Congratulations to Brooke Weston Lead Teacher of French, Alexie Pasdoit and History Lead, Lewis Holdcroft, who have both successfully completed the prestigious Leadership Legacy Project. The initiative is run by SSAT, the Schools, Students and Teachers network and is a year-long project aimed at developing the leaders of the future.

The impact of the project is impressive and involvement demonstrates commitment by Brooke Weston Academy to developing the next generation of leaders. The project culminated in Alexie and Lewis each submitting a written ‘think piece’ on a subject of their choice.

The title of Alexie’s ‘think piece’ was ‘Improving Student’s Accuracy When Using Different Tenses in French to Suit All Learners at KS3’

She said, ‘The project started from the outcomes of the end of year writing assessments in French a year ago and the use of different tenses in the skills of writing as well speaking. There were big gaps between high ability students on one side and medium and low ability students on the other side. My starting point was to find a trick to help our students to be more accurate when using different tenses in writing but to also make it accessible enough so that our less able students could perform as well as our most able students. The two tricks, the Edna List and the Past Cloud that I have introduced to the students have shown some encouraging results not just for my year 8 class but for all other KS3 classes.’

Lewis gave his ‘think piece’ the title, ‘Dual Coding: A Tool to Reduce Cognitive Load in History Teaching’

He said, ‘History has long been inaccessible to too many students due to an over reliance on traditional approaches to note-taking that has led many curious students to abandon the subject. My ‘think piece’ aimed to demonstrate that knowledge rich subjects can benefit from Dual Coding techniques for instruction within all Key Stages; Dual Coding is a teaching tool that can lead to progress for all students.’