Last Monday evening as Greenfield Community College emptied of students, staff gathered to share new and exciting practice in a teaching and learning market place.
The session was the culmination of an initiative launched last September when everyone signed up to one of 12 Staff Enquiry Groups with the aim of researching best practice, trialling it and then sharing the findings.
The market place produced a real buzz as staff visited other groups to hear about their research and to gather summary leaflets on a diverse range of topics including new technologies for schools, literacy across the curriculum, raising aspirations, most effective interventions and accelerating progress amongst others.
Some of the groups delivered presentations and taster sessions which included: 5 minute workshops on using Skype to support language learning, using padlet to stimulate ideas, developing a growth mindset, peer assessment, behaviour for learning, examples of spiritual, moral, social and cultural education and a taster SOLEs session.
Feedback from everyone was extremely positive with requests to continue next year. Chris Middleton, a recent addition to Greenfield’s Maths department said: “It is wonderful to work in a school with a real commitment to keeping up to date with the latest thinking in education. Having time allocated to research and sharing outcomes has given me the chance to reflect on my own practice and incorporate innovative ideas to enrich the experience of students in my classroom and beyond.”
Chris Stonehouse, Deputy Head Teacher at Greenfield, who launched the initiative said, “We have always shared good practice at Greenfield but this year, the dedicated time for enquiry and reflection in cross-curricular groups has brought a new energy and enthusiasm which has contributed to our collective understanding of how to provide a rich and aspirational educational experience for our students.”
