The Power of Language: Arabic and the WA Pillars in Action

By Sazan Ibrahim

At the heart of our school’s vision are the WA Pillars — Climate and Character, Quality of
Instruction, Assess and Adapt, and Success for All. Each one finds a natural expression in
the teaching and learning of Arabic, a subject that not only develops linguistic skill but also
nurtures cultural awareness, empathy, and global-mindedness.

Climate and Character
Learning Arabic fosters respect and curiosity for one of the world’s richest linguistic and
cultural traditions. In our classrooms, students build character through perseverance —
mastering new sounds, scripts, and expressions — while developing intercultural
understanding and appreciation for diversity. The result is a positive, inclusive learning
climate rooted in curiosity and respect.

Quality of Instruction
Arabic lessons exemplify our commitment to high-quality teaching. Teachers use engaging,
communicative approaches that balance traditional literacy skills with modern contexts. From
storytelling and songs to real-world applications, lessons are designed to make language
learning active, joyful, and purposeful.

Assess and Adapt
Assessment in Arabic goes beyond vocabulary tests. As a teacher I continuously adapt
instruction to meet learners’ needs — supporting beginners while challenging more
advanced students. Through formative assessment, reflection, and feedback, students
become more aware of their progress and motivated to take ownership of their learning.

Success for All
Every student deserves the opportunity to succeed in Arabic. Whether they are native
speakers deepening their identity or new learners discovering the language for the first time,
our program celebrates individual growth and achievement. Arabic connects learners to a
global community and opens doors to understanding, communication, and future
opportunities.

In this way, the teaching of Arabic at WA becomes more than language instruction — it
becomes a living expression of our WA Pillars in action.

My Year 13 IB Arabic students have beautifully captured what it means to learn Arabic at
Westminster through an inspiring vlog (below). In their own words, they share how each of
Westminster Academy’s pillars shapes their journey — from building confidence in
conversation to appreciating Arabic culture and literature.

“Studying Arabic has taught us more than a language — it’s taught us how to think globally
and connect meaningfully,” says one student.

L&T Blog W4- Technology in education

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week for Bitesize Research, I was interested to look more closely at the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring report for 2023, which this year was focussed on technology in education. This resulted in lots of headlines about mobile phones in schools during the summer holidays.

Objectives: To understand the impact of technology in education. 

Summary: 

• The study states that there is a lack of good, impartial evidence about the impact of technology in education, insofar as much of the evidence is commissioned by educational technology companies.

• It states that educational technology has opened up lots of opportunities - particularly for students with SEND and during the pandemic, but that these are unequal across the world.

• There is some evidence of the impact of technology on outcomes for specific types of learning - including, for example, practice and fluency for primary mathematics. The authors argue that future studies of educational technology need to be focussed on the learning outcomes primarily. 

• There is some good evidence that even proximity to a mobile phone has a negative impact on learning insofar as it is highly distracting for students.

• The authors argue that the following should act as a way of determining the appropriateness of educational technology for government policymakers as well as educators themselves:

• 1) Is it appropriate for our local context? This includes looking at teaching the basic skills to use technology well and using evidence-informed approaches to educational technology.

• 2) Is it leaving anyone behind? This includes looking at whether all students can have equitable access to the benefits provided by educational technology, including disadvantaged students and students with SEND

• 3) Does it support sustainable futures? This includes establishing a broad set of digital competencies which enable students to benefit from technology’s potential in terms of citizenship and employment. 

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• How am I currently using technology? What evidence do I have of its effectiveness?

• What would I like to see WA students doing with technology in the future? How can I change my practice to support this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Bitesize Research: Using Student Voice

By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone’s having a great week! For the final student-centered bitesize of T3, I was interested in an organisation that’s based in the US called ‘Sound Out’ who work around the area of student voice. They’ve produced a helpful and interesting research summary, and conceptualisation about the outcomes associated with student voice. Objectives:

To understand some of the research literature behind using student voice in education, as well as to create a framework for thinking about the outcomes of using student voice. Summary: Sound Out define student voice as ‘the individual and collective perspective and actions of young people within the context of learning and education.’ They argue that student voice has many important outcomes. Here are just a few of those:

• It impacts learning, and can be an extremely important part of transforming student learning. In particular, they argue that research suggests if students feel a sense of involvement in planning lessons, their ownership of that learning is much better.
• It impacts teaching. In particular, they argue that it builds teacher self-efficacy, confidence, and retention.
• It impacts school improvement and leadership. They argue that integrating student voice into leadership decisions improves effective prioritisation.
• It impacts the personal development of students and makes them effective future citizens.
• It impacts school culture and helps to create mutuality and respect between everyone in the community.
• It impacts diversity and can ensure that schools offer cultural, racial, social, and economic diversity in decision making.

