New structure to the school day
New structure to the school day
What’s the optimum length of a lesson? How many should we have? 1 or 2 week timetable? Could we stagger lunch? How do we fit detentions in? What about extra-curricular clubs? Who is going to staff them?
Questions you’ve probably asked yourself before. But perhaps not while *exams have been in full swing.
This week’s highlights from the We Are In Beta Community, will help you get answers to them and learn how others achieve curriculum and pastoral success within the constraints of their school days.
Are you considering a new structure to your school day? Many are here.
PS. Well done for getting exams out of the way. Thank for doing such a great job.
We - Schools - Are In Beta - always learning (when we consider the structure of the school day).
This week
🗓️ How do you structure the school day?
📚Curriculum Thinking Week 2024: interactive lineup revealed
🧑🏫 8 ways to be a proactive head of year
🗓️ How do you structure the school day? Share and learn from pooled strategies.
The school day is really tight.
Especially, under the pressure of reduced funding, staff shortages and increasing student need.
Getting the most out of it is vital but really tough.
That's why, we're helping some of our members to understand how others do it.
We're gathering insights from across the community into things like:
the number and duration of lessons
how breaks and lunches are structured and staffed
how extracurricular and personal development are arranged through the day
If you're interested in...
accessing the insights and resources we gather and
being a part of it
...share your details using the form below and we'll be in touch about:
how to access shared resources and
how to meet and learn from everyone who takes part.
How did this research come about? How can you get help like this? Read more here
Who is this survey for?
This will be useful for colleagues including:
Heads - looking for organisational efficiencies.
Deputy Heads and Assistant Heads (both pastoral and academic) - looking for operational insights, plus pastoral and academic gains.
Heads of Year and Enrichment Leaders - looking for systems that have improved culture and character.
Heads of Department/Faculty - looking for models which help secure the best outcomes for students in your subject.
📚 The interactive lineup for Curriculum Thinking Week 2024 - register to access it all
Curriculum Thinking Week 2024 is community driven conference celebrating brilliant practice happening in real schools, every day.
A week to celebrate all of the incredible things that have happened for the Curriculum Thinkers Community this year:
100+ sessions
500+ resources
15+ research reports on great schools
16 role groups for senior and subject curriculum leaders
1000's of educators, across 100's of schools
Join us to meet and learn from fellow members sharing what they've been working on to save you from going it alone or starting from scratch.
Use the interactive programme to preview all sessions, resources and insights. Search & filter to explore those that matter to you most.
(Only those who register before 28th June (and paid members) will be sent details about resources shared inside).
Joining the line up? Here’s everything you need to know about how to get involved by end of 24th June.
🧑🏫 8 ways to be a proactive Head of Year
“Being a Head of Year is one of the most challenging, complex, and rewarding roles in a school. It is unrivalled in its problem solving stimulation, opportunity to be creative, and training for further aspects of leadership.”
“The tips below came from years of trial and error, and are by no means exhaustive, or guaranteed to work for you – but I hope you find them helpful”
Be organised
Data is your friend
Triage
Delegate
The 95%
Collaborate
Stick to your guns
Self-care
Sensible tips, right? But what do they look like in practice? Lucy Flower shares all.
On a personal note.
As a Head of Science, there were lots of times I needed to gather different perspectives.
Centralising detentions. Structuring the curriculum and timetable to accommodate Triple Science. Setting up a new Applied Science course at GSCE (or not), etc.
Others’ insights would have helped me make more informed decisions and present betters cases to colleagues.
But I wasn’t able to. I worked in single academy trust, which had no links to other schools and no Science teachers on the SLT.
That’s why we love to help members to pool perspectives in surveys like this in a way that gathers as much contextual information as possible.
In case you missed them: we’ve done similar things with homework and options in the past.
What are you working on where gathering others’ perspectives would help?
Just reply to this email. We’ll see what we can do :)
Thanks for reading.
@NiallAlcock and the We Are In Beta team
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