Supporting Staff and Students
Supporting our Staff
We recognise that one of the key strengths of our school is our committed and highly professional work force, who deliver superb teaching to all the students in our care on a daily basis. As a school, we have ten key commitments to supporting our staff. Click here to read more about this.
We are committed to the continuing professional development of our staff and highly value the extent of the expertise we have within the school. As such, our model of lesson observations seeks to provide opportunities for coaching and facilitate the sharing of best practice across a range of subject areas.
Lesson observations at AHS are carried out without judgement and in a manner meant to ensure useful and robust feedback, with the following underlying ideas:
- Observations are best used as a model for coaching, not accountability
- Observations are often more useful for those carrying them out than those being observed
- Explicit/direct instruction is really important
- Ask teachers about the decisions they made in a lesson and why they made them
- Lesson observations should be linked to the intent of the curriculum
- Asking when students have had to ‘think hard’ in the lesson might be useful for considering learning (Rob Coe)
- Other good proxies for learning might see students:
- retrieve content they have previously been taught
- apply concepts to new examples
- engage in practice drills (which may involve repetition)
- answer questions without cues or prompts
Supporting our Students
The reforms to GCSE and A Levels allowed us to reassess the way that we prepare students for internal and external summative assessments. We want to ensure that all students are equipped with the skills that they need to revise effectively and productively, building this learning and understanding from the beginning of KS3. Our homework policy has this at its heart, but effective revision is something that we have also built into each year group, to ensure that students feel fully prepared and supported.
In each year group, students will participate in end of year exams. As part of their preparation for this, they will have a programme of revision skills as part of their form tutor programme.
