Helen O’Donoghue
Director of Sunridge Associates
COBIS EYFS Conference, Byron College, Athens
28th and 29th October 2016
Helen O’Donoghue has been an international educator for more than twenty five years. She has been the Principal of two large international schools and most recently was the Executive Head Teacher of two Free Schools in London. She is passionate about children’s learning and helping schools improve and become more learning focussed. Helen was Assistant Director for Professional Development at Fieldwork Education, a role that took her to many parts of the world, Malaysia, China, Vietnam, France, Holland, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland as well as working with schools in the UK. Her key strength is working with schools from their unique starting point, coaching and mentoring them on their journey to become more learning focussed. Helen is now a freelance consultant and trainer, working closely with leadership teams to help their schools improve, with a particular focus on children’s learning. She is an accredited trainer for “Thinking Schools International” and remains an associate trainer for Fieldwork Education. She is Director of her own learning focussed company Sunridge Associates TLC,
‘We should be preparing children for the test of life and not a life of tests.’
Art Costa
Come and join this round table discussion about developing effective assessment for learning in the early years. We will consider what effective assessment should look like, sound like, feels like in the early years and how we can develop this for our children.
We will consider how assessment for learning can celebrate the child’s learning journey and help inform future planning and maximize future learning for the child.
Please come prepared to share your best practice with others about your effective use of assessment and how this is used to improve learning for your children in your setting.
Creating the learning focused school.
Schools are about learning and most importantly about improving children’s learning. Too often the emphasis has been on teaching and the management of schools. During this session we will look at how we can take back the emphasis to focus on learning.
This session we will look at all the components that make a school and how they can become more learning focused. We will consider the role of teachers as teachers for learning and how they can be supported through systems and structures that focus on learning. This session will have special emphasis on the early years setting and what is needed particularly for early years teachers to keep the focus on learning.