CPD Day Recap – 19 November, 2018

At our CPD Day on Monday, there was a range of things on offer. We started the day with a “First 90 Days” presentation from Tom Vignoles, our new Principal, who shared with us his experiences to date. We were able to understand the different facets of his role and how supportive ESF Head Office have been in ensuring a great start to the school year.

The next session was to update staff on some child protection procedures that have recently been introduced and to ensure they are able to support students’ welfare. Following this, we looked at some standardised CEM data that is now available on our new Year 7 students, ensure there is full understanding of the data to again be able to support individuals in their learning experiences. Lastly we were introduced to the updated iSAMS interface for teachers that has just been launched, which is already being used by everyone.

After 10:30am, the time was allocated to departments where they had their own agenda.

Below is just a flavour of what has been happening:

• The Global Perspectives Department worked on new units of work, including ‘Global Issues in Literature”.
• The Languages Department’s main focus was ‘good practice in marking’, ‘formative feedback’ and ‘target-setting’.
• Spanish and French teachers also made some comparisons of the Cambridge & Edexcel IGCSEs requirements, analysing the future suitability of these courses for our context.
• In our Chinese Department, it was an opportunity to share learning from a recently attended external professional development opportunity.
• All Years 12 and 13 Theory of Knowledge teachers were able to spend an hour on some collaborative planning.
• The English department split into 2 groups to work on action plans for the development of 2 specific areas: Creating Thinking Cultures in the classroom and differentiation.
• Mathematics used part of the day for IA moderation and sharing information learnt from the ‘Science of Learning’ workshop that the Head of Department recently attended.
• The EAL department worked on Year 9 MYP unit planning, and student support timetables for the Year 7 Intensive English Programme.
• Individuals in Society also shared some learning from a recent workshop on ‘Visible Thinking Routines’ & ‘Science of Learning’ as well as some department development planning and unit planning.

Other departments also used the time for Year 7 to 9 MYP development and review of Units of Work.

As you can see from the above it was a very busy but constructive day.

Annette Chapman
Vice Principal  (SIS CPD coordinator)