More tips from Sonia Thompson
Video transcript
all right that’s fantastic well what is your fifth and final tip okay my final one kind of links to everything um and it is think about implementation and i think as a research school one of the really great documents that we’ve we use with our schools is the implementation document and one of the things that sometimes schools are afraid to do is to say we can’t take on any more we’re going to just work and embed what we’ve got and take it to the place where we all feel confident that this is working for us i suppose the other end of that is don’t be afraid to get rid of things that you’ve done in your school and they are no longer working and often because we’ve spent money on something we’ve you know we’ve invested in it heavily in terms of time we know that it’s not what i’m going to say maths with sorry mats wiz whoever created it i’m so sorry i’m so sorry but it was great at the time great but you know we got to a place where we were it didn’t work anymore and because we’d spent quite a lot of money on it we were so reluctant but you know as soon as we got rid of it it was the best thing we ever did so i think we’ve got to be confident enough for schools to say this no longer works for us there’s research there’s other best bets let’s move it forward but also we need to be confident to say let’s just stop we’re not taking on any more initiatives let’s really embed this and make it work and be confident because it is something that we can see potential in let’s spend time getting it right you start moving on too quickly this is interesting so just take your first example i mean the first thing to say is i don’t think masters will be sponsoring this podcast anytime soon the other thing i see this a lot this kind of sunk cost fallacy right you think you’ve put all this time and money and so you’re clinging on to it for dear life and it’s so hard and it’s just in life generally it’s yeah it’s hard to let go so that’s that’s fascinating i’m interested as well when i visit schools and particularly when i work with maths departments they’ll say all right so our focus this year is to improve retrieval improve questioning improve extended right and there’s about five or six of these things and you just think this isn’t this is an app so what what what what has worked in the past few is it kind of one big idea or too small what was it where’s the limits on you do you think we always say two big ideas and maybe an extra right and really just home into that and even then be flexible even if you’re you’re a term in and those two big ideas ones there’s more potential in one than the other don’t be afraid just to hold back because the long-term benefits of being really clear about as you said five things across a year just will not work because as schools we know gosh i don’t know about you this week last week we had sat we had this we had that we had the other we had seven things happening at once and you lose foot you lose focus and we we did our briefing on friday and by the end of it i said oh my goodness staff i’m really sorry there’s too many things happening so you know we have to be really clear and really mindful of our staff’s well-being and that there’s nothing worse than the thing that breaks stuff while being down when we’re trying to do too much yes and it’s easily done you know and i’m i’m hands in the air i’ve been guilty of it still learning still on my journey but we’ve just got to be more mindful as leaders and that we don’t overwhelm and make sure that what we’re moving forward are things that are really going to have impact for our children yeah okay this is interesting just a few more follow-up questions on this so when you say kind of two big examples yeah sorry two big initiatives for a year yeah you give us a couple of examples of what they might be saying how big are we talking here and and if we’re looking at particular subjective for instance it may be a subject or we might be looking at reading but we might be looking at fluency so it might be just fluency that we’re going to focus in on we’re going to focus in on how to train staff properly to deliver fluency as maybe an intervention we’re also going to look at how we train staff to implement it back in the classroom we’re going to do some um in class observations for staff and maybe do some um in the moment support for staff we’re going to do some coaching around that so really build it in and be clear about what we want as that end point where do we want staff to be at the end of the year if we’ve looked if we’ve said fluency is the thing where do we want stuff to be by the end of the year if it’s linked to reading where do we want children to be so it’s about really being really clear what is the professional development that’s going to support that and again it’s not changing it every week there may be two three two or three big points of fluency training across the year and then of course slotting in other things but being really clear about what that looks like so that pd that professional development calendar being really we really working for you rather than just being a list filled with things that you’ve got to tick off um we’ve just got to be mindful of that yeah that’s really really fascinating so just again just a couple more follow-ups on this yeah so um again so what one error i’ve seen with um in schools as i say it’s just overwhelming people with loads of things to do the other thing that’s quite interesting i don’t know if this is a secondary issue um and perhaps secondary exclusive issue i don’t know so i’ll be interested to ask you you often get a whole school initiative that doesn’t quite work within each department so math is always the the awkward subject here you’ll get you’ll get something that’s like we’re going to improve you know we’re going to one of our folks is on extended writing or writing problems or something like that and the maths department always have to almost kind of shoehorn that in whereas they’d be great if they could focus on like a math specific thing but it doesn’t mean agenda and i’m sure the same you know could work the other way around something that works really well for math the english teachers thinking oh for god’s psychology yeah is that i’m guessing that’s not as big an issue with primary because we’re teaching all subjects would that be yeah yeah i feel definitely i think it that that is kind of secondary specific um and i think you’ve made a great point there around leaders who are not necessarily you know fully conversant with what every subject areas need to do being really mindful of what what is that conversation that you’re having with departments about what are the specific needs for our department um because of course there’s whole school things that you’ll bring everybody together for but more often than not you’re doing more department meetings than whole school meetings so of course you’ve got to be specific but leaders have to have that overview and be very much guided by that strategic picture but also by that departmental picture so i think it’s key i think in primary we are mindful that there are some key stage phase specific things that we’ve got we’ve got to think about so where early whether you know we look at early years and we look up for instance the way that early years are delivering their math sessions we’ve got to be a little bit more mindful but there’s also some things like manipulatives where we want everybody to be using yes and it’s not a it’s not a key stage one thing and teachers need to be really clear so we’ve got to do some whole school teaching about the importance of manipulatives in in reception but as well as in year six so it’s just being really clear about what is that pathway yeah that’s interesting um last one for me just an observation then a final question so my observation is i love the fact that you have planned in to keep these big ideas going across the year because what you often see schools go mental in september by february staff can’t remember what the hell this big idea is because they’re not spending more training on it so i like that planning in these kind of i think you said three kind of big part you know revisiting points throughout the year that feels really important and i think what we’ve what we’ve also done is linked that to the professional development so that those we can we’re moving those forward as part and it’s not some new things that you’re going to do as part of your professional development we’ve got this whole set of things that we do as part of pd i think when we started to merge them and you know i always have to hold my hand up craig we’ve been on a journey all these things are journeys i’m talking about as if it’s fully embedded here these this is a journey and it’s whether or not schools are willing to take that journey and i think when you are when you fix your lens as you know that wider lens on re research and what the research is telling you what the best bets are as a school i think you’re more open to changing things and aligning things and thinking about what’s going to work because the research is there but we’re also looking at our context as well that’s great and final question and if you were launching two big ideas what’s the best way in your experience is it to launch them both at the start of the year and run them both throughout the year or is it launch one let’s get a bit familiar with that and then launch the second one what tends to work best there we are we we do a little bit of staggering um never because of september’s always a little bit gosh teachers come back and you know that learning loss we all have that we always forget what we’re supposed to be doing as teachers so i think if you’re just throwing everything at everybody in september um we do we kind of do a whole refresher against every subject just reminding about key points um but then we have some big ideas then that will move we move forward at particular points so launching off with one and then launching off with a couple of other things so yeah got it fantastic