Staff and Governors from across the Federation gathered together for INSET training on Tuesday 4th January. We were delighted to welcome new members to our brilliant team. Miss Kathryn Knapp is the Federation Deputy Headteacher and SENCo and brings a huge amount of skill and experience to both of her roles. We are very excited to be working with her as our Federation enters the next stage of its development. Mrs Macdonald will be teaching Owls class at St Thomas’ and Mrs Grave will be teaching Elm at WHJS on Thursdays and Fridays. Both teachers are highly experienced and have already made a fantastic start this week.
The INSET day was also an opportunity to set our key priorities for developing the quality of teaching that we offer the children in 2022. We know that ‘minutes matter’ in the classroom and that all children must make good progress each lesson. Highly skilled teaching takes knowledge of each individual’s learning needs and provides them with carefully created tasks that will enable them to demonstrate progress in each lesson they participate in.
Smaller chunks of progress add up over each week and enable our pupils to succeed in the long term. All children, no matter their ability, must be sufficiently challenged with work that is precisely differentiated. Training on the INSET enabled staff to create these excellent lesson plans and we will work more on this as the term progresses.
