The first blog of the summer term has been written by Mrs Hill, Deputy Head Academic at Bethany School. She updates us on teacher development at Bethany and how all staff are encouraged to be lifelong learners.

At Bethany, teachers, just like pupils, are encouraged to be lifelong learners. By having an ongoing focus on teacher development, we ensure that we continue to raise standards in regard to the development of subject knowledge, pedagogy and practice.

One of the ways we do this is through the use of a system called IRIS Connect. This enables us to record and then review our teaching and learning. We can quickly and easily edit clips from our lessons to share with other members of our teams to both share and develop our practice.

Another way that we are building our skills as educators this year is through a focus on Microsoft 21st Century Learning, a learning pathway that supports the development of learning activities that enable our pupils to develop the skills they need for life and work in the globally connected world of the 21st century.

There are 6 21st century learning skills; these are:

1. Knowledge construction  

2. Collaboration  

3. Real-world problem solving and innovation  

4. Skilled communication  

5. Self-regulation   

6. Information and communication technology (ICT) for learning

Over the course of the year, teachers have been exploring how they can build these skills into their own classrooms. As well as this, Year 7-9 pupils are given further opportunity to explicitly explore these skills through the completion of Project Based Learning weeks. During the course of the projects pupils are asked to reflect on their skills development using specially designed rubrics.

As a result of the most recent Year 8 project, two of the winning teams presented their projects about Phoebe’s Garden to the chair of FOBS (Friends of Bethany School), Mrs Morey the Bursar and Mr Preddy the Assistant Bursar. They were so impressed that they are now taking their ideas forward and transforming this memorial garden space into a calm and tranquil garden for all the Bethany community to enjoy.  

This is the current garden space (this morning enjoyed by Mr Reilly with his cup of coffee): 

Mrs Hill
Deputy Head Academic