Subject Monitoring

[Guest AlisonE]

Hi I am interested to know what goes on in other schools - I work in FS2. One of our school policies is that subject leaders have to monitor teaching in each class 2 or 3 times a year. I find this a bit of a bugbear as very few of them seem to understyand foundation stage teaching, and don't seem to be looking for the right things! They expect discrete lessons in 3 parts etc and I aleays find myself having to explain how that isn't appropriate etc. Does anyone else have thisd problem ?? Do other schools monitor in this way? I'ds be really interested to hear.

[Susan]

Hi Alison and welcome.

 

I think that is a common problem although when I was FS coord in a large infant school, I worked with an enlightened head and the FS subject monitoring was done mostly by myself and I fed back to the subject coords about what we did etc.

 

Where schools have implemented phase coordinator roles for TLRs, this seems to work better.

[Guest]

Hi Alison

 

We monitor in our school but try to keep it to a minimum. I am SL for Literacy, P.E, Art, D+t and FS/KS1. The only subjects we monitor by observing is lit and num. We scrutinise books and planning for other areas.

 

I've just been observed teaching numeracy to my recption by Y6 teacher. i put the 3 parts in but they only last for 5 mins max each and i split the 3 parts up over an hour. the rest of the time chn do an adult led activity or child initiated. She was quite happy with that.

 

We also try to double up observations etc ie if i observe literacy it can count towards an NQTs 'NQT observation' also.

 

hope this is of use!

[Guest AlisonE]

Thanks Susan and Moo

It is really helpful to see what happens elsewhere, - our head is rather junior orientated, and doesn't like how FS is "different" and doesn't fit into the same boxes! I like the idea of you Numeracy split into 3 separated bits Moo, I usually do it with 2 bits together and a third later, but your way is better!