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• How am I using student voice in my practice? What impact is it having?
• Which of the outcomes associated with student voice are ones that resonate with my practice?
• Which are ones I’d like to focus on more?

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.

Collaboration & Group Work

 By Flo Rayner

“I hate group work!”

It’s possible that the above statement could be heard coming from both students and teachers alike. Group work and collaboration are often approached with caution and apprehension by both leaders and learners in the classroom. However, it is an essential element of classroom teaching, particularly when considering a student-centered approach.

Why? It seems that lots of students are averse to working in groups during lessons and this could be due to a range of concerns:

1. It is possible that students may worry that they will undertake the majority of the work required and so view it as unfair that other members of their group will benefit from this.
2. There may be a level of anxiety for a young person about who they are working with; are they friends, have they had experience (good or bad) working with this person before, will they feel their voice is being heard?
3. Many students, particularly high achieving and independent learners may simply feel that they would just do better if they worked on their own.

It’s not only students that are opposed to group work. Many teachers feel apprehensive towards group work in the classroom for a number of reasons: Relinquishing control in the classroom could present behavioural challenges, particularly with early career teachers, there is a fear that students will not cover the required material/content if they are not fully focused, as well as teachers feeling out of practice after a long period of teacher-led learning due to Covid restrictions. Why is group work important? Having considered these concerns it is important to discuss why we need to push through these barriers and continue to include collaborative learning and group work opportunities in our lessons.

• Life long learners: By working as a team, children can develop important skills such as listening and leadership whilst also developing their confidence, skills which they will use forever.
• Engagement: When taking an active role in their learning students will be more engaged, which will, in turn, lead to higher attainment.
• Ownership: With this student-centered focus, learners will be able to take more ownership over their learning and take pride in their successes, a feeling of autonomy has been proved to have strong links with increasing the motivation of learners.
• Authenticity: Collaboration will allow students to discuss new ideas in a low-stakes way with their peers, facilitating a more authentic process of production, as well as exposing students to a wider range of ideas and thought processes than just that of the teacher.

What might we consider when setting up group work in our classrooms? Grouping: When selecting groups or pairs, it is important to think carefully about these arrangements in advance of the lesson to both help a smooth setting up of the task, as well as to ensure students can work together. You could think about grouping by ability, keeping ability groups separate, or ensuring mixed ability groups to allow support and stretch for all students. It is important to consider class dynamics; are students likely to work with people they are friends with or is it more important to separate potential behaviour pitfalls? Instructions: Clarity is key. Keep the instructions short and simple. It works well to have 3 or 4 clear instructions, displayed throughout the task to help remind students of the expectations and goals. If they are unsure of what to do next they have something to refer back to. Assigning roles: It could be helpful to have set roles for each member of the group. This helps learners to feel empowered about their particular area of the task and avoids any potential ‘freeloaders’. Leonie Hall also discussed the possibility of allowing students to work independently on their own area of the task, but insisting that each separate part must fit in cohesively with the other members’ work at the end. Accountability: Several theorists argue that the most important part of successful group work is the idea of accountability. If students feel like something is at stake, this will increase their motivation to complete the task. Are they going to have to present their work to the rest of the class? Are they going to be graded on their group work? Is there a prize for the most successful group? It is important, however, to tread the fine balance between providing an element of accountability and removing some anxiety for any students who feel like their overall grade could be brought down through no fault of their own. Timings: Limiting the time of tasks and making this visible to students creates a sense of pace and urgency for the task, which in turn helps keep students engaged and should help avoid students going too far off task. How can we include collaborative opportunities?

• Think, Pair, Share (Short and snappy, students are asked a question, they have time to think, time to share with the person next to them before sharing with the teacher)

• Mini whiteboards (Similar to above, students can write their answer, then compare with the person next to them, then they can present their answer to the teacher)

• Treasure hunt (This is good for recognition or comprehension. Students can be paired or in groups, they are presented with questions or things to find. A number of texts / images are pinned around the room which contain the answers. Only one student is allowed out of their seat at a time, they find the answer around the room and bring it back to their team. Like a relay, another member of the team can then leave and find the next answer. 3 simple rules: 1 student out at a time, no shouting across the classroom, 2 yellow cards and you’re out).

• Running dictation (Similar to above, but they have to retain information from what they have read around the room and report it back word for word to their partner/team. The team which is first with the correct transcription/translation wins.)

• Teach the rest of the group (The best way to consolidate the learning of something is to teach it to someone else. Groups of students could be assigned a topic, and present this to the rest of the class. A whole host of assigned roles could be employed here. Could work as an introduction to a topic using research as well as a revision exercise).

• Why? (This is an idea used by Leyla Marasli, who has highlighted the benefit in any group work of having a ‘Why?’ person. This person’s job is to ask why at every step of the task to ensure that all students in the group can follow the thought process as well as ensuring students can explain how they reached a certain conclusion. A very low-stakes way to include all students and to ensure stretch and depth of learning.)

