Everyone in the sector needs to grow their subject knowledge, myself included. This can seem like a big ask. It is, but there are some ways to make it easier and more enjoyable.
First an example from one school. The head had identified that many staff did not have a wide understanding of children’s literature, beyond a diet of Dahl and Walliams.
Instead of making it heavy duty, he hit on a simple idea. He decided to experiment by using a staff meeting to tackle the issue. When colleagues came into the staff room expecting the usual meeting, instead they were confronted with a pile of children’s books on the table.
They were told ‘Just pick up one that takes your fancy, spend half an hour or so skimming or reading it. Then we’ll spend the rest of the meeting chatting about what you think.’
What happened was that at the end of the meeting virtually everyone wanted to take their book home. Why was this? Well they had been offered some interesting material which provoked their curiosity. And curiosity is a big driver for learning, both for adults and for children.
This meant that they wanted to carry on reading in their own time. This hadn’t been the intention. But it is what often happens when we are offered interesting stuff to engage with.
With one simple strategy, it removed any heavy handed compliance and turned instead into an ongoing, enjoyable experience which also happened to be subject knowledge professional development.
I think there’s something important here. It’s obviously not possible to hand over every staff meeting for this kind of work, but what would it take to schedule a subject development meeting like this every once in a while? And the same applies in secondary department meetings.
The schools doing this are finding a couple of things: greater buy in from staff and real enthusiasm for developing subject knowledge.
Until next time
Mary
And when you’re ready, you might find these helpful for curriculum development in your school
Huh Curriculum Leaders Course: UPDATE: Bookings now open for the next cohort January - February 2023 More info here
Primary Subject Networks, live and recorded.