Sam Gibbs is Trust Lead for Curriculum and Development at The Greater Manchester Education Trust. She is an experienced English teacher, school leader, teacher educator and coach who has worked with schools across the country on teaching and learning, curriculum design and implementation, and instructional coaching. Sam has previously worked at the Ambition Institute and I first met Sam almost exactly a year ago at the Steplab National Conference in London where we had some great chats and I first heard about her fantastic book co-auhored with Zoe Helman, The Trouble with English and How to Address It: A practical guide to deiging and delivering a concept-led curriculum. She is also author of the forthcoming The Coaching Curriculum, which I’m really looking forward to.
I absolutely loved this chat with Sam and it was so good that after two hours, when we’d run out of our allotted time, we agreed to get together again 24 hours later to keep going for another hour and a half! I was both amazed and impressed by Sam’s knowledge, and her ability to go between the abstract and the concrete in a way that provided broad and enlightening conceptual insights, and backed each one up with practical classroom advice.
I think it’s fair to say that this is the deepest curriculum conversation that I’ve had on the ERRR podcast and it was an absolute pleasure. And, whilst Sam is an English teacher, and that is the focus of the majority of this conversation, I think that this is an immensely valuable podcast for teachers and leaders across all disciplines. And that’s because the idea of a concept-based curriculum has implications for everyone in teaching and learning.
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Links/resources mentioned in the show
- Sam and Zoe's book: The Trouble with EnglishThe Trouble with English and How to Address It: A Practical Guide to Designing and Delivering a Concept-Led Curriculum
- Oat Academy concept-led curriculum approach
- 3 book recommendations
- Sarah Cottingham – Ausubel’s meaningful learning in action
- Simon Sinek – Start with Why
- Viviane Robinson – Reduce Change to Increase Improvement
- Ollie's Books, Cognitive Load Theory in Action and Tools for Teachers
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This episode of the ERRR podcast is brought to you by Catalyst. Catalyst transforms students' lives through learning by developing excellent teachers and Leaders through evidence-based professional learning programs. Find out more at https://catalyst.cg.catholic.edu.au/
Listen to all past episodes of the ERRR podcast here.