The Studio (Liverpool)

The Studio (April 21st):

Year 10-13 (Ages 14-19, High School)

• The Studio is attached to The UTC (University Technical College), another secondary school that is more academically based in the sciences, while the Studio is more creative arts and technology based.
• Students can pick a pathway to study in: Entrepenuarship, Coding and Creative. 
• Liverpool is a technology hub
• The school day is longer 8:30am - 5:00pm 
• Regular classes are paired with project and industry based classes
• The school works with a bunch of different companies in the tech and creative fields
• The school focuses on developing the learner as a whole, with the student at the center, student interest and strengths are focused on and academics are tailored around that. They believe in getting students to where they need to be to be successful in the career and area they are passionate about. 
• Planning is around student needs- start with the basics and work their way up
• Feedback is valued
• Very committed to working with the family and having the school, family and student on the same page.
• Reporting to Parents 4xs per year: report on academics and project based learning - comments on reports are very detailed
• Community outreach is very big- students run Codingdojo- a coding club hosted at the school on the weekends, and other community events
• Students work with local businesses and business owners
• Students come from all over Liverpool, some commute an hour or more to get to school. This creates social networks for students that are from different areas and may not have otherwise interacted.
• Students and faculty are on a first name basis, this creates a mutual respect. Teachers and students are partners in learning 
• Scrum time- this is very similar to what is done in the business world, students prioritize goals and projects 
• Students are utilized in the classroom to help support other learners- these are lead learners.
• Magenta Principles - By Mike Hughes
• Started a new system with students - “Left Page/Right Page,” teachers provide feedback on the left page and student work goes on the right page. Students have space to respond to teachers on the left page. Creates an open dialogue and more reflective practice (Red pen-teacher; Green Pen- student. This gives students a voice and allows students who may not otherwise speak up.
• Focuses on balancing types of questions
• Offering coaching sessions
• Students in year 10 and 11 are prepping for GCSEs. The score on the GCSE is predicted by a Cap test which is taken earlier on, end of Year 5 or 6 - this score is the final bar to measure student progress and measures success.
• The challenge with this is that many students move into the school and The Studio has no control over Years 7-9
• Reading age of 12 is required for GCSE
• Reading intervention happen early on in students’ time at The Studio
• They offer many different programs that come into the school to provide students with social and emotional support.
• KPIs - (Key Performance Indicators):  Beginner, Apprentice, Expert, Coach: How they measure progress at unique project based learning school. 

Reflection:

I think my notes from this trip really sum up my experience and thoughts on this amazing school. I was really impressed by the dedication and commitment of all of the staff and the students. Since leaving, I have been in contact with the teacher I worked with over there and she provided me with some further information about how technology is used. She had the following to say:
"Every lesson in English - from Year 10 to Year 13 we use technology but unfortunately we don't have the scope here to use it as much as we would like. Each lesson has a PPT to support it but our boards are not interactive so I am used to using this set-up in previous schools - this makes the lesson far more interactive for the students as they are encourage to stand up and write their answers on the board and we can then save the slides and use them as assessment points or future references. I think the students here would enjoy that more being more digitally inclined. All resources are highly visual too and we often use video links in class activities. Students type up neat and assessed work on lap-tops and they are often brought into the lesson for students to research on. The biggest turnaround for me lately has been the use of Google Classroom which I am thoroughly enjoying using and find extremely helpful - I can teach one to seventy students and can log on and see if they have any questions about the work or have submitted anything outside of school hours - for revision, it has been a god send! 

In terms of whole-school we have two data systems - SIMs and SISRA - both of these track individual student progress across all classes and across the curriculum - they counter for age, gender, reading age, spelling age, special needs and all other factors too so it its a really personalised way to monitor and intervene - we use these as a means to report home to parents too and send halftermly reports based on our findings on these systems. I find SISRA really tricky to use as my background is predominantly English so I steer clear of Maths! But in my subject and role I can't avoid data so have used these as much as possible this year - students respond well to them too as they are visual - I have used some of the tracking sheets to create a visual (excel) document to represent coursework scores for GCSE students - I have colour coded it and put in formulas so students love the nature of this system and it makes them work smarter and faster. I would like more training on these systems though and also think we should be recording praise and achievement points like I have seen SIMs do in other schools. All of have a SIMs account and can log on any time."