Leadership and Learning Apps and Tools

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Leadership and Learning Apps and Tools

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from Teaching Times

In an age of Innovation

Leadership And Learning Apps and Tools TeachingTimes

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Introduction How far can modern technology empower leaders and teachers?

Most emphasis has been placed on its power to support children’s learning.

But in this new age, the roles of teacher and leader, although changing, are as important as ever.

Perhaps more important.

Yet professional Apps and software have tended to have the limited aim of saving teachers and teacher’s time.

They are what might be termed ‘Administrative’ Applications.

Our Apps and tools are Pedagogic Apps – they aim to support qualitative changes in the practice of leadership and teaching.

The suite of online apps and tools you will read about in this brochure seek to maximise opportunities for professional development and learning, leadership and advanced pedagogy in the classroom.

They pass knowledge, assessment and intervention power down the line to the departmental leader and the classroom teacher, whilst passing up much more useable information to the Senior Leadership Team.

This duality, and the fact that they can all be used in conjunction with each other to reveal and intervene in school-wide issues, makes them powerful tools for helping to drive real improvements in teaching and learning.

Ü i-WIGT – Seamlessly appraise and mentor teachers to drive school improvement and improve teaching and learning

Ü Climbing Frames – A comprehensive tool to create a fair and reliable picture of pupil performance Ü SBAS – Resolve individual student and organisational problems around discipline and behaviour Ü Professional Learning Community – One of the most acclaimed best practice libraries in the world

Ü Project-based Learning Resources – A platform to support cross-curricular, in-depth teaching Ü Enable – A teaching tool to assist TAs in literacy development Ü Myself as a Learner Scale – The world renowned self-perception test Ü What Is Good Leadership? – A holistic tool to help develop the essential leadership skills in primary schools

Ü Learning and Assessment Pathways – Audit, integrate and progress assessment for both staff and pupils

W: www.teachingtimes.com

E: enquiries@imaginativeminds.co.uk

Leadership And Learning Apps and Tools TeachingTimes

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“We are encouraging our schools to use the i-WIGT as it is a natural progression from the WIGT, which has been used for many years in West Berkshire schools. The i-WIGT provides an excellent and highly efficient system to observe and evaluate the quality of teaching and learning linked to performance management and, through the links with the Imaginative Minds Best Practice Library, offers immediate access to a range of articles to support professional development.”

Elaine Ricks-Neal, Jt. Principal Adviser for School Improvement, West Berkshire Council

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i-WIGT (What Is Good Teaching?)

The i-WIGT is a collaborative teacher mentoring and appraisal App that is both a diagnostic and intervention tool to secure better teaching.

This iPad-based App is transforming the whole teacher appraisal/mentoring process in schools. It has two unique features – an assessment matrix which unpicks the skills of good and outstanding teaching, and a link to thousands of best practice articles so that emerging problems and development areas can be resourced directly from the App. It also has a self-evaluation module so that teachers can review their own practice and use our Best Practice Library from our Professional Learning Community to pursue their own developmental strategy.

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Find out more at: www.i-wigt.com

Easy to use, confidential and secure, the i-WIGT will help your school to provide: ■■

Objective and fair teacher performance observations in real time

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Accurate, consistent and useable feedback for your teachers

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Clear paths for teachers towards outstanding, creative teaching

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A transparent performance-related pay practice

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Trackable data for each teacher as well as by subject, year group and more

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Teacher self-assessment to encourage reflective practice

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Areas for teachers to evidence their work by uploading images and videos

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E: enquiries@imaginativeminds.co.uk

Leadership And Learning Apps and Tools TeachingTimes

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“There are a lot of products out there that claim to address the issues around 'the world without levels’; however, the clarity of Climbing Frames, its ease of use, its revision of P-levels, the progression in thinking and learning alongside online tracking, put a lot of clear water between it and its rivals. Very good value for money for a school or organisation wanting to take ownership of the future of assessment and learning.”

David Hilton, Head of Curriculum and Standards, The Active Learning Trust

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Climbing Frames Climbing Frames App gives schools a simple, straightforward and structured approach to tracking student progress and intervening to overcome barriers to learning.

Learning to live without levels. This is the mantra of the moment. Our framework and App has been written by Sue Hackman – former advisor to the DfE and perhaps the most knowledgeable person in the country on the practical use of assessment frameworks and curriculum within the UK. Its unique features are that it covers the whole curriculum, it has filtered the key learning moments from the National Curriculum so it is manageable in class, it allows for able children to progress beyond their year group, and it tracks the progress of special needs children with new P-levels and cognitive development tracking for all children.

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But it is far more than a tracking tool – at key teaching and learning points, it has five-point teaching strategy guidance to support teachers having trouble moving children on, and this is reinforced by giving teachers access to our Best Practice Library from our Professional Learning Community. It is a professional development and progress completion support, as well as a tracking tool.

