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Teachers at Harris Academy Bermondsey have thought up a lively new way to share best practice and good ideas – the HAB Marketplace.

At the #HABMarketplace, which took place over 45 mins on the afternoon of Monday 30th April, each department set up a stall at which they ‘sold’ their best approaches to teaching, so that other teachers could come and see if they wanted to ‘buy’ them.

“We asked each department to identify an approach to teaching which really works for them,” said Sarah Harvey, Lead Practitioner for English and Drama, who organised the event along with Nazmin Rahman, Assistant Principal, and David Harris, Lead Practitioner.  “It could be tried and tested approaches or resources, for example, or models of outstanding teaching.”

“Other teachers could then visit the stall to ‘buy’ them, if they thought that perhaps they could apply them to their teaching too. We had some special tote bags which teachers could use to put their ‘purchases’ in.”

The Modern Foreign Languages stall, for example, was ‘selling’ its idea of using different colour highlighters (pink and yellow) to correct spelling and grammar. “It means that students and teachers can quickly glance at work and see whether it’s grammar or spelling that needs to be the focus of attention,” said Sarah. “As an English teacher that’s an approach that we could adopt in our department too.”

The Maths department was selling a good way of quickly seeing which topics individual students need to focus on. "They expertly used Excel to generate an individually tailored ‘question by question’ analysis for each student, based on their most recent assessment, which they then printed off to show each girl the skills she needed to focus on during revision," said Sarah.

“We wanted a different, quick and lively way to share good ideas and innovative teaching and that’s where the Marketplace idea came from,” adds Sarah.

“Like any school we’re a big place and we don’t always know about the good practice going on outside our own departments. The Marketplace is one way to meet this challenge. It gives us the opportunity to exchange and consolidate effective pedagogical strategies and allows us to network, share ideas and be inspired too!”

The event was also a chance for all teachers to come together to celebrate the amazing work and inspiring best practice that happens at HAB on a daily basis.