Skills and Mastery at Norfolk Academy: Attainment with Cooperative Learning

Oct 2014 Werdelin Education has been working closely with the acting head of Stalham Academy, Andrew Howard, to facilitate the newly converted Academy’s vision of high attainment through engaging, high impact student-centred learning. Andrew Howard, acting head at Stalham Academy, 2014. Watch this space! Cooperative Learning is often incorrectly perceived as “talking exercises” unsuitable for teaching specific procedures… Continue Reading →

October 5, 2014 9

Interview with the CEO; tying together your MAT with Cooperative Learning

Co-operative Education East is the first post-COVID client to specifically use Cooperative Learning to manifest a trust-wide coherency that will support the unique ethos of their individual schools’; CEO Paul Bunn shares some of his thoughts in this five-minute interview. First of all, I’m very happy that Drew Howard and I finally have a publication… Continue Reading →

October 3, 2021 0

Creating a High-Performance culture: Powerful systems or empowered people?

One of my new partners, Dragonfly Training, has the same idea as me. Call it the belief that there is some form of logical progression between being a child and being an adult and that the world of schooling and world of work have something to offer each other. Turns out they do. This theme… Continue Reading →

February 4, 2020 0

Participatory Budgeting in Schools#7: In the bright light of Rosenshine

Something as true-to-life as Participatory Budgeting in schools will invariably need to include some Project-Based Learning components across multiple work-groups simultaneously – So, how does that measure up to Barak Rosenshine’s principles of instruction? Here’s a take on how Cooperative Learning helps us cut through that discussion, using Tom Sherrington’s booklet. On 20 May this… Continue Reading →

May 30, 2019 3

The VNET Curriculum Conference beyond the What & the How #1

Ofsted’s lead researcher. A unicorn in red. An inclusion specialist off his meds. A flute playing chemistry professor. A grand old man. Some philosopher-CEOs. And a teacher with digital traction in New York, Tyne & Wear. What do they have in common? Well, aside from the fact that they spoke at Friday’s VNET Curriculum Conference? I personally felt… Continue Reading →

January 22, 2019 0

Expecting the Inspection; Cooperative Learning and Ofsted et al.

Based on experiences from schools, this article gives advice on how to best prepare yourself (and your visitor) for an inspection of a Cooperative Learning class. Teacher: “Okay kids, grab your completed answer sheets, get up and do a Catch1Partner using (XYZ) vocabulary and (ZXY) subtasks. Go!” For children, no explanation is needed. That may not be… Continue Reading →

November 9, 2018 0

Seven-league boots; next steps for Cooperative Learning in 2018-19

“The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour,” goes a saying in pop psychology. If this is true, things are well and truly looking good for Cooperative Learning in the coming academic year. This article outlines some of my upcoming projects, including SSIF spin-offs, the necessity of separating “Cooperative Learning” from “group work,” a… Continue Reading →

August 26, 2018 0

Reading together; Better lives through books; a commentary on Jon Biddle’s NRSN twilight

This week I had the good fortune of attending Jon Biddle’s session Reading for Pleasure, yet another gem brought to us by the Norwich Research Leads Network. (See articles on previous #NorRel presentations by Roger Higgins and Stuart Kime). The organisers had given Andrew Howard and I the opportunity to precede Jon’s session with an ultra-compressed… Continue Reading →

June 21, 2018 0

How Cooperative Learning makes CPD effective; a commentary on Roger Higgin’s NRSN twilight

If teaching and learning is the raison d’etre of everything else, empowering teachers through professional development must be given top priority. This article explores last week’s Norwich Research Schools Network event An Introduction to Making CPD Effective presented by Roger Higgins and Tom Pinnington of Notre Dame High School. A brief interlude: What is the Research Schools Network?… Continue Reading →

May 30, 2018 2

Stuart’s Cake; getting more out of your CPD through Implementation & Evaluation

Sir Kevan Collins, CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation recently argued that “If you’re not using evidence to inform your decisions, you must be using prejudice.” But how, as a school leader, do you know which evidence to use in your context? How do you evaluate its impact? And how can you ensure that it… Continue Reading →

May 10, 2018 2

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