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This session explores settling into a new school and role as the Head of Department. It examines the review and reflection on current provision, the changes made, and the reasons behind strategic decision making. It also discusses the process of leading a team collaboratively.
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This session will: Explore settling into a new school and role as Head of Department. Examine how I’ve been reviewing and reflecting on current provision and making changes. Also, I’ll explain what we’ve done to refine what was in place. I’ll offer the reasons behind changes and strategic decision making. Finally, I’ll discuss leading a team. Although I’ve led the team the work has been done collaboratively.
SWOT ANALYSIS • Before September, I asked every member of the team to complete a SWOT analysis (including the outgoing HOD – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) document for me. • The results were broken down into – Strengths and Priorities based entirely on what the Team had responded with. Why did I do this? I wanted to know what the team valued, what they would keep, change, develop and adapt as they were best placed to inform this. I also wanted to know before starting what my main priorities would be.
Summary of results In our first meeting in September I presented a document (see attachment) outlining what I wanted to focus on and how I imagined we could do this. I wanted it to be a 'done with' not 'done to' discussion and hopefully achieved this.
Day one - September Meeting Key Priorities. These were decided as a result of: Discussion & reflections on SWOT Results analysis Teaching and learning priorities for the year decided by the team and the reflections on results Priorities discussed with outgoing HOD & 2nd in Department • Home Learning • Y11 - writing (P2 input). With spacing 2018 (new strengthened format) hopefully this will increase Y7 – 9s writing ability and accuracy and this will filter through in time. • Comparison structure • Vocabulary focus: using Bedrock more effectively • Cultural Capital increase • Inferences and helping students infer more easily • Consistency of use of knowledge organisers in Y10 (initially)
Home Learning I explained to the team that I wanted to introduce a new home learning programme: • The document in the next slide shows the rationale and the planning that went into thinking about this – The WHY? • We shared the slides attached in your pack with the students • We sent the letter home to the parents • Every teacher in the department collaborated and took a year group between them to focus on the setting and creation of home learning • We use Google Classrooms to set the home learning and check it off when handed in • We have two teachers currently reviewing and quality assuring what was put in place at the moment (during the mythical gained time) – they are checking for support and challenge and rigour in the tasks and ensuring all the tasks are fit for purpose, which is important as at times we were all stretched and home learning tasks were an extra process to think about.
Home Learning Has it worked? Yes. • We have between 93% and 95% of the whole school completing their home learning on time each term and I have used the detention spreadsheet to track this. • On average we have rewarded 30% of the whole school for their excellent home learning (this is home learning that we consider to have taken the student considerable effort and is given to students equitably based on what we know looks like great effort for that student). • Students are consistently reading and writing independently from Year 7 to Year 11 and the work is challenging, relevant and offers them increased opportunities to consolidate their understanding. • Students enjoy being praised for their effort and expect to have to do the home learning or attend a detention to catch up with it. • Students are being exposed to a vast amount of cultural capital through completing these home learnings and this was one of our key priorities from the SWOT. • The implementation of home learning is complete – so the majority of the work is done.
Home Learning • I’m going to show a clip of the amount of extra independent work that this amounts to, which in a context where students have not previously done home learning effectively, is pretty impressive. Clip of the books: • Home Learning Link
Home Learning Pitfalls that we still have to iron out: • Some students don’t do the home learning • Some students who don’t do the home learning are hard to reach in lessons • Some parents are also struggling to get their children to work at home • Extra workload for a year in setting up the home learning (although completed now) • Forgetfulness of teachers in setting it (myself included) and/or forgetting to take it in or check it (routine is key here I find) • Teachers like to mark it (even though there is no explicit need to) meaning it does increase marking workload – this has to be addressed (next team meeting will be solutions focused on this) How will we address these? Encourage live marking/checking & rewarding in lessons, continue with routines for home learning setting, reminders set, parental contact and engagement at Departmental level, continue with rewards and consequences.
Writing Focus • Y11 - writing (P2 input). With spacing 2018 (new strengthened format) hopefully this will increase Y7 – 9s writing ability and accuracy and this will filter through in time. • We have adopted a slow writing structure for Y11 viewpoint writing, which has hopefully contributed to students being more confident with their writing @megan_dunsby and @katie_Sutherland worked on this as an idea from PiXL resources. • A colleague (not on Twitter) Elisa Amesbury also developed the use of 'reason, result and response' in the department for Paper 2 and this has been successful in getting students to develop their thought processes. • We increased teacher input for the @Xris32 200 word style challenges that we were doing the year before as spacing writing tasks and cover these over two lessons with teacher input and then writing. This has been successful in increasing the quality of the student responses and their understanding of different types of writing. Next steps: This year we will embed the writing challenges as closely related to the main unit topics instead of stand alone writing tasks and see if this again increases the usefulness of these. It is always a work in progress and we’ll also use lessons from the team (who are examiners) to refine and reflect again in September.
