At Bushey Meads we are incredibly fortunate to have so many outstanding teachers in our midst – on a daily basis planning and delivering superb lessons to the students in their care. Not only that, we have an embedded culture and ethos of sharing best practice, ensuring that all teachers build on their pedagogical ability year on year and always end every academic year being better teachers than at the start.

This week it was a privilege to see first hand one of our top teachers in action – Mrs Hewitt teaching a Year 9 Food Technology lesson. The students started with a activity to build on their prior knowledge, gained a brilliant understanding of how to make pasta dough using a variety of different activities which included high quality teacher and Learning Assistant input and also the watching a short media clip. They then summarised the key objectives on a post it note which they then took into our industry standard kitchen here on site at Bushey Meads to start applying their knowledge.

The intensive practical started after an important recap of all the important health and safety rules and all the students made excellent progress throughout the lesson – they were highly engaged and thoroughly enjoyed the learning experience.

At the end of the lesson they watched a brilliant demonstration of how to turn the pasta dough into tagliatelle strips using the high tech machine on hand, using mini whiteboards to note down the key facts to apply in their next lesson. The students themselves provided great feedback about the brilliant lesson – it was a joy to see and hear.