Building consistency at Chailey School

The school

Chailey School in East Sussex set out to make teaching more consistent across the school. The work began with a teaching and learning charter setting out a shared approach, followed by cycles of professional development built around it.

The approach

Chailey designed the charter and its professional development itself. DistillED+ resources played a supporting role, giving teachers something to return to as they moved through each cycle.

The cycle

Participation is one of the charter’s areas, with strategies including mini-whiteboards and call and response. The cycle began with a whole-school professional development session on participation. Teachers then went back to their faculties to decide what participation should look like in their subject. Next came choice sessions, usually four to six of them, that teachers could sign up to, each focused on a single strategy such as mini-whiteboards or call and response.

The resources

The DistillED+ one-pagers and checklists were used during those sessions, then taken back to faculties to share and to act as reminders of the key points. They went out again in the daily briefing notes the following week and the following term, so the strategies stayed visible long after the session itself.

The result

For Emily Akehurst, Assistant Headteacher, the most immediate difference has been workload. The resources save her from producing handouts and point her towards further research and reading as she plans. For teachers, they provide “quick, clear, informative resources to refer back to.”

The impact has reached classrooms too. Classroom practice in the charter’s focus areas has improved across the school, Emily says, and staff are now more consistent in how they talk about teaching and learning.

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Quick, clear, informative resources to refer back to.

Emily Akehurst

“There are so many ways that you can use these resources. We have used it to support our whole school professional development but it could also be used to support during coaching sessions. A great resource!”

Emily Akehurst