Anxiety, literacy and parents evenings
Questions on fellow school leaders' and teachers' minds.
This week’s highlights from the We Are In Beta community give you insights into what other schools are thinking about at the moment and a chance to learn how they’re doing it.
Topics include: student motivation, supporting anxiety, formative assessment, literacy, vapes, phones locks, parents evenings and teaching high ability students.
As always, the kindness and generosity from your fellow members in the threads below is awesome. The threads on literacy and parent engagement, in particular, are a joy to read.
If you can add to it by sharing your advice and experience, please do - it will make someone’s day.
We - schools - Are In Beta - always learning (when we get together, ask questions and share answers).
🤔📍9 questions you are asking
⚙️ How to use this bulletin board.
To help you decide (before clicking into them):
which conversations you can add the most value to and
which ones you can learn the most from…
…I’ve divided them into 3 groups:
Newly posted questions - a bit more input needed, threads available to all (🤝🙏🌐)
Really helpful answers worth reading, threads only available in a private, paying members only space (💡👀🔐)
Really helpful answers worth reading, threads available to all (but will be moving to private, members only space soon (💡👀🌐🔜🔐 )
💪 1. Motivating students
I have a year 11 class who are currently working towards grade 1/2. How can I motivate them/best way to teach them. Currently I teach a topic and within a week they have forgotten it?
🤝🙏🌐
🧠 2. Supporting children with anxiety related issues
Hi All, I'm Danny at DRET and I'm really interested to see what resources school use to support children with anxiety related issues. This would be a resources that head of years or pastoral leads use. I also have resources that I'm happy to share with all.
🤝🙏🌐
💡 3. Pastoral CPD recommendation
The videos on the #Pastoral Champions Week are excellent. Truly amazing CPD. So worth taking the time to watch, digest and learn from our colleagues.
🤝🙏🌐
✅ 4. Formative Assessment
We are trying to develop our formative assessment across the school. How do we re-engage staff who are critical of CPD, either because of time or thinking "we already know!"?
💡👀🌐🔜🔐
📖 5. Literacy for Mathematical questions
Has anyone done work in maths on literacy? In particular, supporting students to read wordy questions & be able to work out the maths required to answer them.
Read 8 replies, 2 resources and 3 web recommendations)
👀🌐🔜🔐
🚭 6. Vape sensors and phone locks
Vape Sensors and Phone Lock Trials – Feedback Needed!
We’re considering implementing a few new measures at our school to address some ongoing challenges:
Installing vape sensors in toilets to tackle vaping issues.
Introducing phone locks to manage phone use during school hours.
We’re thinking of starting with small trials for both, but we’d love to hear from anyone who has already implemented similar measures. How effective have vape sensors been in your school? Did phone locks help improve focus and reduce distractions? Were there any unexpected challenges or pushback from students or parents?
Your feedback and experiences would be incredibly helpful as we plan these trials.
💡👀🌐🔜🔐
👨👩👦 7. Parents Evenings
Hi everyone,
I’m looking at analysis of our attendance to Parents' Evenings, and was wondering what the overall attendance is like in other schools? We are currently on around 57% for the three evenings we've had so far this academic year.
We do our Parents' Evenings online for a number of reasons. When we surveyed parents, their feedback was very split when asked about online vs in-person. I'm not sure whether the format would make a difference over attendance.
So, if you could please tell me whether you do an online/in-person/hybrid approach, and approximately what your attendance percentage is.
I appreciate that school context will play a massive part, but it would be interesting to compare.
Thanks in advance for your time.
💡👀🔐
📆 8. Lesson time per week is allocated
Just following up on my exploration of the National KS4 Subject Database, would anyone be willing to share their curriculum structure in terms of how much lesson time per week is allocated to each of their subjects/ option choices in KS4?
💡👀🔐
👨🎓 9. High Ability Students
Good morning everyone.
I would love if anyone had any specific strategies for high ability students that are used in the classroom consistently across your school? It is an area we are looking to develop, focusing on useful and impactful strategies to support and challenge our most able. A
Thanks in advance!
💡👀🔐
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On a personal note
2025 has been the most challenging year of my life (a post for another time).
The Easter break has given me the chance to step back, come to terms with it (to some extent) and reflect on I’m grateful for.
Three groups of people (apart from family and friends, of course) have really kept me going over the past 4 months.
Curious members, who are open to learning
This week, I want to thank the following for starting conversations inside the community: Andrea McJannet, Daniel Bradford, Claudia Boateng, Katherine Park-Barnard, Kerry Dunton, Adam Askin, Dan Thornton, Tara McVey, Siobhan Costello.
Generous members, who are happy to share their learning
Huge thanks this week to the following for sharing experiences, advice and resources: Jonathan Mounstevens, Lydia Grellier, Ben Johnson, Charlotte Hodlen, Nick Edwards, Neil Randall, Coralee Duffin, Dave Tushingham, Neesha Devane, Mike Baker, Mike Bates, Michael Siu, Alex Pett, Caroline Lowing, Dan Thornton, Jamie Maxted, Pauline Kerr, Siobhan Costello, Emma Herod, Anay Kinsella, Lee Mclinden, Alex Wickson
Supportive colleagues, who make their mission to connect the two groups above
Frances Ling, Tom Pattison, Kasia Borowczak, Jane Tayub, Fiona Flint, Vanessa Wright, Tom Killigrew and Julia Quick.
Thank you all for everything you do for the We Are In Beta Community.
Thanks for reading.
@NiallAlcock and the We Are In Beta team
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