FOREST FARM

SCHOOL SENIOR SCHOOL TEACHERS’ GUIDE

Welcome to Forest Farm! Please take the time to read this document carefully: it outlines

your role within the school, the support available to you and the expectations that we have

of our teachers.

SEPTEMBER 2013 – AUGUST 2014

FOREST FARM SCHOOL

NEW TEACHERS’ PACK

CONTENTS

1. Ethos and Pedagogy

2. Staff list

3. Professionalism

4. Termly Planning

5. Lesson Planning

6. Lesson Reporting

7. Student Reports

8. Google Apps

a. Gmail

b. Drive

c. Calendar

d. Other services

9. Finances and invoicing

In this document we will use the Oxfordshire County Council terminology of a

‘term’ being the roughly six-week block between each holiday. There are therefore

six terms in an academic year.

Many sections have the take-home message highlighted in an orange box, like on

the right here.

1. THE SCHOOL AND MONTESSORI EDUCATION

We have grown as a school (and thereby acquired our name) from the Montessori movement, but at the

senior level have tended to use a broad variety of progressive educational techniques, always matched to the

National Curriculum. Our ethos entails a genuine respect for our students as individuals, and a desire to see

them develop into well-rounded adults through freedom, coupled with responsibility, in their schooling.

Teachers and students are on first-name terms with each other, and we seek to form meaningful relationships

such that conflicts can be resolved through support and understanding (given firmly when appropriate) rather

than compulsion and domination.

Our pedagogy emphasises the importance of child-centred, interest-led

education that enables students to acquire practical skills and knowledge that

will be of use to them in the real world. Lessons at Forest Farm tend to be hands-

on and interactive, with students encouraged to understand not only what but

why they are learning. We have high standards for teaching and learning, and

encourage our teachers to employ a variety of pedagogical approaches in lessons

including:

Mantle of the expert (see mantleoftheexpert.com/)

Project-based learning (see edutopia.org/project-based-learning)

Interest-led learning

The flipped classroom (see knewton.com/flipped-classroom/)

This does not mean that every lesson must make use of these. We trust our

teachers as professionals and believe in the great value of teacher autonomy, so do take the time to find

approaches that best enable you to act out the vision of the school.

2. SCHOOL STAFF

At Forest Farm, we only have one teacher per subject. This means that you have all of the pleasures and

responsibilities of being a kind of ‘head of department’. The subjects offered and their teachers are:

Subject Teacher

Art Tamas Malomvolgi

Computing Martyn Steiner

Design & Technology Tamas Malomvolgi

Drama Paul Whiston

English

French Samwise Garrard

Geography Judith Walker

History Franziska Becker

Learning Support Nicola Brown

Maths Henry Uniacke

Music Daniel Ardizzone

PE Paul Edward

PSHE Katie Townsend

Science Martyn Steiner

Spanish Adrian Dorantes

We are very keen for teachers to communicate with each other – the best way is often email, so see section 8

for guidance on this. You may wish to set up some cross-curricular projects, for example.

3. PROFESSIONALISM

Much of what is expected of you as a teacher is included in your letter of employment. Please do remember

though the importance of the following.

SCHOOL LIFE

We would like you to be an active member of the school community, participating in parents’ evenings,

schools trips and school events as much as possible.

TIME-MANAGEMENT

Please always ensure that your lessons start and finish at the timetabled time and that you arrive around half

an hour before the start of your first lesson of the day. This of course ensures that the students are able to

make the most of their time and that they learn the importance of good punctuality.

STAFF-STUDENT RELATIONS

We hope that you will form positive respectful relations with students, but are also conscious of the extreme

importance of safeguarding. Remember to keep your relationship with students professional and to report any

concerns to a member of senior staff. We also highly recommend that you take part in a free training morning

with Oxford Safeguarding Children Board – see http://goo.gl/fZxZvv.

BEHAVIOUR MANAGEMENT

Respect is a two-way street, and you should expect good behaviour in classes, and act to ensure this. Always

remember to share your thoughts with others if you have concerns.

DRESS CODE

The dress code for teachers at Forest Farm is smart-casual: we would prefer you to not wear jeans (or indeed

ties and suits!), for example.

4. TERMLY PLANNING

At the start of term, you should submit a termly planning

document, including the topics you intend to teach each week

and the broad learning objectives to be covered. Go to

http://goo.gl/bsrFl3 to submit the file.

