Supporting our students to think more and think and work harder is a common goal for all educators. Through fostering a culture of high expectations, hard work and no opt out, we can support our young learners in building their academic skills from Early Years to Sixth Form and beyond.

This course covers the research behind, and strategies for, getting each and every one of our students thinking harder and working harder than ever before. Cognitive science forms the bedrock of this session, where you will look at how memory works, the complex differences between long-term and short-term memory, and leave each session with easy-to-implement takeaway strategies to use with your own classes. Independence and resilience are also key in these sessions, and you will look at the most effective ways to upskill your students, giving them resilience to face the pressures of the modern-day world of education.

Find all pre-reading and slides from the sessions here: Resources

Ensuring that every student in our class is able to succeed and make progress is the core aim of everyone who works with our students. The aim of inclusive quality first education is to make sure that lesson time is used effectively and efficiently, with misconceptions planned for in the curriculum planning stage, and that every lesson enables each student to aim towards their full potential, lesson in, lesson out, day in, day out.

This course covers the research into strategies to support all our students, including a focus on SEND students, whilst also looking at how to ensure your most able students are equally challenged. You will explore questioning techniques, how to use oracy skills to give all students a voice, and look at ways to embed lesson-based intervention into your teaching.

Find all pre-reading and slides from the sessions here: Resources

Efficient, timely and effective feedback is essential in ensuring our students make rapid progress in their learning and for us to know where our teaching needs to go next. Quality feedback ensures quality adaptation of curriculum content.

From effective written and verbal feedback to assessment for learning, this course covers all aspects of feedback in the classroom. Rooted in research, you will look at different types and ways of feedback and the impact these have on student progress. These sessions will have a focus on techniques and strategies that you can quickly and easily apply to your own classroom setting, ensuring that feedback and adaptive teaching is at the heart of what we do.

Find all pre-reading and slides from the sessions here: Resources

The course leaders are all senior leaders in their academies with experience of primary, secondary and all through schools. 

The course will cover key leadership topics across the four sessions. You will explore different leadership styles, having difficult conversations and holding people to account, building an effective team, dealing with challenging behaviour and team motivation. Each topic will be introduced as a cross-phase model, and enable you to apply this knowledge to your own setting.

The topics will support aspiring, newly appointed or experienced middle leaders to develop the skills, knowledge and behaviours that they need to be a high-performing middle/phase and/or curriculum leader in their schools. Leaders will develop confidence in their leadership style, reflect upon the key aspects of their role and further develop their understanding of planning for and leading change. 

Find all pre-reading and slides from the sessions here: Resources