Festival of Amazing Learning

*Originally posted on previous blog www.mrbowkerinmalaysia.com in October 2022*

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend a regional CPD and networking event courtesy of the parent company of my school, ISP. Around 250 teachers and leaders from 15 schools based in Malaysia gathered together to connect, share and learn together in Kuala Lumpur. This was the first time I've attended a mass event like this - and I absolutely loved it!

50 of us nominated ourselves to present at the event over the course of the day - these 'Speaker Space' sessions were split up into 5 sessions throughout the day. This worked out brilliantly as at each session there was the choice of around 10 presentations to attend ranging from curriculum subjects, leadership, ICT and all manner of education related subjects. As I was speaking in one, I got to choose 4 40 minute long sessions. I chose a variety of English Writing, Office 365, supporting SEN pupils and Maths.

I was blown away by the knowledge, skills and experience of my colleagues in differing schools and it is amazing to think that if we, as teachers, are afforded to time and space to share our specialties we can really support each other's development in such a profound and impactful way.

I have come away with many ready to use strategies that I'd like to apply in my classroom - for example focusing more on developing understanding in Maths by looking at multiple methods to find the answer to a question - this is something I do already, but seeing a colleague speak so enthusiastically and with such knowledge about why this is such an important tool, really makes me want to try more. The writing session reminded me about the 'Slow Writing' approach and introduced me to 'DADWAVERS' - something I had never heard of before, both are now ideas I want to research more and attempt in my classroom. We were reminded at the event that 'the children in our class only get one education, so we cannot treat them as guinea pigs, however that does not mean we shouldn't take risks, try something new and develop our teaching'. This is sound advice and since the beginning of this academic year I must admit a combination of workload and family life (the 2nd baby is due in just over a week!) means I haven't had this at the front of my mind - but now I'm inspired to give these things a go and take a few risks before the end of term. The SEN session gave me a rewarding insight into the thought processes of children with ASD and how we as teachers should aim to understand our learners perspectives and adapt accordingly. Oh, and I also learned to build a website using Sharepoint in Office 365 - not bad for one day! These were only 4 of the 50 sessions and I've no doubt that others gained just as much from their sessions as I did from mine.

A real highlight for me was presenting a session on Retrieval Practice. This is something I've blogged about before and am so passionate about. I've run sessions on this in my school before with good feedback and after a few adaptations was looking forward to sharing it with a wider audience. I was delighted to see that I had a large number of colleagues sign up for it and was afforded one of the biggest rooms. Public speaking used to terrify me, but the more I've done it, the more I enjoy it and now I actually see it as a positive experience from the lead up right until it's over. We were prepped beforehand to make the sessions as interactive and enjoyable as we could - so I brought out one of my favourite Retrieval activities 'Walkabout Bingo' which really got everyone talking about Retrieval but also meeting each other and networking.

As part of the day we were given a goody bag with details of the day, a flask and two 'thank you' notes to provide to speakers who had done well. I was over the moon to get such positive feedback from my session and the appreciation I felt from receiving these cards gave me such a buzz!

The day was made all the better by everyone having such a positive attitude towards learning and getting better at what we do together - I met so many people at the event and hopefully these will evolve into lasting connections. The day was definitely improved by an abundance of food and a healthy dose of humour throughout- one of the headteachers who had chosen to speak for 5 minutes at the introductory 'Teach Meet' was pelleted with volleyballs for going over their time limit by a matter of seconds - speakers were warned of this at the beginning - the main surprise being that this wasn't a joke!

My colleagues and I finished the day with a photo and it really was a memorable day.

Thanks for reading!

Laurence