Improving Classroom Performance

Bernard Barker

2660ePackDec 00978 1 84070 637 6

A valuable whole school resource

What percentage of lessons at your school are:

• unsatisfactory?
• satisfactory or better?
• good?
• very good?

How consistent and reliable are individual teachers and departments? Do you have effective systems to check and coach for improved performance? Do teachers understand what is required? How much value is added to the results predicted for your students on entry?

With Government pressure to achieve ever more challenging Key Stage and GCSE targets, these questions are vital for everyone. Performance management has become a core task for senior staff in schools and colleges, while teachers will increasingly value coaching across the threshold.

Improving Classroom Performance is a working guide designed to help you develop whole school systems to raise standards in the classroom. Based on the author's consultancy practice and his research at Leicester University, the pack contains:

• Research-based models of teaching and learning.
• Step-by-step guidance on how to establish systems to monitor, evaluate and improve teaching.
• Sample documentation to support the development of schemes of work, lesson plans and observation schedules.
• Lesson transcriptions to raise staff awareness, and encourage reflection and training.
• Diagnostic activities to assist self-analysis and self-evaluation.
• Training methods to develop 'extended professionals' whose strategies unlock motivation and enhance achievement across the ability range.

Note that this product also forms part of Developing Your Staff 1: Working with Students.

Contents

• Introduction
• Thinking about the classroom
• What kind of teacher am I?
• The three-stage learning model
• Managing monitoring and evaluation
• Classroom observation
• Coaching for consistency
• Improving motivation in the classroom
• Coaching for styles and autonomy
• Towards a learning society