Climbing Frames enables your school to create fair, manageable and reliable assessment of pupils that will: ■■

Measure attainment and progress against expectations laid down in the NC

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Monitor pupil progress with great sensitivity

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Quickly alert teachers to slow progress or disappointing attainment

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Help teachers to plan ambitious and achievable pathways to progress for every pupil in the school

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Cover pre-levels, and track cognitive development in a thinking and learning frame, making it a truly universal scheme

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Deliver detailed management information, as well as at-a-glance reporting

Find out more at: www.climbingframes.org.uk

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E: enquiries@imaginativeminds.co.uk

Leadership And Learning Apps and Tools TeachingTimes

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Student Behaviour Analysis System (SBAS) Create a consistent, data-driven behaviour management response for each child.

A unique set of indicators, developed in two local education authorities over twenty years, drives this App. They have been researched, tested and adapted over this time by psychological services to show how and where behaviour problems emerge during a child’s day at school. The tracking is enforced by constant reminders to the child’s teachers and an assessment can be triggered by any authorised form teacher or departmental/senior leader.

Once diagnosed, the App enables school managers to produce a series of reports on a child. Managers can then devise, coordinate and monitor intervention through the App. At each stage, teachers and leaders will have access to specialist expertise from Sandwell Inclusion and the Best Practice Library from our Professional Learning Community.

Find out more at: www.behaviourapp.com

SBAS allows schools to follow individual children causing concern through all aspects of their school life and enables the school to: ■■

Locate the causes of bad behaviour

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Provide support for individual teachers

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Respond quickly and effectively, based on hard data rather than impressions

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Communicate intervention strategies to all staff involved with the child

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Ensure teacher participation in behaviour assessments

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Guarantee cooperation between departments

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Link your strategies to expert practice on student engagement

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Create a school culture that is ‘behaviour friendly’

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E: enquiries@imaginativeminds.co.uk

Leadership And Learning Apps and Tools TeachingTimes

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Professional Learning Community The Professional Learning Community gives your whole staff the most excellent CPD library that they could wish for.

Claimed by international organisations like CfBT to be the best bank of teaching expertise anywhere, the Professional Learning Community gives all staff and governors within your school access to over 7000 best practice articles. That information is available for practice guidance in class, for the development of whole-school strategies or can be harnessed to support school/child interventions arising from the information supplied by our suite of Apps.

It is updated weekly, and covers all the key areas of school decision making and endeavour, such as leadership, pedagogy, special needs, ICT, professional development practice and the learning environment.

A key feature is its Knowledge Banks, which collate articles from across the library and from trusted sources on themes and topics requested by schools. Used in conjunction with the Apps, the PLC can offer teachers an unrivalled personalised knowledge-acquisition and professional development experience.

The PLC is helping to transform teaching and learning in schools across the UK by providing: ■■

CPD resources that all of your staff can use to help develop the knowledge and skills for their role

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In-depth, practical expertise from the UK’s foremost education authorities such as Professor John West-Burnham, Shirley Clarke and Sue Hackman

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Best practice strategies that cover the needs and interests of all of your leaders and teaching staff

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The latest findings in practice-relevant research on leadership, teaching and learning

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A rich source of knowledge for developing new projects and stimulating best practice innovations

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Find out more at: www.teachingtimes.com

Start to build a serious, thematic and creative Project-Based Learning Resources bank.

Ofsted’s focus has shifted to the quality of learning...and pupil interaction is the key. This bank of specially developed cross curriculum projects provides exciting and creative lessons to promote greater interaction and improved learning skills.

Project-Based Learning Resources present an in-depth, creative means of developing students’ skills, knowledge and understanding across an integrated curriculum offering a rounded, projectbased learning experience.

Each pack includes an extensive selection of worksheets, lesson plans and ideas for making authentic links across the curriculum subjects.

With a wide range of teaching and learning methods incorporated, every learning style is catered for.

Based on foundations of serious pedagogy, the resource packs have been produced by senior teachers and advisors sharing best practice. The highly integrated resource packs cover far-reaching topics through Foundation stage to Key stage 2+.

Using these project-based learning packs will help your teachers to: ■■

Increase the level of interaction between pupil and teacher

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Implement a creative culture across the curriculum

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Bridge the gap between high and low achievers with extensive supporting resources

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Make coherent links between subjects to increase pupil knowledge and understanding

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Build pupil confidence in subject areas they may feel less confident in by applying prior knowledge

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Plan lessons effectively with 24-hour access to online resources

Find out more at: www.teachingtimes.com/zone/project-based-learning-resources

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Project-based Learning Resources

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E: enquiries@imaginativeminds.co.uk

Leadership And Learning Apps and Tools TeachingTimes

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Enhancing Attainment in Basic Literacy (ENABLE) Release your Teaching Assistants’ full potential and help them to seriously support children with reading difficulties.

Ofsted now demands evidence that the Pupil Premium is being used effectively to close the learning gap.

Training your Teaching Assistants with this established platform will help them to create effective interventions to boost the confidence, self-esteem and skills of struggling readers.

Ten years of research and development in Sandwell Local Authority schools has produced ENABLE – a solid, proven platform that empowers your teaching assistants to transform children’s reading.

