Minimising distractions in our classrooms
I am privileged in my current role, as teaching and learning lead, to visit many lessons, across all subjects each week. We have an open-door, non-judgemental culture that has allowed the focus to be on the development of teaching, rather than the historical lesson observation culture. That process led to some teachers wheeling out the 'Ofsted' lesson when needed, rather than focusing on the diet that students get from classrooms on a daily basis. Luckily, we, as a school, are a long way down the journey of moving away from this historical culture, moving away from judging whether learning has taken place, and moving towards our vision of 'using research-informed practice to support students to learn most effectively over time'. This change of culture has moved us away from seeing students doing, to seeing students learning over time. A tweet I posted on Friday evening on the learning conditions that I see in classrooms where students are working hard saw many replies...