We provide a template that you can use for this, which can be

found at: http://goo.gl/DvqnRQ

In order to use the template, please log in to your school email

account before visiting the link above and clicking ‘file’ and

then ‘save a copy’. You can then access a link to insert into the

start of term report by clicking ‘share’ at the top right.

You do not have to use our template though, and if you have an alternative approach that you feel happier

with, please feel free to use it. So long as the key information is communicated, the means of communication

is not important.

5. LESSON PLANNING

As we do for the termly plans, we provide an ideal-world lesson planning template (the popular ‘5 Minute

Lesson Plan’ – at http://goo.gl/WaUBLD ) for you to use, but also actively encourage you to use your

considerable skill and judgement to plan lessons in the way that best suits you.

A good plan should consider the following aspects:

Big Picture What knowledge are pupils coming to the lesson with already? What links have you made / can you make?

Objectives What should the children learn? Consider Bloom’s

taxonomy.

Engagement What’s the hook? How will you gain student attention

at the start and throughout the lesson?

Stickability What will stick in pupils’ minds as they leave your lesson? What key point(s) do you want them to remember and bring back to the next lesson?

Assessment How will you assess where your learners are at during the lesson, so you know how to develop their skills?

Key words What new words will you cover in the lesson?

Differentiation What activities you will provide for gifted and

talented students; students with SEN etc.?

Learning episodes The structure of the lesson: what is going to happen in the lesson from start to finish? Provide as many

opportunities for pupil-led learning as possible.

6. LESSON REPORTING

After each lesson that you teach, we ask you to record a brief summary of the lesson and anything noteworthy

about the students’ performance and welfare. The aims of this are to:

1. Facilitate communication between teachers (we will pass on what you share in the reports).

2. Identify characteristics of the students that are common across all lessons (which we can then work

on) and those which are seen only in

certain lesson (allowing dialogue and

sharing of best practice for supporting

them).

3. Keep a record of what has been covered in

cases of staff or student absences.

4. Have a qualitative measure of pupil

progress.

5. Ensure that lessons are appropriate and effective – we know that they almost always will be, but with

one-person departments and a lot of trust in our teachers, we need a way of picking up on any

problems as soon as possible.

7. STUDENT REPORTS

At the end of each term, we collect detailed reports on our students. These allow us to have a periodic

reflection on a students’ progress, and to feed this

information back to the student and their parents.

Our reports try to reflect all aspects of a child’s

experience at school – not only purely academic

ability, but also social, emotional and developmental aspects.

To submit you reports at the end of term, simply go to http://goo.gl/N76vdi. The reports consist of a series of

tick-boxes, followed by comments on general progress and evidence of this.

8. GOOGLE APPS

GMAIL

Teachers and students all have school Gmail accounts.

For teachers , the format of these is first name, followed

by the first initial of the surname. The teacher Maria

Montessori would therefore be

mariam@oxfordmontessori.co.uk. For students, the

email address is first name followed by surname. The

student John Smith would therefore be

johnsmith@oxfordmontessori.co.uk.

The first time you try to log on to your school email

account, your password will be letmein! – you will be immediately prompted to change this once you have

successfully logged in.

Please remember to check your email frequently, as we may send emails that need a fairly quick response.

DRIVE

Google Apps includes free storage and online editing of documents. These cover the typical Microsoft Office

programs: a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation tool and a drawings application. You can easily

share any documents you create or upload by clicking ‘share’ at the top right of the file window.

For further guidance on the use of Google Drive, please see http://goo.gl/w6NWva.

Many key staff documents are saved on Google Drive, and you will usually find that you have already been

shared into any documents that you need. When looking for a document, a good place to start may well be

clicking ‘shared with me’ in the left side bar at drive.google.com

CALENDAR

All senior school timetables are available on Google Calendar. Please contact another member of staff if you

would like to be shared into these.

OTHER APPS

Google Apps features a large and expanding range of additional applications, which you may wish to

experiment with in your teaching. You might like to create a blogger blog, like we use for Music

(montessorimattersoms.blogspot.co.uk/) and GCSE Computing (omscomputinggcse.blogspot.com). You could

also try creating a Google Site for your subject, a Google+ page to introduce yourself or all manner of other

things – be creative!

9. FINANCES AND INVOICES

You will need to submit an invoice around the 27th

of each month. Please include the classes and hours that

you taught during the month and your total invoice amount.