A Rounded Approach to CPD: Temple Moor High School
Through the wonderful world of Twitter I’ve been in touch with Tait Coles, Assistant Head at Temple Moor High School in Leeds, following the school’s purchase of IRIS Connect. As ever, I was interested to discover their plans with IRIS and how they plan to use it as part of their CPD programme. The school has a great, rounded collective approach to professional development, which I thought was worth sharing.
Teaching and Learning Communities (TLCs)
Temple Moor has a number of differentiated and bespoke TLCs, giving all staff opportunity to develop their professional learning with a particular area of focus. The groups cover all areas of the teaching community, from the 5R Development TLC, in which the group will create resources and strategies to implement the 5Rs, independent learning and collaborative learning throughout the school; to the Developing Teacher Programme TLC, which is designed to develop and support teachers to plan and deliver continuingly good to outstanding lessons.
Ideas and discussions from TLCs are fed into Faculty CPD sessions as an opportunity to collaborate, share and contextualise ideas in subject specific settings. Learning from the TLCs are also shared at whole school twilight sessions and TeachMeet Briefings. All staff will be encouraged to use IRIS Connect as part of their TLCs, for example as evidence of Masters or for Action Research and use the system as an easy way to share and discuss practice.
TeachMeet Briefings
Temple Moor holds weekly TeachMeet Briefings. These short and informal forums allow staff to present a teaching and learning tip that has been successful in their lessons and/or exhibit a piece of student work. These are a fantastic way to encourage all teachers to share and celebrate the great learning that takes place at Temple Moor. All TeachMeet Briefings will be recorded and shared using IRIS Connect.
Training and Development Opportunities
Temple Moor are also going to be delivering the NCSL accredited Improving Teacher Programme and Outstanding Teacher Programme alongside follow IRIS school, East SILC John Jamieson School, who have recently been designated as a Teaching School. Part of the programme includes trainees delivering lessons and presenting to colleagues, self-reflection and sharing around this is something that Tait hopes IRIS Connect will support.
The school will also begin to work alongside Leeds Trinity University College as a Teaching and Learning Academy, providing staff with the opportunity to be supported and assessed in Action Research Projects. This really provides an encouragement and opportunity to continually develop teacher’s careers.
And...
As well as all of these fantastic programmes, groups and opportunities, Temple Moor has appointed three new members to the Learning Teem. These teachers will research, trial, record and share aspects of the schools Learning Vision (Assessment for Learning, Collaborative Learning and Deep Learning) using IRIS Connect. Just one example will be the Deep Learning Champion, who will focus on the use of Solo Taxonomy in his lessons and use IRIS Connect to capture and share this at TeachMeet Briefings, Faculty CPD sessions and SLT meetings.
There’s a lot going on! Together this range of professional learning opportunities will allow Temple Moor to really exploit the collective capacity of it’s staff, allowing them to share, develop and improve practice, leading to better outcomes for their students.