Bridie McPherson and Josie Sacks - Head of Department and National Curriculum Lead - London

In this episode I’m speaking with Josie Sacks and Bridie McPherson. Bridie is Head of Department at Oasis South Bank Academy and Josie is National Curriculum Lead for Oasis Community Learning. This interview came off the back of me watching Josie and Bridie talk as part of a ‘We are in Beta’ presentation. The ideas and insights offered around the likes of whole class feedback and standards within English teaching more broadly were fantastically concise and a brilliant indication of the work being done in the UK around curriculum and feedback. 

In this episode we discuss:

- The best text Josie and Bridie have ever read, taught or been taught? 

- The KS3 curriculum at Oasis South Bank and the specific ideas that Bridie and Josie have chosen to construct the learning around 

- The kind of conversations or debates that led to textual choices in the scheme of learning

- An example of one unit and the type of specific vocabulary and sentence structures that are introduced that then leads to whole class feedback in subsequent tasks 

-Specifically, what are the things teachers cover in whole class feedback

- How misconceptions are reviewed in the long term

- And lastly, why models, exemplars or live writing are not entirely effective in guiding students’ understanding of a task

Thanks a lot to Bridie and Josie for giving up time on the last Friday of term to chat about these things with such a massive amount of passion and investment. 

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We Are in Beta - a network of practicing teachers and leaders learning from each other and growing together.