Session 3

Supporting colleagues

Session 3
in professional change
Objectives
Slide 34

Traditional forms of professional development

Slide 35

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Session 3

Slide 36

Slide 37

Slide 38

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Managing behaviour

Session 3
Blockers

Slide 39

Drivers

Slide 40

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Session 3

Issues in working with adults and working with children

With a partner discuss the following.

1. The differences between working with adults and children.

2. The similarities between working with adults and children.

Be prepared to give feedback.

Differences:

Notes:

Similarities:

Notes:

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Planning and reflecting on classroom observation

Session 3
Slide 42

Using handout 3.1 we will discuss the three stages of observation – pre-lesson planning;
in-lesson focus and post-lesson reflection.

Slide 43

Notes:

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Session 3

Key action points from session 3

•

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Handout 3.1

Using modelling to promote change

Pre-observation
Building rapport and trust
What interpersonal skills do I use to establish a positive working relationship
which will enable learning to take place?

Establishing realistic expectations

How can I enable this individual to be specific and realistic about what he/she
wants to achieve from this observation?
Is this the right place to be starting?
What are the ultimate goals?

SMART targets
Have I ensured that the target for this observation is defined specifically, is one
which will be clearly demonstrated in the lesson, and is realistic for this individual
at his/her stage of understanding and skill development?

Objective pointers
Have I given clear information about when, how and where the targeted behaviour
will be demonstrated?

During the lesson

Anything different?
Do I do anything different from my normal teaching style in order to ensure that
the demonstration is explicit? If so, how might this affect my teaching and the
children’s responses?

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 Handout 3.1 page 2 of 2

Post-observation
Your role
What kind of behaviour on my part will be most productive in enabling
the individual to reflect on the observation?

Scripts – what can you say?

How can I prepare to facilitate this session based on:

• what I have learned about this individual from previous observation;

• from their approach to the present observation;
• from what I may have learned about this individual’s beliefs and attitudes
regarding his/her own and children’s behaviour?

Drawing out what was seen and heard

What will be the best approach to encourage reflection? How can I use my
listening skills most effectively? What kinds of question will be most productive?

Analysis of effectiveness – modelling reflective practice

How can I model reflective practice during this session? Can I enable this
individual to give me feedback which is both supportive and appropriately
challenging?

Application to own practice

How can I give practical support in joint planning for transferring the target skills
and strategies into the individual’s own practice?

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 Session 4

Skills, strategies and techniques

Session 4
for promoting change
Objectives
Slide 44

Promoting change

Slide 45

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Session 4

Building on the positive

Slide 46

Slide 47

Slide 48

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 Session 4
Notes:

Slide 49

Support and challenge

Slide 50

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Session 4

Slide 51

Avenues of exploration

Slide 52

Slide 53

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 Session 4
Slide 54

Active listening skills

Slide 55

Slide 56

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Session 4

Slide 57

Slide 58

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Solution-focused approaches

Session 4
Solution-focused approaches offer a framework on which to build pre- and post-lesson meetings
with colleagues.

Slide 59

Slide 60

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Session 4

Slide 61

Slide 62

In this session we will focus on one technique in detail – the use of rating scales.

Slide 63

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 Session 4
Slide 64

Slide 65

Notes:

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Session 4

Key action points from session 4

•

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Handout 4.1

Active listening

Reflecting
Using some of the words the speaker has used in order to show that you
are giving good attention. This gives the message ‘I am listening, carry on’
and is likely to encourage the speaker to continue.
Non-verbal prompts
Nods, ‘mmms’, smiles which show you are attending and engaged.
Summarising and paraphrasing
Assures the speaker that you are listening. Gives the speaker the chance to hear
his/her own words. Allows you to check with the speaker that you have heard
correctly and have caught the emotion as well as the factual content.
Using questions
Questions are not always helpful to the individual. Over-use of questions can feel
like an interrogation, especially when the questions are ‘closed’, i.e. they invite
‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses, or are simply probing for detail which is not necessary
to understand the issue.
Open questions
Open questions are the more helpful, exploratory questions – they invite a person
to expand. For example, ‘How do you feel about that?’ is more useful than the
leading question ‘Do you feel happy/angry about that?’, and ‘What do you
think you might want to do next?’ is better than ‘Are you going to talk to the
headteacher about that?’

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Handout 4.2

Personal action planner

Spend a few minutes now thinking about the following points. It might help to talk
to a partner in order to clarify some of your thoughts.
What do I need to do to follow up the points covered today?

Who do I need to talk to? By when?

