In my short time as a teacher I have attended a number of different inset days with varying degrees of success. What starts out with good intentions can quite quickly be lost in endless powerpoint slides and hours of being talked at…

Being part of the Cabot Learning Federation has enabled inset days to become much more collaborative and interactive. With six secondary and four primary schools in the federation, it’s a truly unique opportunity for teachers from different schools to meet and discuss new ideas and produce tangible outcomes that can be put into action. One of my ‘pet hates’ with inset days in the past has been good ideas being generated but no time to implement them. With 5 network meetings in the calendar, this is certainly not the CLF way!

During the inset day staff from the different schools met up in their subject areas ready to work through an itinerary that had been collaboratively produced and agreed in a previous network meeting. This was not just for teaching staff, separate groups were created for members of SLT and support / admin staff – all with the shared vision of improvement.

I spent the day with my ICT / Computing colleagues working through the following agenda:

• auditing peoples strengths / areas for development.
• auditing what courses are offered in each school
• discussing new ofsted framework and creating a poster of key points
• practical examples of showing progress in a lesson.

The day was a great success with lots of valuable discussion with all members of the group contributing. The latter two points on the agenda ended up being the main focus of the day. We spent a big chunk of time discussing the new Ofsted framework, what an outstanding lesson looks like, ways to show progress as well as feedback from colleagues who had already been observed under the new framework. The unique nature of this day allowed teachers from six different secondary schools to voice ideas and opinions. We took this opportunity to try and create a poster relating to ‘key points of an outstanding lesson,’ draw upon as many different views as possible to promote constructive discussions. It proved to be a lot harder then first thought but has provided us with a working agenda for our next meeting in mid-November. Here’s one of our drafts…

The whole day was being tweeted by a number of staff from different subject areas across the federation. See the following hashtags for further information… #clflearning #clfict #clfmaths #clfenglish

Click here to see an analysis of the day on Twitter!

I always like to get out of the ‘bubble’ of my school from time to time and be on the outside looking in, see things from a different perspective and for the first time (possibly ever) I’m looking forward to the next one!!

#neverstoplearning

p.s. Please follow: @edubaker, @lessonhacker, @siaranML @bunks11 @vykishaw