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By using ENABLE, you can ensure that your Teaching Assistants are fully trained on an effective intervention programme that can significantly improve children’s reading. In fact, ENABLE has been proved to lift children’s reading age and ability by up to two years.

Find out more at: www.teachingtimesbookshop.co.uk

How the programme helps struggling readers: ■■

Develops a pupil’s self-esteem and their self-belief in becoming a reader

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Provides a model and supports the reading of quality books

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Develops a child’s use of context and prediction by questioning, discussing and re-telling the stories

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Helps pupils to develop an extended sight vocabulary of high frequency words

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Extends the learner’s vocabulary of high frequency words that can be written independently

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Learners will be able to recognise by sight and say the sound for all letters of the alphabet

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They will be able to hear the sound of and write the correct letter symbol for all letters of the alphabet

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They’ll be able to read and write three/ four-letter phonetically regular words, as well as be able to read and write some common digraphs

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Plus, learners will be able to compose and write simple sentences containing high frequency words and three/fourletter phonetically regular words.

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Myself as a Learner Scale (8-16 +)

Myself As a Learner Scale 8-16+ Analysing self-perception

by Robert Burden

Confidence and open or closed mindset is everything in learning Myself as a Learner Scale is one of the most acclaimed self-perception tests ever.

Young people’s perceptions of themselves as learners and problemsolvers have been shown in numerous research studies to be key elements in their learning progress.

Myself as a Learner Scale (MALS+) has been constructed to provide a readily available technique that can be used by teachers, psychologists and researchers to gain access to this important aspect of learning development.

MALS+ is easy to administer and can be used for gaining information on large cohorts of students or for more clinical purposes with individuals. It is a valid and reliable scale that can provide a valuable addition to any school’s assessment programme.

It also provides extensive information about ways of analysing and interpreting MALS+ scores together with examples of possible research and clinical uses.

This easy-to-administer test helps support your learners by: ■■

Uncovering, beneath external shows of confidence, which children have poor views of themselves as learners

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Pinpointing exactly where their problems are

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Measuring progress in developing ‘openmindsets’ in children

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Encouraging their resilience, so that they can overcome obstacles in their learning

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Making them less reliant on teachers and received opinion

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Making them open learners, who are willing to challenge themselves

Find out more at: www.teachingtimesbookshop.co.uk

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Leadership And Learning Apps and Tools TeachingTimes

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What Is Good Leadership? (WIGL) Supporting the development of leadership in primary schools What is Good Leadership? will help improve leadership practice at every level in your school.

Based on research and best practise regarding core leadership and management skills and attributes, the WIGL toolkit is tailored to the specific middle and senior leadership roles found in the majority of primary phase schools.

Developed over five years working with schools and drawing on national and international research, WIGL provides a holistic approach to developing the essential leadership skills within a school.

The accessible matrix format outlines a progression in the key skills of leadership, which can be used to identify and support potential new leaders, as well as evaluate and guide the progressive development of experienced leaders. It is positive, cumulative and builds on strengths.

Key features of the WIGL framework: ■■

Constructive and developmental

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Building skills and knowledge based on clear descriptors

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Supporting self evaluation and personal development

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Supporting whole-school evaluation and professional development planning

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Informing performance management and job descriptions

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Enabling a 360° view of an individual or whole school leadership team

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Users are quickly able to assess individual and collective performance, noting strengths, and where there are gaps or aspects to improve on in current practice.

Find out more at: www.whatisgoodleadership.co.uk

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Learning and Assessment Pathways (LAPS) Making assessment work to tranform your school Learning and Assessment Pathways: a step-by-step resource for creating a coherent, intergrated assessment system through out your school.

The new curriculum and latest Ofsted framework for inspection are driving ever higher expectations and accountability. This is increasing pressure on all primary schools to ensure that their assessment practices are effective and efficient.

LAPS is an innovative toolkit for primary school leadership teams that enables you to audit, integrate and progress assessment for both staff and pupils. In fact, using this unique framework will give you a noticeable impact on practice and learning.

The toolkit contains a wide range of tools to promote and support professional dialogue.

Using LAPS will give your leadership team the skills and confidence to: ■■

Audit your school’s strengths and plan your next steps

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Adapt your current strategy to the new curriculum

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Engage staff and pupils in continual improvement

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Integrate changes in a progressive and timely way

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Stay ahead of assessment changes with online updates

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By using LAPS, your school will have a clear roadmap of how to audit your existing assessments to reveal effective and durable practices. At the same time, you can also respond to the new educational landscape and prepare for future change.

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E: enquiries@imaginativeminds.co.uk

Leadership And Learning Apps and Tools TeachingTimes

Order today Help to drive real improvements in teaching and learning in your school To order any of the tools and resources in this brochure, simply fill in the form below and return it by fax to 0121 224 7598 or call our order hotline on 0121 224 7599.

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Apps i-WIGT* Climbing Frames SBAS Online resources Professional Learning Community Project-based Learning Resources

Toolkits and resources Enable Myself as a Learner Scale (8-16 +) What Is Good Leadership? (WIGL) Learning Assessment Pathways (LAPS)

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