■ For permission

■ For support/collaboration

■ For direction

■ For further skills development

What is my order of priority? By when?

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The role of the leading teacher

The role of the leading teacher

Teacher development in classroom management
The way in which teachers manage children’s behaviour is often very personal and particular
to their value systems and formative experiences. It is often shaped by the models presented
by the very first teachers observed on teaching practice at the start of a teaching career. It is
also quite resistant to change.

Teacher development in this area, therefore, needs to have several components and to go well
beyond conventional cascade ‘training’. The components include:

• training, in the conventional sense, to include both skill development and experiences that
can change attitudes and shape values and beliefs;

• opportunities to observe excellent practice;

• opportunities for on-the-job coaching.

Observing good practice

There need to be opportunities – for teachers in initial training, teachers in the early years of their
career and teachers who are experiencing difficulties or working in particularly challenging areas –
to observe and discuss the practice of leading teachers who are able to model exceptionally
good practice.

The leading teacher model was developed by the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies
and has proved a highly effective way of developing skills and building local capacity. It provides
a model that is locally embedded and sustainable, rather than depending on national initiatives
or centrally driven training.

The scheme involves the LEA identifying teachers with exceptional classroom practice, and
creating systems which allow teachers from other schools to visit them and observe lessons.
The observations are carefully planned and managed. The LEA might, for example, ask its leading
teachers to concentrate on demonstrating a particular skill such as questioning or a structure such
as the plenary, where local practice is known to be weak and in need of development. The LEA will
also influence who visits and observes the leading teacher: LEA staff may suggest that staff from
schools where they are providing intensive support make visits to teachers who can demonstrate
the particular skills relevant to identified CPD needs in these schools; they are able to act as
a broker, putting teachers in touch with each other for particular purposes. The LEA will usually
meet with its leading teachers regularly to discuss the key contributions they will be making
to overall plans for CPD.

The key to the role of the leading teacher is that it is managed, targeted, part of an overall local
CPD strategy, and supported by established frameworks for classroom observation. These will
usually include contact between the leading teacher and the visiting teacher ahead of time,
to clarify the purpose of the visit, a pre-lesson meeting just before the lesson in which the leading

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The role of the leading teacher

teacher sets the context and highlights elements for observers to look out for or questions to ask
themselves, and a post-lesson meeting when leading teacher and observers reflect on the lesson,
and the leading teacher draws out the learning for the observers.

Finally, plans are made for ways in which the observer will use the learning back in school; ideally,
the leading teacher will be able to make a return visit in order to follow up these plans. Leading
teachers receive training for their role and in most LEAs standard forms are used for planning,
recording and following up the learning arising from lesson observations.

HMI findings
Where the leading teacher initiative has been most effective HMI have identified that:

• teachers were briefed carefully in advance;

• there was a clear purpose to the teachers’ observation; time was set aside for the teachers
to disseminate to their colleagues what they had learned;

• headteachers planned for teachers to observe across Key Stages 1 and 2 to obtain most
benefit for their school.

Managing leading teachers

Leading (behaviour) teachers are part of a wider local network of leading teachers, offering
observation opportunities in the teaching of literacy and mathematics, for example, or of inclusive
teaching strategies for children who experience barriers to their learning.

This guidance on LEA management covers all these different leading teacher roles.

The LEA is responsible for ensuring that:

• arrangements for ‘appointing’ leading teachers are clear: for example, whether there are open
invitations for headteachers to nominate a member of their staff, or whether particular
teachers are approached;

• adequate numbers of leading teachers are identified;

• between them, the leading teachers teach classes covering the range from Reception
to Year 6;

• the leading teachers have the requisite teaching skills.

While the main role of leading teachers is likely to be teaching demonstration lessons, they may
also, on request from the LEA:

• support teachers with their planning;

• organise training programmes;

• prepare teachers’ materials to support local initiatives;

• visit other schools to offer support and teach demonstration lessons.

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The LEA will be responsible for scheduling the activities of leading teachers. Where they can,

The role of the leading teacher

LEA managers should delegate this scheduling responsibility to heads and to the leading teachers
themselves in the following ways. They might:

• inform headteachers as early as possible about the procedures for identifying and, later,
contacting leading teachers;

• ensure that leading teachers are designated to cover geographic areas;

• encourage the development of local school networks;

• advise headteachers of the names and locations of leading teachers within their network
so that the heads can schedule demonstration lessons between themselves without recourse
to the LEA;

• ensure that there is some phasing, and that schools know when they might arrange to send
their teachers to observe demonstration lessons in the leading teachers’ schools;

• provide a directory of leading teachers within the LEA so that headteachers can look outside
their network if insufficient leading teachers are available locally;

• ensure that the headteacher of each leading teacher’s school has agreed the weeks and days
in which other teachers may visit, and publish these weeks and days in the directory;

• design a simple form for booking and confirming a visit.

