Sarah Melvin
Profile
Senior leader and English lead at Baildon and the Eden Teaching School Alliance
Sarah is currently is a member of the SLT and the English lead at Baildon C of E Primary School, an outstanding two form entry school in Bradford. Since 2013 Sarah has led the teaching of English across school and is an active member of the senior leadership team. Sarah’s leadership has supported the school and staff in a time of change, with the introduction of the New National Curriculum, which involved remodelling the school’s approach to English. This approach aimed to inspire life-long readers and promote reading like a writer and writing like a reader.
Her roles and responsibilities stretch further than improving the English curriculum within her school, as she plays a pivotal role in the school’s improvement and development, including the coaching and mentoring of staff. During her time working at Baildon, Sarah has led the school to be graded ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, and to maintain this grading for the second inspection in a row.
Since 2016 Sarah has worked for the Bradford LEA as a KS2 moderator, which has allowed her to be trained in the assessment procedures and changes year on year. In more recent year she has developed her experience and practice is KS1 and foundation stage, not only as a senior member of the leadership team but through her qualification as a KS1 moderator (for reading, writing and mathematics) and leading training and teaching in these years.
Since becoming a SLE and working for the Eden Teaching School Alliance, Sarah has delivered training and support to a number of schools within the Bradford and Leeds Local Education Authorities. Here she has established an excellent reputation for her work as a consultant and trainer, working closely with leadership teams and teaching staff to raise the quality of their practice and create consistency in English across their schools. Sarah has presented training and support to a variety of audiences including; whole school training, subject leaders, headteachers, teachers, teaching support staff, NQTS, RQTS and trainee teachers. In addition to this her experience has also stretched to further educational settings, conducting initial teacher training at Trinity and All Saints University and training SCITT trainees. Her training covers all areas of English (reading, writing and SPAG) for teaching, curriculum and assessment.
This academic year Sarah has already conducted training for 25 primary schools for:
• School to school support for planning a literature-based curriculum.
• Coaching and mentoring for teacher development (including lesson observations)
• Assessment changes for KS1 and KS2
• Preparing for moderation KS1
• Preparing for moderation KS2
• 1.1 school moderation for Year 2 and Year 6
• Rehearsal room techniques to impact on reading.
• Rehearsal room techniques to impact on writing.
Her most recently written training explores an exciting new pedagogy to the teaching of English trailed at Baildon and delivered externally to 4 local school for whole staff INSET. This pedagogy explores how the techniques used by the Royal Shakespeare Company (rehearsal room techniques) can enhance the exploration of challenging texts in the primary setting. This approach brings texts to life and allows pupils to develop strong inferences of any text for any age group, through exploring inference, language and composition and effect through promoting oracy and a plethora of learning styles.