In this week’s TES Professional, Stephen Munday, headteacher at the Comberton Village College and CEO of Comberton Academy Trust, explains why his school became an academy, what role the head has to take in the process and the benefits and challenges of conversion. It is the first in a five-part series looking at academies and MATs that aims to provide all the information school leaders need about the process.
How to handle the class fidgets
Meanwhile, US elementary school teacher Greg McGrath explains how he has a novel way of approaching the issue of fidgeting students: an energy check station. He outlines how he has a corner of his classroom where students can go to ‘self-regulate’ their energy levels by doing activities to either calm them down or give them a boost.
Seven ways to keep gang culture out of the classroom
TES writer Helen Amass has interviewed the people behind a new report outlining strategies schools should adopt to ensure gang culture does not seep through the school gates. The organisation Catch22 conducted extensive research in Pupil Referral Units in major cities and has come to several interesting conclusions, including the need to adapt the curriculum for those students at-risk of exclusion from mainstream schools.
Finding the consistency sweet spot
Simon Knight, deputy headteacher at Frank Wise school in Banbury, outlines how school leaders can find the sweet spot between consistency and flexibility. He talks through four key areas of focus and ends with the advice that if you want to have confidence in the big picture, “you need to keep an eye on the small stuff”.
‘We need to stop talking about extremes when discussing headship’
In her first column for TES, Future Leaders acting chief executive Jacqueline Russell calls for headship to be made more approachable by putting an end to a fascination with super heads and super failures. The vast majority of heads are between these extremes, she says, so let’s talk about the real nature of the job.
Using ed tech to tackle SPaG
Our resident ed tech columnist sets her sights on what the world of tehcnology has to offer teachers who are looking to tackle spelling, grammar and punctuation. Not only does she list a top set of apps, she advises classes get on Twitter and start correcting the tweets of celebrities... and then tweeting them the corrections.
Read all these articles in full in the 6 May edition of TES. This week’s TES magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here
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