My experience of Prospero's CPD for Teachers: Practical Classroom Management Skills

lassroom Management Skills

The chilly morning of Saturday 6^th October saw charismatic trainer Katie facilitate a throughly enjoyable and free workshop on Practical Classroom Management Skills. Behaviour management can be tricky and demoralising at the best of times, even more so when you find yourself in a new school or as a Supply Teacher. So phew for Katie, Drama Teacher and children’s author extraordinaire whose training was uplifting and engaging.

From the outset, Katie immersed us into a classroom setting, modelling best practice for welcoming students into the classroom and setting clear expectations. She then lead us through a series of tasks that enabled us to reflect on our own experiences before analysing the types and causes of certain behaviour.

After a lunch of socialising and sharing ideas, we worked with Katie on how to set and maintain high behavioural standards focusing on some of Doug Lemov’s strategies. Armed with fresh ideas, we became a hive of activity using role play to practise and present our learning. Some of us relished the opportunity to wind the clock back and became misbehaving teenagers, whilst others demonstrated how they’d use their newly acquired BfL tactics to deal with these situations. After each role play Katie skillfully engaged us in discussion ensuring we all understood how to implement behaviour for learning best practice.

Finally, Katie shared some of Tom Bennett’s ideas with us and introduced some video clips demonstrating the importance and role of careful planning in supporting good behaviour.

We completed our info-packed handouts by writing our own top ten tips for behaviour management going forward and finished with a discussion about any individual BfL issues we have been experiencing..

And this is what some of the other teachers said about this behaviour for learning workshop

“It was really engaging – role play helped to see things from the students’ point of view and made the course more interactive and realistic.”

“Katie provided a variety of techniques that are applicable in the classroom and great solutions to many real-life situations.”

“It covered the theory behind the causes of misbehaviour and gave further reading suggestions.”

“The teamwork led to good feedback, advice from others and a morale boost that no one’s behaviour management is perfect!”

 Another summarised the day with

 “This was a very well-organised and well-led event.  The instruction covered a very large number of up-to-date classroom management do’s and don’ts.  It was interesting how many people’s real-life class-room situations were addressed. There was a very good balance of instruction and feedback. It was an inspiring day.”

Prospero Teaching’s training team add

We’ll definitely be getting Katie back to lead some more exceptional  CPD for teachers. In the meantime our next free accredited CPD course is

SUPPLY TEACHING STRATEGIES – WEDNESDAY 31ST OCTOBER, 6PM – 8PM

In this evening skills-booster session we’ll help you make your supply teaching stress-free, well-organised and productive. Book your place on this course here.

And you can see the full range of our online and in person, free, accredited CPD we run throughout the year on our Courses page.