Professional Development Opportunities

At Richmond Hill, we pride ourselves in ensuring that we utilise the most up to date research led evidence in order to inform our teaching and learning offer. We want to ensure that our pupils receive the very best teaching and learning and are therefore committed to ensuring that our staff have access to quality professional development opportunities throughout the academic year. 

We provide weekly incremental coaching sessions for all staff to ensure that teaching and learning is of the highest standard, is taught consistently well and the curriculum is delivered in a way that meets the needs of our children. In order to support this, the school purchases the Great Teaching Toolkit, a staff professional development platform, which provides access to the most impactful and up to date educational research. Additionally to this, our teaching assistants partake in regular incremental coaching sessions facilitated by our SENCO, to support the high quality provision provided for our SEND pupils. 

At Richmond Hill, we value high quality training for our whole staff team therefore individual CPD opportunities are also sought to allow for further development including accessing a range of NPQ opportunies . This ensures that our children are taught and supported by a skilled team of educators. Furthermore, we pride ourselves on supporting the development of ECT cohorts and have a number of staff accredited to delvier the ECT programme of study and Mentor ITT students. 

We are very proud to be able to offer to colleagues wider to our school and trust, the two prestigious training and development opportunities below. These are facelifted by our school staff and are explained further below.

Let's Think in English Training Hub

Richmond Hill Primary Academy is delighted to be working in partnership with Let’s Think in English. We are proud to be a hub school, offering training and support to our colleagues across the country.

At Richmond Hill, children from Year Two to Year Six experience a Let’s Think in English (LTE) lesson once every two weeks. Our Year One children begin the programme about half way through the year, once they have sufficiently learned the necessary skills such as turn-taking and listening. It is often cited as children’s favourite lesson – see the bottom of this page for some videos from lessons to see for yourself why so many children love it.

LTE and the hub school is led by Kelly Cousins, Ben Lodge and Laura Vickers. All have been trained in the Leading LTE course and are experienced and passionate practitioners. If you have any queries regarding the hub school please do not hesitate to get in touch.

What is Let’s Think in English and why use it?

Based on over thirty years of research from King’s College, London, Let's Think in English is a cognitive acceleration program designed to develop thinking skills through engagement with challenging texts. Let's Think in English is based on Vygotsky's social constructivist learning theory and Piaget's cognitive development principles, emphasizing the importance of cognitive challenge and social interaction in developing higher-order thinking skills.

The program uses high-quality literature, poetry, and other texts as a vehicle to develop children's cognitive abilities, particularly focusing on:

• Inferential thinking
• Reasoning skills
• Metacognition (thinking about thinking)
• Collaborative discussion skills
• Critical analysis

The program has been shown to help children:

• Develop deeper comprehension skills
• Become more confident in expressing and justifying their ideas
• Transfer thinking skills to other curriculum areas
• Improve their ability to engage with increasingly complex texts
• Enhance general reasoning abilities

What a lesson looks like

Let's Think in English sessions follow this structure:

1. Concrete Preparation: The teacher presents a carefully stimulus to the class using access strategies where appropriate to ensure it is accessible to all.
2. Social Construction: Students share their thinking in small groups or as a whole class, with the teacher facilitating rather than directing.
3. Cognitive Conflict: Children engage with thought-provoking questions that require them to:
• Make inferences beyond the literal
• Consider multiple interpretations
• Justify their thinking with evidence
• Build upon others' ideas
4. Metacognition: Time is dedicated to reflecting on the thinking processes used during the session.
5. Bridging: Follow up lessons will refer back to the LTE lesson and the reasoning skills developed in order to allow children to apply those skills in different contexts.

(Taken from the official Let's Think in English website: About Let's Think in English - Let's Think in English)

For more information on the programme, please contact admin@richmond.doncaster.sch.uk or call Kelly Cousins (Principal & LTE Hub Lead) on 01302 782421.

Opening Doors Training Hub

Richmond Hill Primary Academy is delighted to be working in partnership withOpening Doors to Writing. We are proud to be a hub school, offering training and support to our colleagues across the country.