Stage Two Secondary Submission – Allie Keating

I am Numeracy Leading Learner at Maltby Comprehensive School and

have recently completed my NQT year. I will examine how I could
successfully organise and coordinate a gifted and talented masterclass for
more able students, by working with colleagues and particularly an
assistant head, who will assist me in the organising and dealing with
colleagues within my LA and schools throughout my catchment area.

Preparing for the Learning Journey

Consider and describe the context in which you are working; how does
your setting, the children you teach or national or local policies affect
what you want to achieve?

I have completed my NQT year in a mixed 11-18 comprehensive school with

approximately 1500 students on roll. I currently have a TLR role as Numeracy
Leading Learner, the main focus of my role being to raise the profile of Numeracy
across the school and the curriculum, to ultimately raise achievement. I have vested
interest to raise the achievement at my Maltby Comprehensive School, not only
because of my commitment to the school, but due to the fact that I was in fact a
student of the school and feel a personal onus to raise the attainment within my local
community.

During my training year I taught two top set year seven groups, and until Christmas
last year taught the top set year 7 students, of which, over 60% were identified as
being gifted or talented. Commitments with Year 11 unfortunately meant that I could

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no linger teach these students so offering a gifted and talented provision would mean
that I could still support these students with their learning.

The local authorities aim is to encourage all pupils to fulfil their potential; their
potential therefore needs to be identified and nurtured. It is important that there is
clarity about how these needs are identified and those policies are in place to meet
them. Schools and parents are becoming increasingly aware that the most able
pupils have an entitlement to an appropriate curriculum, which will enable them to
achieve in relation to their abilities. The development of the ‘Gifted and Talented
Strand’ of the ‘Excellence in Cities’ initiative has enabled schools and LAs to focus
more closely on provision for our more able and talented pupils.

How is this relevant to your current role and career development? Who
else is
it relevant to?

I aspire to become an Advanced Skills Teacher at my school, and see my

career progressing through a role of Learning Specialist as soon as a
vacancy becomes available for me to apply for. I feel that working with
Gifted and Talented students will increase the breadth of my teaching
repertoire and allow me to experience teaching students who with help,
are capable of achieving well above the national expectations.

My training year did not give me much experience of working with gifted
and talented students, however as my role within school has progressed I
have begun to increase my experience of working within primary schools,
leading my to become an active member and chair of a Primary Learning
Team which has been running now for 3 terms successfully and has now
entered its second year. As I have become more confident in my own
teaching and management skills I have taken on responsibility as chair to
the PLT meetings which run half termly.

I feel that the context that I have chosen will have a significant effect on
my career development, both on my teaching and management
experience as well as my experience of coordinating cross phase

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initiatives. In addition to this it will have an effect on the professional
development of colleagues in my working team, and the students who will
attend the classes. Ultimately, we will be able to disseminate our
evaluations of the masterclasses to the schools within the network cluster
and improve the provision for gifted and talented students.

What do you already know about the area of change you are interested
in?

I have experience in the area I wish to change from working as a Maths

teacher in a Saturday morning Master Class at a Wickersley secondary
school within our network cluster. I have attended and worked with an
AST from a different Network cluster to gain experience and share good
practice. I also worked with the same AST at a gifted and talented
summer camp in Macedonia in 2006 and 2007.

I have read research on gifted and talented provision and had meetings
with the LA coordinator for gifted and talented children regarding the
experiences our local gifted and talented students are offered. This,
coupled with my experiences of teaching at the Wickersley Masterclass
has given me the confidence to go ahead and coordinate a masterclass as
I realise how significant extra provision can be for the students learning.

Start discussions with a coach or mentor about the focus of your change
and
learning. Following this dialogue, decide on your focus.

Rachel Nash, the assistant head has agreed to be my mentor and Michael
Swann, Leading Learner for Teaching and Learning has agreed to be my
co-coach. I will also have the support of Joy Blaker, the Gifted and
Talented coordinator for the LA and Farouk Gossiel, an Advanced Skills
Teacher who is coaching me to becoming an AST and with whom I will
share good practice.

Evaluation ideas were discussed with Rachel and are outlined in my

learning plan.

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Creating a Plan:
Learning and change focus:

Developing practice after considering the evidence provided by relevant

literature and research findings; creating a provision for gifted and talented

students; extending my own teaching and management experience to coordinate

a cross phase learning initiative.