Comparison Structure • We haven’t done anything explicitly with this priority as a team, other than discussing strategies and using them in class with Years 9, 10 and 11 in relation to poetry. Next Steps: We have restructured the Year 9 curriculum which means there will be a more explicit focus on comparisons (but not through GCSE work) KS3 is built progressively. This is still a work in process as Year 11 found this skill really challenging, as did Year 10 in the Anthology comparison essay. Use the results analysis to analyse the effectiveness of the teaching. Collaborate more on one common approach to teach comparison skills.
Vocabulary focus: using Bedrock more effectively • We have tried as a Team to make Bedrock work, but for several reasons this has not succeeded. System issues, poor student buy in and cost implications mean that we have decided to explore ‘in-house’ solutions for explicit vocabulary learning. Next Steps: Map vocabulary termly on 4 levels: subject terminology, vocabulary using spelling rules to embed a multi-disciplinary approach to vocabulary, synonyms for emotions and etymology. Vocabulary tracked from: curriculum overview documents, Knowledge Organisers, whole school vocabulary work, spelling focused work, emotion synonyms and etymology. Students learn via fortnightly memrise quizzes. Teachers assess via MCQ fortnightly in the library lesson and embed in teaching sequences and retrieval practice.
Vocabulary Focus for 2019-2020 The Overview of Vocabulary – (1) The mapping & setting of Home learning (2) the quizzing at home via memrise (free & easy to set up) 3) the testing through MCQs in Google Forms (4) review at end of 2020
Cultural Capital increase • Home learning has helped • Embedded in lessons looking at issues and exploring articles/clips etc • This picture is a display completed by @katiesuther to give students information about free culture that the city offers in the holidays
Inferences and helping students infer more easily What did we do? • Discussed how to do this regularly • Explained to each other what we were doing and how it was having an impact • Increased the importance of modelling • Modelled modelling within the department (through drop ins etc) • Shared good examples and good practice constantly throughout the year Did it work? Yes – but results with Y11 and Y10 this year will help to qualify this Next Steps: • Continue to discuss, develop and adapt
Consistent use of Knowledge Organisers What did we do? • Created Y10 consistency • Created a booklet for Y10 and shared in lessons, online, via e-mail, and a copy in tutor time • Created them for Y11 and did the same as above • Used them regularly in class, at home and in tutor time Did it work? Yes – students found them useful and cited them in a revision survey as helpful Next Steps: • Continue to use these in lessons • Creation and embedding of the KS3 knowledge organisers (which are shorter and have no textual knowledge included) • Make sure students have a range of strategies to use these as revision tools
I wrote about this here: https://susansenglish.wordpress.com/2019/06/22/why-i-love-refining-the-use-of-knowledge-organisers-in-english
Ofsted • During term 1 – we got the call. • The outcome was Good, however we urgently needed to look at basic literacy skills. What did we do? • Whole school focus on the basics • Every department looked at their functional literacy and started to develop a strategy for teaching ‘disciplinary literacy’ • As a team we created a SPAG focused booklet for KS3 which covers the following: common subject misspellings and grammatical errors; learn, understand and apply tasks; find and fix exercises that increase in cognitive difficulty • This was embedded from term 4 • It is still a work in progress as issues have arisen: cost of printing; embedding seamlessly is difficult unless done consistently; getting used to using these etc.
Ofsted focused SPAG Next steps: • Staff feedback (already in) • Student feedback (to do) • Reflect • Refine the process: reduce the booklet to rules, list of spellings, task explanation & find & fix exercises • Relaunch with all classes and teachers in key stage three • Revise at end of 2020
English Lecture Programme • I wanted to transfer the English ‘Aiming higher lectures’ we’d put in place in my previous school to my current school • However, I wanted to encourage everyone in the department to lead, research and deliver one • What did we do? • Discussed it in a team meeting • Created a schedule of potential texts • Signed up for the session that appealed to us • Created a blurb (see next page) • Advertised with the students and parents • I went first and invited the team to pop in and observe • Next Steps: • Deliver a programme of lectures again next year
Leading a Team In the opening SWOT activity I identified (as seen below) that I was a threat/weakness and I planned to mitigate this through: • Building trust • Allowing teachers autonomy • Accountability measures • Being honest/vulnerable • Listening • Transparency Next steps: Continue to lead, manage & adapt as situations and challenges arise
What next? • Year 9 overhaul under way. In order to embed more diversity into the curriculum. • Retrospective curriculum mapping and tweaking over the year to aid inter-leaving and metacognition. This is being embedded into the curriculum from Y7 onwards and will be ‘a living document’ • Encouraging independence in the students – getting the balance between supporting them and offering more opportunities for desirable difficulties
My advice for a new HoD • Trust – don’t micro-manage • Give time • Support, mentor and coach • Understand your own values, be true to them, • Be transparent • Don’t shy away from saying what needs to happen/be said • Enjoy it • Be yourself • Be flexible • Be proactive not reactive • Don’t be ‘gung-ho’ in changing things (unless there is a clear need for change) • Consider crunch points in the year • Be reflective and adaptive • Observe, listen and learn • Collaborate – this is a huge strength of the team I joined • Step back when you need to
