Online Focus on Teaching course: Writing

• A better understanding of why the topic/approach is challenging and to feel they are part of a community who are facing these challenges together.
• A good understanding of what success in the focus area looks like, so they know what they/their learners are aiming for.
• Opportunities to see/experience teaching activities/examples of good practice they could take-away and use in their classrooms or schools.
• A clear set of next steps for approaching the challenges. The next steps should provide a scaffold for teachers to make small, manageable and sustainable changes to their practice.

The first work package is to provide or curate materials which explains to the participants what the fundamental elements are to the particular area you are focusing on.

This might be an extract from an existing document, e.g. a Getting Started With guide, or a short video of yourself explaining the concepts, or something you have written yourself.

The material should, wherever possible, be supported by relevant educational research. The Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit is a good starting point, as are our Getting Started with guides and the Great Teaching Toolkit. The Teaching Activities handout exemplifies the kind of rationale we are looking for.

We also need the text to be provided on-screen to introduce the materials you are producing/curating. Please provide one paragraph explaining why these will help participants to understand approaches to the area/topic you are focusing on.

Do not use images, video or other materials from third parties – we will not be able to use this in our courses.

There are some examples below to show a variety of approaches to this work package.

The materials for this package provide an opportunity to see examples of what good looks like. This will help teachers to understand and visualise what they/their learners are aiming for.

We need you to provide two examples of successful outcomes for understanding the element your course is focusing on. These could be successful exam responses, pieces of class work or homework. Alternatively, it could be something you have made or recorded for this course, e.g., a video demonstration or example documentation. If you are providing examples of student work, please ensure you have permission to use this.

Make sure that whatever you provide, it addresses these key questions:

• What is the activity/resource/example?
• What is it good for?
• Why are we suggesting it? What does the research say (see Work Package 1)?
• How/why does it work?
• If it is something a teacher would use in their classroom, how would they introduce it?
• If it is a classroom activity, what questions could teachers ask during/after it?

Do not use images, video or other materials from third parties – we will not be able to use this in our courses.

There are some examples below to show a variety of approaches to this work package.

When you have completed all of the commission, please save all of the documents into one folder and then zip this. You can then upload this zip file in one action to Basecamp.

If you do not zip the contents, every file has to be uploaded and then downloaded individually which takes a large amount of time.

You can prompt the system to send an email to notify the colleague who set up the project that you have uploaded your files.