Critical Reflection on a selected area of Professional Development.
Selected Area: Development of Curricular Target Setting Routines
Description of Professional Development Undertaken:
• Development of curricular target setting across the school.
• Development of classroom environment to support curricular target setting.
• Development of speaking and listening skills to enable purposeful peer and self evaluation and constructive conversations about learning with adults.
This was a whole school project involving learners and teachers from Foundation Stage to Year 6.
Needs Analysis:
Our children enter school with a very low level of attainment. For example, baseline assessment revealed that in the cohort entering in September 2006 only 17% attained the average level expected for foundation stage pupils in language and communication by the end of their first year. This represents a significant barrier to learning. A great deal of time is dedicated to the promotion of basic skills in the early years, and across the school in order to overcome this and other difficulties.
However, our results at the end of Key Stage 2 have been consistently below 65% at level 4+ in Numeracy and Literacy. As a consequence we are part of an Intensive Support Program which focuses on the use of curricular target setting to accelerate learning and progress. For us the use of curricular targets is the ultimate step in a school improvement project which has taken place over the last 6 years.
Throughout the year I have been involved in developing routines and strategies in our classrooms which support the use of curricular targets and progress towards them. I have worked as a whole school team, sharing our strengths, expertise and ideas to move forward together, evaluating progress and the impact of our work as I have proceeded.
Converting the Learning into Development
Implementation:
The use of targets is very different in the foundation stage. As...