ECIS Annual Conference Course: Identifying, Improving and Assessing Children's Learning Trainer: Sarah Brown, Head of the International Primary Curriculum Page 1 of 2 Overview We want to support schools in understanding how the IPC Assessment for Learning programme works for foundation subjects, but also help teachers and leaders to go beyond data crunching and get right to the heart of identifying exactly what kind of learning is taking place in their classrooms, and how this learning can be improved. Do your children know if they are learning knowledge, skills or understanding? Does your planning, classroom practices, assessment and reporting reflect these different types of learning? What are educators and researchers such as John Hattie, Shirley Clarke, Daniel T. Willingham, Carol Dweck and Harvard's Project Zero team telling us about how to improve learning through assessment of knowledge, skills and understanding? Our workshop will dig deeper into these questions, exploring both theory and practice, which you can then share with your own schools and embed in your day-to-day learning and teaching. This workshop is most suitable for teachers or leaders who already have some experience of planning and teaching with the IPC, but non IPC members who are passionate about improving learning are also welcome (but please note we will not be covering the basic implementation of the curriculum). If you're looking for a day on data crunching and National Curriculum level replacements then this isn't the course for you...but what you will learn will transform the way you approach learning and teaching in your school. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, then please join us for some Great Learning, Great Teaching and Great Fun! Sarah Brown Biography Sarah is Head of the International Primary Curriculum at Fieldwork Education, where she has been supporting, training and developing IPC schools around the world for over four years. During this time she has taken part in a number of accreditation and pre-accreditation visits, working in a team of heads and external advisors to ensure high standards of implementation at schools working at a developing and mastering level of the IPC. Most recently she has been leading the next stages of development within the curriculum, so that teachers and children the world over can improve learning with the IPC. Before this role, Sarah worked as an IPC leader and practitioner herself, helping to manage the implementation of the IPC at a school in the North West of England. In her teaching career, she worked with children from Reception to Year 6, whilst taking on the role of Special Needs Co-ordinator and becoming a member of the Senior Management Team. Combining study with a full time teaching job, Sarah completed her Masters in Education in 2008, for which she achieved the mark of 'distinction', and received a departmental award ECIS Annual Conference Course: Identifying, Improving and Assessing Children's Learning Trainer: Sarah Brown, Head of the International Primary Curriculum Page 2 of 2 for her contributions. Following this, she was invited to lecture on the PGCE course at the University of Manchester, in both Literacy and Special Educational Needs. Before teaching, Sarah had developed a portfolio of skills in PR, press, marketing and editing, through her previous roles as a journalist, arts promoter, and press officer for Greater Manchester Police. As a lifelong learner, Sarah is particularly passionate about the IPC's clear focus on learning, and believes that it is vital that educators are enthused and motivated about the potential of a thinking-based, creative curriculum, so that children can be equipped with the knowledge, skills and understanding that they will need for a future in a rapidly changing global community.