Vision 2 Provision

Julie Fisher took the keynote session for the launch event of our EYFS Leadership Development course. The session asked some challenging questions of the Headteachers and EYFS leaders who were participating and offered them a chance to reflect on what aspects of their provision need to be improved over the year ahead:

• how would you articulate your vision for the education of EYFS children in your school?
• how confident are all staff who work in the setting at articulating the vision?
• how is the vision bought to life in everyday practice and provision?
• what is your understanding of how young children learn?
• does your setting allow for these preferences and approaches to flourish?
• are all of your staff confident with the 'Characteristics of Effective Learning'?
• what balance is there between adult led, child led and adult initiated learning in your setting?
• how effectively is the outdoor environment used to strengthen and enrich provision?
• is your timetable allowing for optimum learning

There are five more sessions to follow this, where EYFS leads will reflect on the key questions and strengthen/shape their vision for provision.

If you are a Havering EYFS Lead and would like to join, just look for the sessions on the Havering CPD Portal. The next date is the 4th December (half day- repeated in the afternoon) at Mead Primary.

EYFS Leadership Development Launch

We were delighted to see so many Headteachers attending with their EYFS leads at the start of our newly visioned EYFS Leaders Network meetings.

This year we started with a full day session so that we could:

• share data from National, London and local sources to provide insight into current EYFS performance in Havering
• identify an improvement focus for the Borough this year - increasing the number of pupils reaching the Exceeding goal in CLL
• Launching the 'Vision to Provision' part of the course where leaders reflect on their setting and its improvement priorities for this year

The initial feedback from the launch event has been extremely positive:

The colleagues we heard from were really inspirational and all of the messages/advice was really useful

Excellent day and Julie Fisher was so inspiring!

An intense, but enjoyable, and reflective day

The next session is on December 4th. We look forward to welcoming EYFS Leaders to Mead Primary for a half day session 9am-12pm or 1pm-4pm.

Early Years Leadership Course

We were delighted to announce that Julie Fisher would be part of our revamped Early Years Network CPD this year. The six sessions started with a full day Conference on the 19th October. However if you weren't able to make it, then please make sure you sign up for the remaining five sessions as you will be very welcome.

Dates and details for the full programme can be found by clicking on this link:

If you wish to book a place on this course - which is free for Havering Schools - click here to be directed to the Havering CPD Portal.

Peer Review - Launch Day Training

Our Havering Primary Teaching School Alliance (HPTSA) was proud to be part of the first wave of schools in Havering to launch the Educational Development Trust Peer Review model. We believe that our schools should be committed to establishing a continuous cycle of improvement, that is led by the school for the school.

Eight schools have signed up to be part of this first cohort, and we expect many others to follow across the remainder of the year: Hacton, Branfil, James Oglethorpe, Mead, Broadford, Hilldene, Engayne Primary and Upminster Junior & Infants.

Participants explored the principles that would underpin this approach and the mechanisms that would be required to get it off the ground. All the reviews for the academic year were booked in and we will be underway by the end of November.

Keep tuned for further updates.

Google Summit Training

Our Teaching School has a number of SLEs that can help schools with their use of ICT to support collaboration and communication. As part of our development of this capacity we attended the Google Back to School Summit in October.

There were lots of handy hints and tips:

• Using Google Forms to help communicate requests for support. These could be tweaked to: request School 2 School help, get the site manager to look at an aspect of the school site, send a request to an ICT technician.
• Hear about the power of 10x thinking and reflect on what this might mean in our schools
• Challenge children with the Smarty Pins hack of Google Maps: https://smartypins.withgoogle.com/

We can't wait to share these ideas with our own staff and other colleagues. Our SLEs will be using some of this content at the upcoming Havering ICT Conference, and the next ICT subject leaders meeting.

Six Steps to Effective Feedback

Have you ever wanted a simple framework to help with colleague discussions or performance reviews? Have a look at this article from the Harvard Business Review...

Click here for article

Teach Like A Champion: Sentence Expansion

All teachers would appreciate that effective writing doesn't come from just having kids ‘write a lot’. Success comes from having pupils learn to create the basic forms of writing, especially the sentence, in a methodical progression that shows them how and has them complete exercises repeatedly until they are able to apply them confidently.

Doug Lemov has a great article on his blog that uses some of the simplest conjunctions to help create reflective and extended sentences...

http://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/hochmans-sentence-expansion-activity/

Dylan Williams - Growth Mindset

“I have often said, what is interesting is not what works in education, but under what circumstances does it work,” says Dylan Wiliam, emeritus professor of educational assessment at UCL Institute of Education.

This comment came amid a broad-ranging discussion on what impact educational research should have on an individual teacher’s classroom. See the link below to listen to more from the Tes Podagogy podcast series.
Click here to listen to the full podcast

5 Steps To A High Performing Team

Susan Ritchie has some simple but effective tips for helping to develop your team.

Click here to read the full article

OLP Leadership Development

We are delighted to announce that the deadline has been extended for the recent courses.

To allow for an increase in demand, we decided to extend the registration deadline for NPQML and NPQSL courses starting this autumn.

We will be accepting applications until Friday, 13th October.

Please share the registration links below to ensure your colleagues access outstanding leadership training starting in their locality this autumn.

National Professional Qualification for Middle Leadership (NPQML)

National Professional Qualification for Senior Leadership (NPQSL)

For general information on these courses, please visit our website.