We believe that high quality continuing professional development is the cornerstone to ensuring that we fulfil our vision of ‘Inspiring Minds; Shaping Futures’, because it is through the development of teaching and learning that children will be inspired to learn and in turn this will shape their futures. At Windmill, we all see ourselves as lifelong learners, we actively collaborate in action research projects and use research to inform our practice.
Our CPD opportunities are strategically planned out throughout the year to align with our Academy Improvement Plan priorities and to continually upskill all teaching staff in their teaching.
We have devised our schedule of CPD sessions around the Education Endowment Foundation’s guidance report on Effective Professional Development, this means that we carefully plot in sessions where we bring back our action research in reflection sessions. We have found that this ensures that we embed new teaching practice and have ample opportunities to rehearse and revisit.
Effective Professional Development
CPD at Windmill can take many forms:
- Weekly CPD sessions
- Tailored CPD sessions for senior leaders, subject leaders, teachers, teaching assistants and apprentices
- Bespoke trainings for ECTs
- INSET days
- National College on line trainings
- Coaching
- External trainings
- Use of external consultants such as Read Write Inc
- Peer to peer lesson observations
- Lesson study
- Collaboration with other Trust schools
- Working parties
- Participation in Trust wide projects such as Reading Reconsidered
- Participation in national projects such as National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics
We encourage leaders to develop their skills in order to become Leaders in Excellence and work across schools in the L.E.A.D. Teaching School Hub. We have Leaders of Excellence in mathematics, reading, subject leadership and special educational needs and disabilities as well as the headteacher engaging in work for the L.E.A.D. Teaching School Hub. Through deepening our own professional knowledge in order to support other schools, we also bring back new insights that can help us further develop our own provision.
As a member of L.E.A.D. Multi Academy Trust, we have access to a wide range of high quality CPD opportunities from the L.E.A.D. Teaching School Hub.