
A 'Descriptive' Approach to Grammar
Improve the quality of children's (and teachers') writing by incorporating Professor Debra Myhill's 'Grammar as Choice' approach. Explore, discuss and consider how and where you can implement the principles and techniques of this research-informed and creative approach.
'... an effective pedagogy for writing should include explicit grammar teaching which draws attention to the linguistic choices and possibilities available to children and which has at its heart the creative shaping of text.' (University of Exeter, 2022)
Transcription: Handwriting and Keyboard Skills
The handwriting aspect of 'transcription' in the current national curriculum for England gets very little mention and because it contributes so little to an overall statutory assessment judgement of writing it tends not to get much attention. However, if children are consistently and carefully supported in developing 'helpful' and fluent letter formation during the early years and key stage 1, the physical and cognitive load of transcription is reduced, freeing-up mental capacity for the important work of composition.
Much of what we write as adults is transcribed using a keyboard of some sort; it is as important that we consider how we support children in developing fluent keyboard skills as it is that we support their developing handwriting.
Using Picture Books in Key Stage 2
Picture books can provide powerful starting points for discussion, thinking and learning for children in KS2. Carefully chosen texts can provide an opportunity to consider difficult themes from a 'safe' place.
They can enrich learning across the whole curriculum, helping new concepts, ideas and knowledge to 'stick' and building authentic connections between subjects and disciplines.
Spelling: Moving on from a Phonic Strategy
A systematic synthetic phonics approach which encourages and celebrates children's independent attempts at segmenting phonemes to encode spoken language is a crucial key to unlocking powerful agency and authentic 'voice' in children's writing, but how can we best support their transition to confident, accurate, conventional spelling without simply resorting to weekly spelling tests? Explore a range of approaches that will synchronise with your whole communication, language and literacy curriculum.
Non-fiction Reading, Multimodal Texts, and Critical Literacy
We are all constantly bombarded by non-fiction texts which aim to inform or, more often persuade us. Social media, TV programmes across seemingly endless channels, film, advertising and packaging, web-based material presented to us by search engines all use words and images to manipulate what we believe to be reliable and 'true'. Real-life, everyday literacy requires us all to be adept at reading, understanding, critically analysing and producing non-fiction texts. We have a responsibility to ensure that children experience a balanced communication, language and literacy curriculum that provides them with the tools to work successfully with these texts.
Developing Talk: Dialogic Teaching
A strong oracy curriculum which provides teachers with a sound understanding of the full range of talk 'repertoires' and the confidence to use talk-based teaching skills and strategies will have a significant impact on children's learning, development and linguistic capital.
Using Robin Alexander's dialogic teaching and materials developed by Voice 21, I can support your staff team in developing a consistent whole-school approach to oracy which will have an impact across the whole curriculum.
‘Oracy is the ability to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language. In school, oracy is a powerful tool for learning; by teaching students to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them.' (Voice 21, 2019)
Defining and Developing Cultural Capital in Your Curriculum
'As part of making the judgement about the quality of education, inspectors will consider the extent to which schools are equipping pupils with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. Our understanding of ‘knowledge and cultural capital’ is derived from the following wording in the national curriculum: It is the essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said and helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.' (Ofsted 2022: para 206)
The interpretation of this statement in the Ofsted School Inspection Handbook has presented schools with some challenges; definitions of cultural capital have proved difficult to pin down. Explore the origins of cultural capital as a concept and secure your school's definition and curriculum intent so that they can be shared effectively with staff, governors and your children's parents. Review your curriculum to ensure that implementation is woven through your existing curriculum plans.