CPD Picks of The Week

Are you looking for an end of term assembly, or some end of term motivation?

In this week’s CPD Picks we share an inspirational assembly already to use in the last few week’s of the summer term. We also summarise the most popular podcasts of the year and share some posts on the importance of relaxing this summer.

Top 5 blogs

1. Freedom Of Information: School Inspection – Do OfSTED inspectors re-draft notes to suit an inspection outcome?
2. How To Spot Cognitive Dissonance In Schools – Are the things you are doing in your school, stupid?
3. Saving Design Technology –  If DT is to survive in an EBacc world, should leaders reconsider their curriculum?
4. 10 Easy Behaviour Management Tips For Lesson Success – What can we do to upgrade our behaviour management?
5. Word Gaps: 5 Strategies To Boost Vocabulary – What strategies can we use to improve vocabulary?

Resource of the Week

With just a couple of weeks to go until the end of term, are you looking for something to inspire your students over the long summer break? This inspiring assembly can be adapted to any age group and it is a great one to use on the last week of term. The assembly focal-point is time: time-equivalents; population statistics and famous one-off events; people; disasters and celebrations. Essentially, what (event) happens in our life-time. People featured are: Andy Murray; Fred Perry; Michael Jackson; Princess Diana; Jack Andraka; The Queen; NASA and Nelson Mandela.

You can read about the resource here and download it for free by clicking on the image above.

CPD Spotlight: Time to take a holiday

It’s time to start looking ahead to your holiday! It’s been a long year and it’s important that you take some time over the summer holidays to completely switch off from work and relax. Here are some blogposts discussing why it’s important, including some tips on how you can do it!

• Recognise The Signs Of Teacher Burnout
• It’s Time To Combat Teacher Burnout
• Summer Holiday Guilt-Trip
• 10 Tips For Teachers Relaxing Over The Holidays

Podcasts

This year we have published 24 episodes of the Teacher Toolkit podcast! We’ve really enjoyed interviewing so many interesting teachers and educationalists, and its been a real TT team effort doing the interviews, editing the podcasts and writing the show notes. Particular thanks to Joshua McGovern and Iesha Small for your editing expertise! If you’ve missed any of the episodes you can find them all here, but below are a list of some of the highlights.

1. Podcast 1, published in January 2018, Ross interviews MP Suella Fernandes – it is the most listened to podcast to date!
2. In podcast 3, Ross interviewed primary headteacher Jamie Barry.
3. Podcast 6 saw the launch of the 100 Years, 100 Women series where I interview Priya Lakhani OBE at the BETT show; shortly followed by podcast 9 in which she interviewed BBC’s Helen Skelton.
4. In podcast 11, Ross interviews Jaz Ampaw-Farr for our 100 Women series.
5. Podcast 12, I interview Dame Alison Peacock, CEO of the Chartered College of Teaching
6. In podcast 14 Ross interviews literacy and performance poet, Adisa the Poet.
7. There were 2 interviewees in podcast 21 when I chat to two PE teachers and middle leaders, Daisy and Becky.
8. And in podcast 23, Ross chatted to Vic Goddard, principal of Passmores Academy, Harlow.

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This is our last CPD Picks of the week for the school year! We hope you’ve enjoyed the weekly digest – get in touch if there is anything else you’d like us to include when we come back in September.