Teacher's Fortune: Reflection on Practice: Conducting a Meeting

Reason I chose this experience:

I chose to plan and manage a formal meeting for teachers as it was a new experience for me. The meeting was to address the importance and schedule for the approaching Movie Making project of year 6 and 5. All the teachers and assistant teachers of Year 6 and year 5 were the main participants. Head of Key Stage, Head of English department and CIT teacher for year 6 and 5 was also there for expert inputs. All together there were 25 participants present for attending the meeting.

Planning and Executing the Meeting:

I planned a meeting for all the teachers and assistant teachers to smoothly take forward the project of Movie Making project as a part of curricular extension enriched with cross curricular links. Initially, in the planning phase I had small meetings with Head of the English department/ Movie Making project in-charge. I also spoke to Head of year 6 and other teachers to ask their last year experience and difficulties faced to assess the main issues to be dealt during meeting. A meeting invite was sent to all the participants along with a precise meeting agenda. A teacher was assigned for taking the minutes of meeting. On the meeting day writing material was provided at the seats of the teachers along with the copy of meeting agenda. Aim and objective was written on the white board. A small power point presentation was used to share the importance of incorporating cross curricular links in movie projects. After that meeting agenda was followed step wise. The contents included Development of a Timeline for the project to ensure a degree of uniformity across the year group. Floor was opened for all the teachers to share the challenges and difficulties faced last year and way forward was discussed. Head of the English Department shared the Time line and at the end I summarised the meeting.

After introducing myself and welcoming all the attendees I introduced aim and objective of the meeting. Then the meeting agenda was discussed that was circulated earlier. Using a power point presentation possible movie topics in reference to the cross curricular links was discussed. Importance of Movie making project for students and teachers was highlighted. After concluding the presentation discussion was initiated regarding the effective use of Enrichment Programme lessons for Planning Movie project. In this regard a timeline was developed with the input of teachers and in-charge of Movie making project. During discussion session, most of the challenges and difficulties faced by the teachers were shared so they were directed to the relevant expert teachers for prompt quality solutions. Most importantly teachers shared possible solutions to make entire movie making experience enjoyable and manageable for themselves. A Buddy list of teachers was also shared to seek future assistance. At the end I summarised the main points of the meeting. Over all it was a very enjoyable experience.

Head of the Movie Making Project sharing Timeline of Project

Answering question of a Teacher

Welcoming Teachers and Introducing Topic

Sharing Importance of Cross Curricular Links

Sharing some Topics for Movie

I took verbal and written feedback from the attendees. I distributed feedback form with some questions about how the meeting was conducted. They answered the questions in detail related to the clarity of meeting agenda. They were asked to state if enough time was provided to all the participants to share and discuss their view point. A question was asked about effective time management in running the meeting. Also teachers were asked to give their suggestions to help the meeting become more productive and useful.