Planning demonstration lessons

If you are new to the role of a leading teacher you will need to find out all sorts of information
to help you do the job. Here are some questions you might find useful to ask your headteacher
or other colleagues. The list is by no means exhaustive and you probably know the answers
to many of the questions already.

What you need to know

• The name of anybody the LEA may have appointed as the link person for leading teachers.

• The name of the LEA manager who has lead responsibility for the work of leading teachers
in relation to behaviour.

• Details of any LEA network meetings for leading teachers.

• Details of the number of teachers whose schools have made requests to observe you teach.

• Any specific requests the teachers may have made, for example, to observe how you keep
all children engaged in whole-class teaching, or the way you establish clear routines and
systems that help children know what is expected of them.

What you and your headteacher need to agree

• How many demonstration lessons you might give over the year.

• When you might give demonstration lessons.

• How many teachers might observe your lesson.

• At what time of day you will be giving your demonstration lessons.

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The role of the leading teacher

• When you will talk to the teachers before the observation.

• When and where you will meet to talk to the teachers at the end of your lesson.

What decisions you may need to make

• What will the focus for your lesson be?

• How far will you be able to adapt your lesson to meet the requests of teachers who come
along to observe?

• What will you talk to the teachers about before they observe your lesson? For example:
– the social, emotional and behavioural skills you are planning to develop through
your teaching;
– the way you have planned the lesson;
– how you help children know how to work independently or in groups;
– how you pre-empt and defuse conflict;
– the way you have developed your partnership with teaching or support assistants;
– any aspects of the lesson that the teachers observing you would like to focus on.

• Are there any materials that you need to make copies of?
– brief lesson notes;
– brief notes on any classroom rules, routines or consequences you have agreed
with the children.

Before the lesson begins

• Brief your teaching assistant and any other additional adults who may be involved
in the lesson.

• Check that visitors know where to come and at what time they are expected.

• Plan your briefing for the visiting teachers.

• Prepare the children by explaining that there will be visitors who have come to see
the way the class work together; explain how you expect them to behave and respond
to the teachers.

• Prepare the seating arrangements, ensuring that your visitors and all the children can
see clearly.

Talking to visitors before the lesson

• Tell them what you have said to the children about their visit.

• Indicate where they are to sit.

• Explain that you will introduce them at the start of the lesson.

• Remind everybody that they are observing your teaching and so should not get involved
in working with children.

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Talking to visitors after the lesson

The role of the leading teacher

• Set a time limit and stick to it.

• Maintain control of the debriefing: you should chair it. Suggest that visitors take notes.

• Keep it short, positive and focused upon teaching.

• Make a brief comment on the lesson yourself and then take a comment or question from
each person.

• Keep the conversation flowing, ensuring that the key teaching points are drawn out for each
part of the lesson.

• Don’t get side-tracked by negative views. Bring in other visitors by asking them if that is how
they saw it or what they thought.

• Encourage the teachers to identify any aspects of the lesson that they might introduce into
their own practice.

• Five minutes from the end, tell your visitors it is time to sum up. Take one summary comment
from each visitor in turn about one aspect that they think they could start to implement in
their own teaching.

Lesson notes for visiting teachers

Lesson notes are usually personal and don’t have to be in a standard format. But notes for
a demonstration lesson are for someone else and may need to be more comprehensive. However,
if your lesson notes are too long they may not be read! Aim to give just enough detail in your
lesson plan for visitors to place the lesson in context. Set out the lesson’s learning intentions and
how you intend to achieve them.

If you have one, give colleagues a weekly outline as well. Your plan may already be in a combined
weekly and daily format because some schools adopt this approach.

Using teaching assistants

If you are supported by a teaching assistant during a demonstration lesson, you will need to brief
the assistant about the arrangements for the visitors. You will also need to explain the assistant’s
role to the visitors.

You might want visiting teachers to focus on the ways in which you and the assistant have
developed and maintain an effective partnership, for example, the assistant’s role in helping to plan
and review lessons. Point out to visiting teachers too the ways in which staff who are supporting
you know not only what children are to do but also what they are to learn – in their social,
emotional and behavioural learning as well as in the subject you are teaching.

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The role of the leading teacher

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