HLTA FORUM
Brief Notes from the meeting
Friday 28 January 2011
Venue: St Barnabas and St Philips
Dear Colleagues,
This was the ninth meeting of the HLTA Forum in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. I would like to thank the HLTA’s Headteachers and schools for supporting this initiative.
The overall aims of the HLTA Forum are as follows:
· Provide professional development opportunities for HLTA(s)
· Facilitate information sharing
· Support the dissemination of learning across the authority
HLTAs and their Headteachers are encouraged to forward any items they wish to be included at a future Forum
Yours,
Maddy Luxon (AST for Support Staff; )
HLTAs present:
Dawn Parent (St Barnabas and St Philips)
Krystyna Miller (Oratory R C Primary School)
Lynn Greenland (Marlborough Primary School)
Fatima DaSilva (St Francis of Assisi RC Primary School)
Aadilla Bronkhurst (Park Walk School)
Julie Ballantyne(St Francis of Assisi)
Gemma Enoch (Ashburnham Community School)
Carol Hylton (Holy Trinity C E Primary School)
Lynn Thomas (St Mary Abbots)
Lorrie Knight (Oxford Gardens Primary School) aspiring HLTA
Brief Notes
1. Welcome and brief and ‘brief notes’ from last Forum
· HLTA funding may have ceased but 13 HLTAs were assessed before the 31st December 2010 deadline for fully funded assessment
· Lorrie Knight, Julie Ballantyne and Carol Hylton all need to be added to the Fronter HLTA Room
· The decision was made to allow all Teaching Assistants to access the HLTA Fronter room (for read only – no editing rights)
· All Fronter passwords have changed!
· HLTAs present were enthusiastic about the SEN Conference replacing the summer HLTA Forum (24th May)
· A formal email will be sent to HLTAs which they will present to their line manager – costs will be kept to an absolute minimum (but travel and lunch will have to be funded). HLTAs may decide the conference is more appropriate to experienced TAs with a SEN specialism. Schools can choose to send an HLTA and an experienced TA.
· Support Staff Newsletter was well received and HLTAs are encouraged to forward their “Impact Stories” to be included in future editions (Aadila agreed that we could include her story about her ‘Maths Matters’ - Maths Intervention programme - and the difference this made to the children’s maths levels)
· HLTAs agreed to play a role in circulating the Newsletter – as far as possible pointing colleagues to the link on the CPD pages (http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/educationandlearning/cpdforschools/supportstafftraining.aspx )
2. Developing HLTAs as Coaches: Developing your skills to use the GROW Coaching model with children and colleagues by Karen Hope
· GROW model introduced (Goal, Reality, Options, What will you do?). HLTAs applied the model in practice with each other – prompt questions attached to the end of these brief notes.
· HLTAs found challenging – not to slip into giving advice!
· Questions are very useful to elicit the level of commitment to action from the coachee
· Applicable to role in school and also wider life
3. HLTA and Performance Management led by Maddy Luxon
· Using pupil performance data to demonstrate impact will be developed in a future HLTA Forum – few HLTAs are engaging with Assessment Data (despite how ‘data rich’ our schools are)
· Issue around evaluating the impact HLTAs have on learning – need for more focus on data and data-use by HLTAs (for example, during the Performance Management process and as part of school self evaluation)
· HLTAs encouraged to prepare for the Performance Management process by auditing their performance against the HLTA standards (in a similar way to how the teachers use the Professional Standards for teachers)
4. Tour of the school
· Another interesting and inspirational tour
5. Professional Sharing and Updates
HLTAs shared some strategies and resources in the time remaining
For example, “The DigiSmart Zone” to develop safe internet practices with children at St Barnabas and St Philips. This comprises lessons with Workbooks, assessment and certification
Visit www.digismart.net
Date of Next forum:
Tuesday 24 May 2011, SEN Conference Parkwood Hall Special School, Swanley, Kent (TBC – details to follow)
Possible Coaching Questions
Strengths
(Important in helping to maintain self-esteem at high levels,- the skill is in picking up an individual's strengths and feeding them back throughout the coaching process.)
Remember to look for and draw attention to the strengths of the person being coached throughout. Affirm the positive.
ü What strengths do you have that could help you here?
ü What would your most trusted colleague / friend / confidante say were your greatest attributes?
ü What strengths have helped you to manage / cope so far?
General points for the whole process
It’s helpful to reflect back what you hear (paraphrase) to clarify / confirm your understanding.
ü Are you saying that…
ü You seem to be saying…. Have I heard that correctly?
Sharing your observations (rather than your judgements) is a necessary part of the process at times.
ü I noticed …
ü I’m going to share an observation…
Possible Coaching Questions
Goal
ü What would you like to have achieved by the end of this coaching session?
ü What do you want?
ü Go ahead to a time in the future when you have achieved your goal. What is it like?
ü What will it look like? Sound like? Feel like? When do you want to have achieved it by?
ü What excites you about this goal?
ü Think into the future when you have achieved this.What do you feel like?
ü How will you know when you have achieved this target?
ü Imagine that you wake up in the morning and a magic wand has been waved. All the problems surrounding this issue have been resolved and everything is perfect. How do you know the miracle has occurred?
ü When will you accomplish this target?
Possible Coaching Questions
Real situation
ü What is the current situation?
ü What do you feel about this right now?
ü What is missing here that you would like to have?
ü What are the problems this is causing?
ü What have you already tried doing to improve things and what were the outcomes?
ü How does it feel at the moment?
ü What are the current obstacles to achieving your target?
ü What resources do you need to overcome your obstacles?
ü Look back at your target. Is it still what you want/need?
Possible Coaching Questions
Options
ü What might you do if you could move yourself a step forward now?
ü What could you do if you didn't have to explain it to anyone else? How would that feel?
ü What could you do if resources / time / parents / school / teacher / students / friend and so on were not blocks here? (Insert the limitation they have identified.)
ü What could you do if you did not have to live with the results of your actions?
ü Brainstorm one of the options you have come up with.What other ideas are sparked off?
ü If you secretly knew what the answer was, what would it be?
ü If you had answers lurking just below the surface and you shared them now, what might you share? And what else?
ü From your options, which is the quickest/easiest/cheapest/most comfortable/least comfortable/most effective thing to do?
ü Now go through each option. Remind yourself of your target. How will the option you have chosen move you closer to your target?
ü What is the benefit of doing the thing that you have chosen?
ü What will you know that's new by doing' this?
ü What impact will it have on you/your colleagues/your role/students and so on?
Possible Coaching Questions
What will you do?
ü OK, we’ve generated quite a few possibilities. Which one are you going to go for?
ü What are you definitely going to do?
ü When would be a good time to try this? What day? Morning or afternoon? (Be really specific here)
ü What are the steps?
ü Go forward to the time when this is already achieved. Looking back, what did you do to get there?
ü When will you take these steps?
ü Who else (if anyone) should be involved in this process? What will they do? How will they know this?
ü When will you review your progress towards your target?
ü What are the barriers to your taking that first step? How likely is it to stop you? What can be done to overcome it?
ü How sensible is your timescale?
ü Can you summrise for me what you’ve decided to do?
(Many of the real situation questions can work here too.)