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You needn’t walk alone

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Liverpool FC

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Working together

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The teaching ‘profession’

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The teaching ‘profession’

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Going it alone

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An early goodbye

• Ofsted chief: two-fifths of teachers quitting within five years is 'scandal'

• Sir Michael Wilshaw says many new recruits leave profession because of poor training and not enough support

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Quotes on teamwork

“Remember teamwork

begins by building trust

and the only way to do that

is overcome our need for

invulnerability.”

Patrick Lencioni

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Quotes on teamwork

• “Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.”

• Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

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But who said it?

• “Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.”

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A Team-Player?

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A question

• Did you observe enough ‘good’ teaching when you were training?

• Would you like to observe more ‘good’ teaching now?

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A quote

“Teachers say their schools of education did not adequately prepare them for the classroom. They would have welcomed more observation, mentoring and feedback in the early years.”

• Arne Duncan

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Ways of Working Together

• Team-teaching

• Mentoring

• Joint planning

• Teachers’ meeting

– Brainstorming

– Comparing

– Sharing

– Planning for others T

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Team-Teaching

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Advantages of team teaching

• Exposed to a different accent and way of teaching

• More time to spend with weak students

• Sharing responsibility for a lesson

• Sharing work load

• Possible to learn from working closely with other teachers

• Can learn new techniques, activities, skills

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Advantages of team-teaching

• Students get more 1:1 help

• Easier to clamp down on student behaviour

• Good to model activities with other teacher

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Disadvantages

• Difficult to have conversation classes (Classroom mgt? Noise? Monitoring?)

• Limits activities you can do

• More time wasted on classroom management

• Having to learn strategies for team teaching

• Needs a good working relationship with other teacher

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Thought

• Also, sometimes it’s just nice to have your own class

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Quote from the questionnaire

• All in all, I have observed that the students' language output has increased considerably since we introduced team-teaching. In fact, in my 13 year-long teaching career I have never witnessed anything like this. In short, it's beautiful.

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Quote from the questionnaire

• I personally feel that I have learned more about teaching and children than ever before. The many ideas that my teacher partners have shared with me and the many times that I have had the opportunity to observe children's learning simply because I wasn't constantly in the spotlight have helped me to grow both as a teacher and … as a partner. It is an experience that I would strongly recommend to anyone.

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Mentoring

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Mentoring

• Induction

– Culture shock

– Organisational expectations

• Best Practice

– Learning from the expert

• Teaching support

– Failing teacher

– Developing teacher

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Who can be a mentor?

• Well-developed personal skills

• Confidence in own teaching styles

• Active listener

• Empathy

• Financial (time) reward? Personal development? Prestige?

• (‘Advanced practitioner’ – ‘Mentor’)

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Mentoring sequence

Possible sequence

1.

• Joint planning

• Mentor teaches class

2.

• Joint planning

• Mentor and mentee share class

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Mentoring sequence

3

• Joint planning

• Mentee teaches class

• Reports back to mentor

4

• Mentee plans

• Mentee teaches class

• Mentor observes

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Commenting on lesson plans

Aims:

• Language to describe graphs in IELTS writing task 1

• To practise various future structures for planning in a work context

• Vocabulary to talk about different types of happiness and the situations which led to these

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Lesson plans

To practise and develop ability to listen for gist

• Pre-listening task (sentence gap-fill)

– T distributes worksheet containing part of a song sts do no know it’s a song) sts fill in the missing lines with the sentences provided

• While listening task

– Sts listen to the song to check previous task (5 mins)

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Observation sequence

• Draw up a procedure; choose criteria

• Select a date; inform teacher

• Briefing with teacher

• Observe teacher, make notes (evidence)

• Give feedback

• Write up notes

• The three point syndrome

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Three point syndrome

• “Think about how to engage your students more by ‘personalising’ material”

• “Try to give as much detail as you can about new vocabulary (eg: word stress, part of speech, spelling, related items)”

• “Write your aims on the board”

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QA observations

Consider:

• Time taken

• Value to teacher

• Confidence for teacher

• Retrospective nature

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Teacher’s meetings

IELTS group – weekly meeting to:

• Talk over problems

• Share materials

• Devise activities

• In-service materials swop shop

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Peer observations

• Buzz observations

• Observation of a complete session

– New

– Familiar

• Peer observations should be non-judgemental (supportive, descriptive, inquisitive)

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In-service training sessions

• Need to differentiate

• Best when topics come from teachers

• Often best when delivered by teachers

• Time needed for research on a specific area

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