Learning objectives

1. Identify your personal learning objective(s)

To identify and develop a programme of out of hours provision for
gifted and talented students, increasing my ability to teach, lead
and coordinate, in order to maximise gifted and talented students
learning experience.

2. What will your outcomes be?

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  The development of my own teaching ability, and the
teaching ability of my staff.

 A successful out of hour’s masterclass, where teachers feel

confident and learners feel challenged but enjoy learning.

 Students will receive a better provision which will support

and enhance their current learning experience.

3. How will you know that the learning objectives have

been met?

My experiences will have affected my day to day teaching and I can

confidently disseminate my experiences between my department
and other collegues within the network schools and surrounding
masterclasses.

Students will give me positive feedback about the activities that are
provided for them and how it differs, yet supports their current
curriculum learning.

Parents will give me positive feedback on how the master class is

affecting their children’s attitudes to learning and their opinions of
the provision from the network for their gifted and talented children.

Actions
What is the timescale for achieving your learning
objective(s)? 3 terms (September - April)

Key dates:
Action Date
Teaching at Wickersley Masterclass Saturday morning September 2006 –

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10-12pm Christmas 2006
Weekly meeting with Rachel Nash Wednesday mornings October 2006 –

7.30 – 8.30am January 2007

Fortnightly co-coaching session with Michael on November 2006 -

Tuesday evenings after TLR briefing March 2007

Meetings with Rachel and Joy Blaker to go through November 2006,

planning and staffing for masterclass December 2006

Meeting with Rachel, Joy and Adrienne Neale (Gifted December 2006

and Talented assistant coordinator for the Clifton

Network)
Meeting with Farouk Gossiel (AST-Swinton) to discuss November 2006

coordination and planning of teaching materials

Meetings with Primary learning team and Primary September 2006 –

Headteachers to discuss planned provision January 2007

CPD – improving mathematics by interactive teaching November 2006

methods – delivered by Lead practitioner

Meetings with my staff to plan provision and then November – February

organise resources etc for each teaching block 2007

Meeting with Senior Leadership team to present November 2007

masterclass proposal
Preparation of first questionnaire for pupils and February 2007

parents with Rachel, staff and Joy Blaker

Meeting with assistant Head Stephen Blundell to March 2007

discuss data and assessment of pupils

Meeting with staff to discuss planning and May 2007

sustainability of Masterclass into subsequent years.

Evaluation of first year of masterclass using evaluation June 2007

form from students and parents

Recruitment of students for 2007/8 academic year July 2007

Resources including sources of support and challenge

Rachel and Michael during our mentoring and co-coaching sessions.

Farouk during mentoring and sharing good practice sessions.

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Learning Agreement – Attached for Rachel

Progress review

See above

Sharing of learning and progress with others - plan with key

dates

I have shared my planning with the SLT team for my school, Head
teachers and Staff at the feeder primaries for my school and to the
Network for which the masterclass serves.

I will repeat this cycle, and in addition be making a presentation at a

staff meeting in March/April 2007.

Evaluation - plan with timings and actions

Feedback from students – I would like to give them 2 questionnaires, one

at the end of the first half term, one at the end of the second.
Feedback from Parents – I would like to give them a questionnaire about
the learning experience of their children and if their perception of the
school and provision has changed.
Feedback from Rachel at M and C sessions (throughout)
Feedback from Joy Blaker, informally throughout and formally at the end of
the programme
Feedback from members of staff who are teaching in my team
(throughout)
Informal feedback from others (throughout)
Positive performance management review and passing of NQT year

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On the learning journey:

Weekly coaching and mentoring sessions with Rachel

The meetings that I have had with Rachel have been invaluable. She has
facilitated my coordination of the master class and has directed me and
mentored me at every step of the planning stage. Our meetings have
been extremely frequent and have not stayed confined to the weekly
meeting we had planned.

As we had to move very quickly in order to secure funding for my project, I

was forced to examine my own skills in dealing with the LA in order to
achieve what I had set out to. Rachel was able to mentor to so that I felt
confident to operate with colleagues in an assertive manner.

She has been able to mentor me so that I am able to recruit staff, making
sure that I set clear intentions that relate specifically to my objectives,
purposefully setting my expectations, something which I found particularly
challenging to members of my professional peer group, and staff that are
considerably older than myself.

I feel that I have developed an excellent relationship with Rachel and have
already begun new project with her that I perhaps may not have had the
opportunity to do had I not taken up this opportunity to be mentored. I
find her mentoring particularly useful and inspiring as she has risen to a
high position in a relatively short space of time, something which I also

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aspire to do, so will no doubt carry on this mentoring well after this project
is deemed a success.

