This course is aimed at members of the senior leadership team interested in the impact of teaching assistants. The deployment of teaching assistants has very much changed over the past 30 years but can still vary greatly from school to school in terms of roles and responsibilities. We have however known for some time, that the impact on learning compared to cost has been very low. With the Education Endowment Foundation now producing guidance on how to maximise effectiveness, here we unpick the report for quick and easy reference. We take the summary of recommendations one by one and explore what these means in real terms.

This is a course for anyone new to Attachment Disorder and wanting to find out more about it. It aims to give you the basics so that you can start to identify pupils who may be displaying tendencies and work with those pupils to support their needs. We’ll therefore give you advice and simple ideas you can put into practice straight away and approaches to adapt and trial. It may be that the pupil needs further support so we’ll talk about what other avenues you may want to pursue. Great for teachers new to the profession, support staff or anyone wanting to check their understanding and support pupils to have the best possible outcomes.

In this course, Matt Bromley looks at teaching and learning. He shares some advice on how to make a success of teacher explanations and modelling and exhorts the importance of having high expectations of pupils if they are to succeed. He offers top tips on marking and feedback and looks at the particular challenges of teaching exam classes. As well as being useful for individual CPD for new teachers, this course could form the basis of coaching and mentoring activity in schools.

Working with pupils during the school lunchtime can be one of the most challenging roles in school. With children having the most freedom and space during this unstructured time, behaviours can deteriorate, which can lead to a whole host of difficulties for staff. These films are therefore aimed at providing a basis for understanding how and why pupils behave in particular ways and how as adults, our behaviours are crucial to changing a culture.  

In this course, the second of four courses on the subject of How Students Learn, Matt Bromley explores the first of his three steps of teaching for long-term learning: stimulating students’ senses to gain the active attention of working memory.     In order to learn, students must accept the challenge of hard work and this requires a learning environment in which students feel comfortable with discomfort.  Then, students need to be clear about what they are expected to learn and why that is important.  One way to do this is to articulate clear learning outcomes and success criteria. Matt also shares his advice on how to use feedback to direct learning and inform planning.  He offers some practical tips on how to stimulate students’ senses in order to gain the active attention of their working memories, and how to ensure those working memories are not overloaded by making use of dual coding.  Finally, he shares some tips for helping students to develop transferability so that they can apply what they learn in one context to multiple other contexts, thus ensuring learning is not only long-term but also meaningful.   As well as being useful for individual CPD for teachers, this course could form the basis of whole-school INSET.   

A focus on autistic masking. What is it? How does it present? How can you identify it? Why is supporting a child to un-mask so vital to well-being and enabling access to education? The content of this course will provide the skills needed to make a child who masks feel safe, as well as considering how the whole school ethos can celebrate difference.

In this course, Matt Bromley turns his attention to ‘impact’. He explores ways of improving a school’s assessment practices and looks at how best to evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum. He also examines the role that SLT can play in the curriculum design process. As well as being useful for individual CPD for school leaders, this course could form the basis of SLT or middle leadership discussions or training.

There are a whole series of issues that we can expect to see in our pupils in the coming months.  To help you spot the signs and take appropriate action, I’ve outlined a range of potential concerns, when to worry and suggested next steps.  

Maths is like Marmite, some love it, some shudder at the mere thought of it. However, teaching Maths doesn’t have to feel scary! This course is designed to support those who want to become confident when delivering all types of Maths lessons. We will explore efficient preparation before a lesson and how small changes can make BIG differences in your teaching and the children’s learning.  

In this course, Matt Bromley explores the second of his three steps of teaching for long-term learning: ensuring students think hard but efficiently about curriculum content in order to encode it into long-term memory.  Matt argues, in order to learn, students must accept the challenge of hard work and this means pitching lessons in students’ struggle zones so that it is hard but achievable.  Sometimes, in order to make students think, we must introduce desirable difficulties, artificial blocks and barriers that slow down students’ thinking, induce cognitive strain and therefore ensure information is actively processed.  One effective means of pitching learning is to teach to the top.  To help students focus on the curriculum content to be learned, we should make use of teacher explanations and modelling, as well as questioning and classroom discussion.  But we must also help them to avoid cognitive overload by providing a means of thinking efficiently and cheating the limitations of working memory capacity.     As well as being useful for individual CPD for teachers, this course could form the basis of whole-school INSET.   

