Team meeting agenda

1. Session objectives: What do we want to achieve? (5 mins)

• Feel confident about working as a team
• Feel able to apply the on-line materials in the classroom
• Decide the strategic cultural issues that everyone needs to apply in their classroom
• Plan some do-able shifts in classroom practice

2. Consider the working practices of the team (15 mins)

• Purposes of the group
• Format of the sessions
• Ground rules for working
• Expectations of outcomes

3. Recapping on-line materials: What did we think of the materials? (15 mins)

Thoughts about:

• The questionnaire re your students’ progression
• Where most of your students were.
• The questionnaire re your classroom culture.
• Aspects that seemed to need most attention ( relating, talking, constructing, celebrating.
• Ideas for activities and routines.

4. Planning what to do across the school. (15 mins)

Decide

• Which ideas should we all adopt as whole school strategies?
• How the progression of dealing with being stuck should be built across the school. ie how the progression phases might play out against key stages and even year groups.

5. Personal action planning. What am I going to do? (20 mins)

Think about what you are trying to achieve.

Rather than simply deciding to introduce something new into the classroom because it sounds interesting, you will gain more value if the plan is given a specific focus by creating a question.

Why a question? Because this is an enquiry, you want to find out if something will change (pupil behaviour) when you change something specific.

Think through questions like:

• Where are your students now in their development of the learning behaviour? ( ie results from Activity stuck)
• How you would like your students to be different?
• What aspects of your learning culture need to be improved/changed?
• Which of the practical ideas for doing something different seem most appropriate?
• How you want your pupils to improve/develop/enhance in …………?.

Think of it like this:

If I do XXXX will it improve/develop/enhance YYYY?

This is the crunch question. Students are unlikely to change unless your behaviour changes!

Visualise how you want your students to be and then think about what you might do, or say, or model, or celebrate, or whatever…. differently to bring about this change in students.

You could think of this as If/ THEN statements.

• If I create stuck prompts with my class, then will their reliance on me be reduced?
• If I allow pupils to ask only one question of me in any lesson, then will their willingness to seek answers for themselves improve?
• If I insist that I expect students to get stuck at least twice in the lesson, then will students realise the positive value of  being stuck?
• If I re-frame stuck as an interesting stage in learning, then will their fearfulness diminish or disappear?

The learning enquiry plan is a record of what you intend to do.

Taking your enquiry question on into a plan remember;

•  you can adapt the activity/ideas that you chose to ensure they meet the needs of your pupils]
• make the plan specifically focus on development;
• concentrate on no more than three actions;.
• decide how to map your actions over the next three or four weeks;
• It’s useful to think about what you are going to do less of  to make room for the changes.

The format below may help you think through the planning process. You can fill in your Personal Action Plan using the word document version.

As part of your plan it’s important to record what you will monitor over the weeks.

Changes you expect to see in your practice.

For example what do you expect to;

• find tricky about developing a coaching relationship with pupils?
• hear as you become more aware of how pupils are learning?
• look out for in order to find out which approach best suits most students?
• feel less stressed? What will indicate that?
• find tricky about having more interesting/ focused conversations with students about learning?
• monitor to make sure  meta-cognitive talk becomes established?

Changes you expect to see in your students.

For example do you expect students to;

• be or show less stress about being stuck?
• reduce their reliance on your support?
• improve their demeanour about finding things hard?
• show greater confidence in themselves?
• realise that getting stuck is normal and helpful?
• be willing to try other ways?
• engage more readily with feedback?
• believe in themselves more as learners (growth mindset)?

Noting such changes will motivate you to continue with their experiments because the changes in students are almost always positive.

The plan represents a promise to do it. This promise helps you to keep the plan as a priority in your mind.

Capture classroom changes you want to monitor in your learning notepad. 

6. Evaluate team session: How did we do as a team? ( 5 mins )

• Did we achieve our objectives?
• Are we comfortable with what we are trying to achieve?
• Any concerns at this point?
• Next meeting date and time.