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Intentional teaching is best practice and a requirement of the National Quality Standard, Element 1.2.1 Intentional Teaching:
The following ideas can be used at a staff meeting to facilitate professional discussions between educators and to assess best-practice skills. This may link to the quality improvement process and may be also a fun way of boosting staff teamwork and morale. Directors, managers and leaders may find this useful as part of helping the service meet Element 7.2.1. of the NQS:
Some of these activities may also be suitable to use as part of your staff induction process along with your service's policy and procedures or for individual professional reflection.
Undertaking these activities will you support you as a leader to evaluate if further professional learning and development for individuals or the team is required and will also help you towards meeting NQS Element 7.2.3:
As the director/manager/leader, read through these activities first and decide how you might use it in your setting. Think about the experience and understandings of staff and what hope to achieve. You could also ask your team members which activities that'd like to do and be informed by the time available and any recent, relevant experiences at the service.
Read all or some of the following questions and discuss together as a group. You may choose to break into smaller groups of 3 or 4.
Ask for volunteers (you may want to do this ahead of the meeting depending of your team) to take turns and talk to the team about intentional teaching and how it is incorporated into one the following (choose how long you want the "guest trainer" to talk for, say 5 minutes):
Depending on the culture of your team, you might want to add an element of fun to this activity, you might want to provide some dress-ups or other props for your volunteers. Think along the lines of colourful glasses, button-up white shirts, ties etc...be creative!
Use this article to support your team in intentional teaching. Look for opportunities for ongoing professional discussions around intentional teaching and reflective practice.
Let us know in the comments if you try any of these activities with your team. How did it go? Are there tips that you could share with other people running these activities? Did it have have an impact on your team's performance in relation to intentional teaching?
And for further professional development training from Excellence Matters, you could consider our online training course on Intentional Teaching or an in-house 2 hour workshop that can be run at your service at a time that suits your service.