CPD Picks of the Week

Holly Gardner

Holly Gardner is TT Editor, as well as a Freelance Publisher. She has been working with @TeacherToolkit for over 6 years - since she published his first book in her role as Senior Commissioning Editor at Bloomsbury Publishing. Since then, she left her day job,...
Read more about Holly Gardner

Do you give verbal feedback or written feedback?

Download our verbal feedback resources and brush up on your leadership skills with this week’s CPD picks.

Top 5 blogs

1. The 5 Minute Lesson Plan – An old favourite and a planning must-have.
2. How To Revolutionise Guided Reading – What is whole-class guided reading?
3. *NEW* Live Marking – Have you ever tried live-marking in class?
4. The 7 Deadly Leadership Sins – How many are your bosses committing?
5. *NEW* The Forgotten Few – What happens when a child disappears from your class?

Resource of the week

This month the Teacher Toolkit Verbal feedback Action Research Project was launched. Ross Morrison McGill believes that “providing verbal feedback is a) not only quicker and more effective, but b) it significantly reduces teacher workload in the classroom”. So far, 119 schools in 6 countries have signed up to take part in the action research project running from November 2017 to June 2018.

Here you will find more information about the project and how to download the resources. You may want to officially register as a school taking part in the project (there’s still time!) or you might just want to simply download resources to use in your classroom.

CPD Spotlight: Leadership

As The 7 Deadly Leadership Sins was featured in our top read blogs this week, we’ve chosen Leadership as our CPD spotlight of the week. Here are 5 leadership blogs with advice for aspiring, new or experienced school leaders at all levels:

1. Welcome To School Leadership
2. 10 Things You Didn’t Know About School Leadership
3. 21 Leadership Habits
4. Improving School Leadership One Nudge At A Time
5. Advice For School Leadership Teams

From elsewhere

• A group of nurseries in southern England has banned the use of glitter in their craft activities to reduce the amount of microplastics in the seas. Tops Day Nurseries said that glitter “is almost impossible to remove from the environment.”
• A longitudinal study shows that Montessori preschool boosts academic results and reduces income achievement gap and that that well-implemented Montessori education could be a way to help disadvantaged children to achieve their academic potential.
• A new study shows that single-session interventions (SSIs) show promise in the prevention and treatment of teenage anxiety and depression.
• A new study has warned that sex education may need to become more graphic because teenagers are increasingly experimenting with ‘taboo’ practices. Since 1990 researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and University College London have been monitoring the changing sexual practices of 16-24 year old men and women with opposite-sex partners. The study “shows increasing diversity in young people’s heterosexual practices, helping to develop understanding of current sexual trends which could help guide education policy and safeguard young people’s health and well-being.”
• Damage caused by obesity means that surgeons are performing hip replacements on children as young as ten. Figures from NHS Digital show that in the last 3 years, 10 children and teenagers aged 10 to 19 have had hip replacements due to excess weight. Research by the University of Liverpool has found that obese children were at high risk of slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE), a painful hip disease.