Beyond Good

Prompted by Pritesh's tweet regarding the number of observations completed and feedback given in the autumn term, Femi and Matt discuss attitudes and culture around drop-ins.

Femi and Matt wrestle with the concept of students who refuse instructions and what schools can do about it.

Femi and Matt's discussion is prompted by an article of the same name:
https://thinkingflexibly.com/2024/10/18/the-lost-art-of-planning/

They discuss the pros and cons of planning lessons, designing lesson sequences and preparing resources from scratch vs having off-the-shelf schemes of work, resources and teaching powerpoints.

Matt and Femi discuss explicit teaching (direct instruction), questioning, AfL and much more!

Matt and Femi talk to Katharine Birbalsingh, founding member and head teacher of the Michaela Community School in Wembley Park.

Following on from their video analysis of his lesson, Matt and Femi talk to Barry Smith about some of his principles for classroom teaching.  Starting from a lense of MFL teaching, we extract the general pedagogical principles that Barry believes lead to exceptional outcomes in the classroom.

Matt and Femi chat to metacognition enthusiast Nathan Burns about metacognition, knowledge, knowledge organisers and much much more.

Check out Nathan's resources on his website:
https://www.mrmetacognition.com/

Femi and Matt discuss the enactment gap - teasing apart what it is exactly, diagnosing solutions to the problem and then get into the pragmatism of supporting teachers to improve elements of their practice - trying to figure out when and how to intervene if a colleague is struggling with students during unstructured time.

Femi tells Matt about his recent visit to another high performing school - this time Q3 Academy Langley in the West Midlands.
This brings up the topics of participation and thinking ratio - leading to a spirited discussion about 'pair talk', 'everybody writes' and other approaches to increasing thinking and participation.

Femi talks to Matt about how he is now thinking about PD - from individual all the way to whole-school.