PRE CONFERENCE
March 21, 2025
Friday Timetable
08:00 Registration Opens + Coffee and Cookies served
09:00-10.30 session1
10:30 -11.00 Break
11.0-12.30 Session 2
1.30-3.30 Session 3
Session Outline
How do we get to know how our students think and how we can help this development?
The key theme of this day's workshop is to introduce robust, tried and tested tools to assess the thinking of your students and thus help them progress. This is largely based on the work produced during a 4 year Erasmus project called Assessment Companion for Thinking Skills (ACTS). https://letsthink.org.uk/resources/assessment-acts/
The workshop will involve participant in interactive set of sessions exploring, applying and reflecting upon these tools.
Exploratory Talk for learning, Productive Failure, Sustained Shared Thinking and Bridging.
We will also tailor the sessions to meet the needs of different stages and subjects of school curricula.
You will come away with a deepened understanding of student thinking and practical experience of using these assessment tools.
Alex Black
With 37 years of teaching experience, including the last 30 years at an International School in Zürich, I have had the privilege of working with students from early primary age to grade 12. My expertise spans across teaching IB Diploma Biology, Theory of Knowledge, and Middle Years Science. In addition to my classroom teaching, I was deeply involved in a bilingual pilot project, where I trained Gymnasium teachers in immersion teaching methodologies. For three years, I taught Physics in both English and German within a Swiss gymnasium bilingual program.
Since 2018, I have been actively engaged in teacher development projects with the Let’s Think Forum council. This has allowed me to continue my career-long involvement with cognitive acceleration methodologies and action research in classrooms. Through these experiences, I have gained valuable insights into how teaching practices can evolve and improve, and I look forward to sharing these ideas with you today.
Sarah Seleznyov
Sarah has been teaching for 30 years, across primary and secondary schools in the UK. Over the last four years, she has been involved in setting up School 360, an experimental state primary school in London, which seeks to offer an education of the head, heart and hand in equal measure.
Sarah has been a Lead Teacher on the Let's Think project for 15 years, specialising in mathematics for early years and primary ages. Sarah has worked on numerous action research and teacher development projects with a particular focus on innovation in teaching and learning. These have included projects in the UK such as Rethinking School, and internationally, including in Hong Kong, Korea, Latvia, Finland and Kazakhstan.
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