As an indication and evidence of Ahmed Bin Hanbal Independent School for Boys cooperation with the community, the school hosts the Qtel-Qatar Indian Football Forum (QIFF) Cup’s third Qatar-Kerala Inter-District Tournament these days. Besides Indian Ambassador Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa and organizers of the tournament, prominent community members took part in the opening ceremony at Ahmed Bin Hanbal Independent Secondary School grounds. Mr. Jameel Al-Shamari, the Principal and Operator of the school, Mr. Rashid Al-Naimi, Vice Principal for Administrative and Students’ Affairs and Mr. Reda Saad El-Mahdy, Academic Vice Principal of the school attended the ceremony and presented the Shield of the School as a gift to the sponsors of the tournaments. Mr. Jameel gave a short talk and wished all teams good luck. All participants expressed their support to Qatar’s bid for hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup. I have to say that it was really a fantastic event. The Gulf Times, as well as the other foreign newspapers, published news about the event on its first page. The following photo has been taken from the Gulf Times Newspaper.
Monthly Archives: October 2009
The National Professional Standards and Teacher’s Self Audit
In the course of getting teachers acquainted with the Teachers’ National Professional Standards, Mr. Blackburn, Head of the School Support Team, conducted a session based on the national professional standards for teachers.
The session started with a “Do-now-activity” getting teachers to match some pictures with the professional standards that correspond with them. It seems that teachers have become accustomed to such a type of exercise or activity. It is a starter activity that needs good preparation from the part of the teacher or the trainer, where trainees are assigned a task to do as soon as they enter the lecture room or the classroom. The trainer does not say a word, but the task is clearly explained to the trainees, either on board or in handouts. Once trainees get into class, they start working out the task or the activity.
Teachers were really responsive and were eager to participate actively. It was clear from the discussions that: “One piece of evidence can cover an enormous number of standards”.
The main issue was to help teachers prepare their own “self audit“. Marty, school SMA, clarified the meaning of “self audit”. He said that it describes what you know about each of the professional standards and what you think it means. He also mentioned that it must be written from the teacher’s point of view. For practice, groups of teachers were provided with a handout of the professional standards for teachers, and each group was to decide what each professional standard means. It was an interesting activity that aroused the interest of all teachers.
I think teachers benefited a lot and they are now ready to prepare their own self audit. For their professional portfolios, teachers need to prepare their self audit as one of the five factors needed for licensing.
Building an Effective Classroom Culture
In accordance with the Supreme Education Counciland in cooperation with the Cognition school support team, the weekly professional development sessions started yesterday morning. The school support team, headed by Mr. Blackburn, and I, acting as the Academic Vice Principal of Ahmed Bin Hanbal Independent Secondary School for Boys, decided that the first session of the teachers’ professional development should be on helping teachers to know what we expect to see in their classes when we visit them, to evaluate their performance and to develop their teaching practices so as to be able to elevate students’ level of performance and improve the quality of teaching and learning. Alan, the English AT gave a presentation entitled “Building an Effective Classroom Culture“. Working as a team, Alan (English AT) , Martin (SMA) , Dave (Science AT) and myself (School AVP) participated in the presentation at different intervals. It was a successful model of team-teaching. Teachers were really responsive and group work helped a lot in enriching the discussions eliciting the teachers’ points of view concerning the communication strategies they use in the classroom, the key factors that help build good rapport with students and the strategies they use to empower their students. In conclusion, Allen clarified what we expect to see in a classroom, which is summarised in:
- a Clear Learning Objective on the board
- a lesson with a Clear Start
- a Clear Middle that comes from the start
- a Definite End that relates back to the learning objective
To download this useful presentation, click here
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