In this course, Matt Bromley explores the importance of teachers and the quality of their teaching on student outcomes.  He shares some of the habits adopted by effective teachers, defines the complex process of ‘learning’, and explains the difference between ‘performance’ and ‘learning’.  He then sets out his three steps to long-term learning that can help teachers to plan and deliver effective lessons and help students to ensure that what they learn today, they can remember and apply tomorrow.      As well as being useful for individual CPD for teachers, this course could form the basis of whole-school INSET. 

Supply teaching, NQTs, trainees, cover supervisors, Covid19 lockdown rotas and ‘oh, Sue’s away – can you just cover her year 9s period 4?’…throughout our teaching careers there are many times that we will be required to cover classes and teach lessons that we may have had little or no time to prepare for. This course gives you an overview and practical solutions to establishing relationships with pupils when you might only have 47 mins with 34 of them.

During this course, Pooky summarises a simple, evidence-based approach to promoting resilience in the face of adversity.  You’ll learn about the evidence underpinning the approach and how the 4Ps of parents, peers, problem-solving and passion can be used as a framework for promoting resilience in the children in your care using a very simple action planning template which focuses on both risk and protective factors. This course has been developed by Dr Pooky Knightsmith, an internationally recognised mental health expert and author. The content is based on a paper commissioned by Health Education England and Young Minds as part of the ‘Addressing Adversity’ project.  Pooky has run workshops on the 4Ps approach across the UK and internationally and this simple, evidence based approach has provided a practical focus colleagues from across a wide range of settings.

This is a course for anyone who is working with pupils with autistic tendencies or diagnosis. Following on from our ‘Spot and Support Autism’, we take a more in depth look at how being on the Autistic Spectrum can affect attainment in school. We will unpick the triad of impairment; the 3 core areas that help define ASC and develop our understanding of how a child may be operating within these. From here we can unpick the areas of the English curriculum which present the most challenges. Most importantly we’ll look at what practically we can do to support our pupils navigate what can often be a very difficult, confusing and unfulfilling journey. 

In this course, Matt Bromley defines metacognition and self-regulation and explains what it looks like in the classroom.  He also walks you through six practical teaching strategies you could adopt in the classroom to help teach, model and promote your students’ metacognition and self-regulation skills. As well as being useful for individual CPD, this course could also form the basis of group discussions or training in-school, perhaps as part of a teacher learning community or lesson study project.

This is a playback of a past live webinar. During this webinar, Pooky explored some simple steps to take us a little closer to meeting the mental health needs of every member of our school or college community.

This is a great course for all teaching assistants, especially those new to the role, or new to a school and helpful for supporting and training colleagues. With the majority of teaching assistants expected to lead an intervention at some point during the week, it is often the case that no formal training has been given. Here we take a step by step walk through the key areas that need to be considered in order to run a successful intervention and give you the confidence to adapt and amend plans for the benefit of your pupils.

In this course, Matt Bromley shares his tips for managing your time and working with other adults in school. Matt looks at the types of people you’ll need to work with in your new school including your headteacher and subject leader. He then homes in on how to forge an effective working relationship with your teaching assistant (TA). Matt then turns his attention to time management, offering some practical tips to ensure that you maintain a healthy work life balance and don’t burn out. Finally, he shares some tips for making a success of lesson planning. As well as being useful for individual CPD for new teachers, this course could form the basis of coaching and mentoring activity in schools.

This is a course for anyone new to Autism and wanting to find out more about it. It aims to give you the basics so that you can start to identify pupils who may be displaying traits and work with those pupils to support their needs. We’ll therefore give you advice and simple ideas you can put into practice straight away and approaches to adapt and trial. It may be that the pupil needs further support so we’ll talk about what other avenues you may want to pursue. Great for teachers new to the profession, support staff or anyone wanting to check their understanding and support pupils to have the best possible outcomes.

Eating disorders are really hard to understand and can leave us very worried about doing and saying the wrong thing, fearful that we’ll make things worse. Consequently, many people do not try to help at all. In this course I’ve tried to help you build your current strengths and understanding to give you some ideas about how to support a child or young person with an eating disorder even though you’re not an expert. You won’t get it right all the time, none of us do… but these simple ideas will build your confidence and enable you to make a difference to any child you are working with or caring for regardless of your role and experience.