Practitioner research

Using Research and evidence as a lever for change at classroom level - paper presented at the Americal Education Research Association meeting in San Diego April 2009

Wheatfield Primary School is a relatively new school of 420 pupils in a new town community which has little to offer young people. Many of our parents are educated to degree level and a high proportion are white collar workers. One of our six new themes, ‘Sharing the Planet’ was a completely fresh idea to all staff, so we set about creating a definitive set of aims for this strand, and ways of measuring its impact upon the children’s learning and attitudes. A trial of materials took place with the Year 2 children during the spring, with greater investigations taking place with the learners in Year 1, 4 and 5 during the summer term. All year groups have parallel classes, within each of which we identified five children who were not on track to make their target grades (L3 in Year 2 and L5 in Year 6).