Creating an effective and efficient teacher development process
We spoke with Head of School, Dan Rodeck and Assistant Head Teacher Kat Preece, to find out how teachers at Filton Avenue school are using VEO to accelerate skills development. We also quizzed them about how their use of VEO has changed since our new feature updates.
A Transparent Development Process
Before VEO, the team at Filton Avenue were using more traditional assessment and development methods like in-person lesson observations and drop-ins. Professional development reviews ran alongside the teaching and learning cycle.
“We’re dedicated to improving the learner experience through the development of our teachers’ practice. VEO has helped us implement a transparent, ongoing development process that our teachers can really engage with on an ongoing basis.
We use VEO alongside a reflection technique, provided through WalkThru’s, to clearly observe, learn about and develop teaching skills.”
We can create unique tag sets within VEO which allows us to easily incorporate reflection and teaching methodologies. Our teachers can therefore clearly see when and how they’ve used certain techniques and how well they’ve performed.
“It’s the best tool for us. It gives you a really clear picture of teaching and learning in the classroom and allows teachers across the school to learn from each other by watching each others’ lessons.”
Time-Saving AI Insights
Kat also shared some of the benefits they’ve seen since the introduction of VEO’s new AI features.
“The automatic tagging is really helpful. Where some teachers weren’t utilising the tagging feature previously due to time restraints, it now does it for you. The AI Question Bot is also a time saver. Being able to jump to questions and see when they’re being asked has supported us in our coaching conversations, because we can instantly jump straight to the moment we’re discussing.”
Learning reviews used to take between three days and a week with two teachers working on them. Now, teachers submit their videos to VEO. So instead of relying on two people’s memories or interpretations, everyone can review and evaluate videos as a group for more rounded, valuable feedback and reflection.
A New Perspective
VEO enables users to record directly within the platform or to upload videos from mobile devices. Dan and Kat shared that VEO therefore gives their team more time to reflect and engage with feedback, as there’s less need to travel between the school’s two sites for in-classroom observations.
They explained that it enables teachers to look at the impact of certain teaching practices without the noise of the classroom getting in the way.
“Teachers are encouraged to record whichever lessons they’d like to, specific to an aspect of teaching and learning that they are working on. They reflect on them individually and then with their instructional coach which just wasn’t possible before. This cycle repeats itself termly to help accelerate skills development.”
“You can create a bank of examples to refer back to. You can say to trainees, ‘this is what a really good example of this looks like, and here it is in three different examples’.”
A Game Changer for Teacher Development
“VEO has been a complete game changer for the way our teachers view and engage with their teaching and learning development. It enables staff to feel an increased sense of approachability and like doors are open with reference to their development opportunities.
Teachers feel like they have more clarity over and support with their development, we’ve been able to implement instructional coaching and increasingly open discussions. In-classroom observations can cause teachers to feel on the spot and nervous, which can impact their delivery. This is why being able to champion their own development through VEO has been welcomed.
Use of VEO and the adaptation of new technology has also further strengthened the culture around pedagogical conversations.”
Supporting Student Progress
“We’ve also been able to use VEO to support our student development. Our teachers have been able to use the reflections within VEO to have conversations about learning behaviours with pupils. It’s also given us an opportunity to track learner engagement and early years foundation stage (EYFS) provision.”
More recently, Kat shared about how VEO is being used to spot limitations on the potential growth of disadvantaged students.
“We were using VEO to review certain scaffolding we had in place with a disadvantaged student and noticed that the scaffold wasn’t giving the children an opportunity to have a go independently. Although it was supporting them, the task never presented the opportunity for a child to do it on their own. That then became the teacher’s target when reviewing the videos on VEO over time. We saw the child go from filling the gaps in a sentence, to them being able to write a sentence independently.”
Quotes from colleagues:
‘It allows me to be honest without judgement and think carefully about what I want to improve.’
‘VEO helps me to focus further on what I am doing well, and not doing. Picking up on small nuances. Less pressure than learning walks and allows more teacher control’
‘I can really focus upon my key children as I can re-watch my lessons as many times as I need to. I enjoy watching them back and seeing what has worked well. I am aware of much more elements of my teaching’
‘Changing just one small thing at a time. Allowing me to see my teaching and, especially, the learning that has taken place is a lot more powerful that traditional lesson observations’
‘Having a 3rd eye helps me to see things from a different perspective and gain a greater understanding of how I can improve provision in order to meet the needs of all learners’
