School Transitions
/ By Strategy Education / Advice • Classroom • Events • History • Pupils/ / 0 Comments

How to Support Pupils with School Transitions

Whether pupils are moving between year groups, key stages, or primary to secondary school, the transition can be stressful and upsetting. No matter how old we are, change is unsettling, and support will be needed to try and mitigate the effects.

For vulnerable pupils such as those with SEN or those who have other needs, it can be even more challenging, and they will require extra support and planning to help them through the process.

STARS (The School Transition and Adjustment Research Study) gathered a wealth of information to provide practical strategies that help support children through school transitions.

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Reduce Low Level Disruption
/ By Strategy Education / Advice • Classroom • Pupils/ • / 0 Comments

How to Reduce Low-Level Disruption at Exam Time

Exam time can be stressful for students, often leading to a deterioration in the expected levels of behaviour in the classroom.

It is no surprise that emotions are often heightened due to the pressure, with many students finding it difficult to express their feelings. Teachers can make a real difference if they introduce some simple strategies to minimise low-level disruption.

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Sky Arts Week
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Bringing the Arts into your Classroom

Creativity and art are often neglected parts of the curriculum. Yet, their importance in promoting confidence and improving health and wellbeing in young people is backed up by research.

During COVID, there were long periods of school closures and restricted access to all aspects of art. Sky Arts have decided to promote the arts by introducing Access All Arts week.

This project celebrates everything art-related and will help teachers bring the arts into their classrooms in 2022.

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Teaching Career
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Enhance your Teaching Career

Teaching is often described as a vocation, and indeed, many teachers are driven by their passion for education. However, it is also true that teaching is a profession where career development has an important part to play.

As teaching is constantly evolving, it makes sense for teachers to take ownership of their own growth.

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Marking work
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The Great Marking Debate

Sometimes it seems as though there is no greater issue of contention in education than marking! Whether in Primary or Secondary education, there seems to always be an ongoing conversation about the value, necessity and regularity of marking with differing opinions from teachers, pupils, parents and SLT.

Teachers themselves don’t always agree about the benefits of marking, with some seeing it as an essential tool for feedback and progression while others see it as a waste of their precious time with no real benefit to pupils.

What exactly is it that causes marking to be so open to debate with no agreed solutions?

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Building Resilience in Children
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Building Resilience in Children: COVID-19

The stress and anxiety experienced by children due to lockdowns and lack of socialisation has already been well documented. However, one thing we are beginning to see is the effect of the government’s pressure to “catch up” children to meet their age-related goals and regain momentum towards pre-pandemic results.

Inevitably, teachers are already coming under intense pressure to ensure the pupils in their classes are reaching their expectations with very little mitigation of the difficulties this is causing.

Unfortunately, it isn’t just the teachers feeling this pressure, as the children are at risk of experiencing the fear of failure too.

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Military Service Pupils in Schools
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Supporting Military Service Pupils in Schools

Did you know that whilst many children of parents serving in the British Armed Forces attend schools that have a high percentage of service pupils, the majority attend schools with less than ten service children?

Children in this situation have unique circumstances where they may have been separated from a parent for long periods, moved homes and schools frequently, or even relocated to different countries.

Teachers can be ill-equipped to understand how they can help these military pupils but fortunately, a charity called Little Troopers has developed a programme of resources to help pupils from reception to sixth form. Designed with the help of educational psychologists, behavioural experts and play therapists, the resources are very helpful to any school that has children from a service background.

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Teacher Feedback
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Reducing the Burden of Teacher Feedback

Time spent on marking students’ work and writing individual feedback has long been seen as adding to teacher workload. Moving away from written feedback is an obvious option to reduce teacher workload but schools are often reluctant to let go of the evidence that written feedback provides.

In an environment where school leaders are looking to reduce teacher workloads, it is important to be able to prove to Ofsted and parents that verbal feedback is an effective alternative to providing written feedback.

Looking at some current research into verbal feedback methods may help school leaders and teachers ensure they are following best practices. It should certainly open a debate into how changes could be trialled.

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