The co-coaching with Michael has allowed me to increase my skills in

teaching and learning and has allowed me to develop my relationship with
him so that we can continue to work together on future teaching and
learning ventures.

Michael and I have made a recording of our experience of the Gifted and
talent masterclass and the response of the students, by videoing part of a
masterclass session. We have used these as a discussion and have
thought about alternative approaches we could take. We have helped
each other to start and identify our strengths and weaknesses and have to
come to the conclusion that we need to continue our observations and
also bring in external observers such as Farouk to further our
development.

As Michael also aspires to become an Advanced Skills Teacher in Science,

we have decided to continue this co-coaching by carrying out mini projects
relating to our Leading Learner role.

We will present our experience of co-coaching in the NQT programme this

year and hopefully integrate this into the ITT programme in subsequent
years.

4 th October 2006

I had a meeting with Rachel Nash to begin discussions about coordinating

a masterclass at Maltby Comprehensive School, she mentored me and
gave me advice as to who we would need to speak to and what we would
need to propose.

7th November 2006

I consulted with Michael and Farouk to produce a proposal to be put to the

local LA. I took this to Rachel who thought it was excellent and pointed

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out a few alterations before it was sent off. As luck had it, the Wickersley
Master Class was due to finish which left an opening for another school to
offer provision, however, the emphasis was that we had to move quickly
as other schools wanted to offer a programme and the budget was limited
to one school.

10th November 2006

Meeting with Joy Blaker and Rachel Nash. Rachel mentored me before the
meeting and highlighted the main aspects that I would need to draw from
the meeting, making sure that our needs were attended to as far as the LA
could provide. This helped me to tackle the meeting in a more assertive
way and I feel, which Rachel substantiated, that the meeting was a
success and that the proposal can go ahead.

10th November 2006

Meeting with staff. Again Rachel helped me with the agenda however I
felt more comfortable in discussing this as a new venture and an exciting
opportunity for the school and the individual staff. We developed very
quickly a programme overview for gifted and talented students in the area
of Maths, Science and English.

11th December 2006

Meeting with Rachel, Joy Blaker and Adrienne Neale to discuss the funding
for the Master Class. I felt much more confident about this meeting and
was able to put across my argument and requests in an extremely
successful way. This was backed up by Rachel, who said that I had
improved significantly in my confidence over the last couple of months. I
was confident as it is a project that I have a great deal of knowledge about
now, and have gained the confidence to say what I need for the project to
be a success. I have a much clearer idea of how to approach people in the
correct way in order to get what you want, a skill that I believed that I
possessed before beginning this project, however, fell my mentoring from
Rachel has allowed me to develop this and use is a more productive way.

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An example of this was over payment for my staff. The LA weren’t keen to
change the way in which staff had been paid from the previous master
class, however, I believed that my staff were offering a different
experience, with greater planning therefore deserved more money, this
was met by some hesitation, however I reasoned at the meeting, which
came to a decision which went my way. From that I was given control
over the funding for my masterclass, therefore increasing again my
responsibility for the project.

13th December 2006

Presentation to Senior Leadership team to put forward the plan for the
Master Class – The Head Teacher was fully supportive and agreed for me
to work alongside Rachel adapting the schools policy for gifted and
talented provision. From this meeting I had identified the students that I
would be inviting in consultation with the LA and the Network staff. It was
encouraging that the primary schools that I had identified later began to
nominate further individuals, which meant they were obviously identifying
students that deserved recognition and extra provision for their abilities.

12th January 2007

Staff meeting – Rachel was present in this meeting as it was to discuss

payment of my staff, contracts and roles and responsibilities. Rachel
coached me to set my expectations of staff clearly and high, which I did so
successfully. I also took feedback from then on how successful the
planning of the project had gone and how confident they felt with teaching
as a result of my management and coaching. They were all extremely
forthcoming with positive comments and are all looking forward to getting
started.

20th January 2007

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First Masterclass. I had to address all the children with their parents and
make it clear what the aims and objectives of the master class were. This
was easier than I thought, although I was still extremely nervous. Rachel
said that I handled it well by keeping it short and direct. The actual
teaching went well, and as Farouk had told me, I felt much more confident
teaching within my own surrounding, I feel that I will be a more successful
practitioner than I was at the Wickersley Master Class.