Further reading:

• Sharan, Y (2015) ‘Meaningful learning in the cooperative classroom’, Education 3-13, 43:1
• Lehraus, K (2015) ‘How to integrate cooperative skills training into learning tasks: an illustration with young pupils' writing’, Education 3-13, 43:1
• Isaac, M. (2012). "I Hate Group Work!" Social Loafers, Indignant Peers, and the Drama of the Classroom. English Journal, 101(4), 83-89.

CPD Reflections: Classroom Talk

By Will Glydon

What got me thinking about this topic? Classroom talk can be tricky! It can be difficult to ensure that all students are fully participating in pair and group work as some students find it difficult to share ideas and are overpowered in conversation by their more extroverted classmates. As well as this, comfort with class talk can certainly vary depending on the stage of your career. As an early career teacher, I know that maintaining solid behavior management can cause teachers to steer clear of group work activities as it can feel risky to let go of complete control. Where did I find some research on this topic? Researchers Doug Lemov and Martin Robinson answer questions on Classroom Talk in 'What does this look like in the classroom?' by Carl Hendrick and Robin Macpherson. I have selected three questions, which the researchers responded to, that particularly piqued my interest as I felt they were applicable to WA. I also looked at the Bitesize Research from last week which had some of the School 21 oracy strategies. Below are some responses that pick out tactics and techniques to tackle Classroom Talk.

How can I make sure that classroom discussion is rich rather than superficial?

I picked out this question as I personally find this difficult. I find that sometimes students are talking without offering much substance or deep thought. The researchers Doug and Martin offer these pieces of advice:

• Writing the key question on the board and leaving it there is an easy way to keep the topic on track
• Think of the extent to which you are valorising ‘outside the box’ comments by saying things like “Oh, that’s so outside the box!” It is important to encourage different ways of thinking, but to generate rich, rather than superficial discussion, what teachers should be aiming for is to generate very insightful ‘inside the box’ comments. They argue that explicitly explaining this to students is important.
• ‘Meta feedback’ is important for students who go off-topic. Language that can be used can be something like “she made an excellent point, let's respond to that first before we move onto a new topic”
• ‘Charting it’ is the final technique mentioned. This involves writing the ‘golden nuggets’ of the conversation on the board to refer back to throughout the lesson. This is not only praising rich and insightful comments made, but as we all have working memory overload and forget conversations quickly, it means the comment will not be forgotten.

Another technique that was mentioned in the School 21 blog post last week is having ‘Talk Detectives’. This involves choosing students to walk around the class, listening to conversations, and monitoring the level of discussion. This could be a great way to encourage the students to think carefully about the richness of conversation whilst in group work. How do you ensure that all students contribute in pair activities, small and larger group work? I have noticed that some of our students are much quieter learners, however, it is still important to encourage these students to fully participate in classroom talk activities. Some of the strategies that the researchers Doug and Martin share are as follows:

• It is important to ensure that students are writing something before they go into their groups. That means their conversation will be Version 2.0 of their thinking and give them more confidence to share their ideas instead of feeling rushed and panicked. This technique also encourages deeper thought.
• For pair activities, a good technique is to ‘manage turns’. This is achieved through the teacher instructing the person on the left to speak for 30 seconds and share their ideas first, then the right. This allows both students to have equal time in sharing ideas.
• For group work, teachers should be giving ‘Meta feedback’. This involves giving large groups feedback on their ability to speak and listen to others and not dominate the activity. The skill of listening should be praised.
• It is important for students to get into “Habits of discussion”- These habits can be achieved through providing sentence frames for the students to follow. Maybe these habits will be too prescriptive for KS4, but they could be beneficial for KS3 to build listening and speaking skills?

How can I get pupils who are used to talking informally (i.e. in slang) to be able to adopt the register required for success in exams and beyond? I chose this question as I have noticed that some of our students can have incredible thinking and brilliant points, but sometimes it is not articulated in quite the right way. The researchers suggest:

• Consistently make a point to upgrade student language. This can be done through responding with something like “good point, but now put that same point into the language of a geographer”
• Putting technical tier three vocabulary on the wall of a classroom can help. This way, students can refer back to it and the teacher can point to the vocabulary to assist them.
• It is important to make a point of the fact that the students don’t need to have classroom talk in the same way that they write in an exam. However, it is important to explicitly say that there needs to be a formal level to classroom discussions, it should not be ‘playground talk’. This will encourage students to think more about what they are saying.

I hope that you find some of this research useful and there are a few ideas that you might find useful to use in your own practice. If anyone would like to talk about some of these ideas any further, then drop me an email and we can arrange a time to meet up to have a further discussion. Likewise, if anyone tries some of these techniques or any other to develop classroom talk, then let me know your findings!