10th February 2007

The masterclass has now completed a half term and has been from the
outset extremely successful. Staff morale remains high and I can see the
positive impact the programme is having on the students. I am now
looking forward to evaluating it.

Rachel left on Maternity leave at Easter and has now left me with sole
responsibility for the Gifted and talented masterclass. I have continued to
work with Michael as a co-coach.

15th March 2007

Meeting with staff to look at planning for the final term, Michael and
myself both have a firm idea of where the masterclass is going and the
fact that we need to recruit more students from outside the area within
the network. This needs to be done in laision with Joy Blaker as our
timetables restrict us doing so.

8th June 2007

Dissemination meeting with staff and consultants for LA. Extremely
successful with the majority of feedback from parents and students, with
92% of students currently attending identifying that they wish to continue
with the masterclass next year. Feedback from the LA has highlighted
Maltby as the most successful masterclasses with the highest attendance
rate of the network, all of which will contribute to its sustainability.

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The learning breakthrough

For me, the breakthrough came after a conversation I had had with a
school governor at the end of a meeting to discuss the first half term of
the Master class. The meeting had gone well and Rachel was pleased with
the presentation that I had made, and had mentored myself and Michael
so that we could produce an accurate analysis of the data we had
received, primarily the schools from which the students came.

This data allowed me to instruct Joy Blaker from the LA to chase up

children that weren’t attending and also allowed me to put forward a
convincing argument as to ensure funding come April for the Master class
to continue.

The governor Mrs Darnell had many comments to make to me after the
meeting. She first of all commented on how well she thought the Master
class was going and the progress that she felt it had achieved since the
move from the previous secondary school venue. One of the main points
and perhaps for me the most significant was the fact that Mrs Darnell’s
daughter, Megan, had been registered and attended the previous Master
Class and had spoken extremely highly of the improvements that were
obviously apparent to her since the new Master class had been set up.

Megan said that the Master class was ‘exciting’ and ‘enjoyable’ and that
she felt proud that the Master Class was being held at her school which

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was an excellent morale boost and made me feel extremely delighted and
proud.

Mrs Darnell said that she was very happy with the way the Master Class
had been organised, and in particular the emphasis I had put onto student
learning and the dynamic staff that I had recruited. She was impressed
that I was in my NQT year and had set up such a massive project. I felt
happy, but in a discussion with my mentor admitted that I would not have
been able to do the task that I had actually done had I not received the
support from her.

The conversation with Mrs Darnell spurred me onto complete the Master
class with even more successes, particularly in my teaching. For this I
focussed in more on my co-coaching with Michael. We discussed methods
of teaching and learning and how to integrate these into our Master
Classes. We discussed the possibility of videoing each other after Easter
once I have secured funding to increase my staff.

The feedback I have received has been very positive from the students,
and for me, abolishes any feedback that comes from my mentor, Michael,
parents or other staff, as I feel very strongly that the Master Class must be
successful and enjoyable for the children, as they are forfeiting their
Saturday mornings to be able to come into school and receive extra
provision.

Another reinforcement of this success, and perhaps a second

breakthrough moment came at and open evening and a conversation a
parent was having with one of the Assistant Head in charge of core
subjects, Stephen Blundell. Stephen introduced me to the parents who
had a Year 6 pupil and had brought his son to the open evening. He
explained that the parents had previously had a relatively poor view on
the school, which the parent self admittedly held from a legacy of hearsay.
Despite this, his son had expressed an adamant wish to attend the school
because of the positive experience he had at the Master Class which in the
parent’s opinion was down to the teaching experience he had achieved
and the way the Master Class had been run.

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When I discussed this with Rachel she said that that is what I deserve due
to the work that I have put in, and I felt hugely rewarded for all the work
that Rachel had put in the mentoring, Michael had out in co-coaching, my
staff in completing planning and teaching, and myself in the coordination
and teaching. I will definitely be disseminating the work in NQT meetings
with Michael, the Primary Learning Team for which I am chair, with the
AST who I am working closely with, and other schools primary and
secondary within my Network cluster of schools.

I have recently secured funding to take the Master Class forward into the
next academic year. I have discussed with Michael the possibility of
employing more staff to relieve me of as much teaching, so that I can take
on more of a consultant role to the master class, allowing me to analyse to
programme in more detail, and cut down my planning time so that I can
focus on my next learning journey, for which I will hopefully work closely
with Rachel or another member of SLT to complete and further my
professional development and my career.

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