All of the day was useful. Craig delivered a powerful message about vocabulary, lots of staff discussion was facilitated and we have lots of practical tips to use back at school. Food for thought on planning for vocabulary was also high on the list of useful parts! Great course content and delivered extremely well. 10/10.
Role: Associate Consultant
Craig Duncan has 25 years’ experience in Primary Education, as a Teacher, Senior Leader and with 13 of those spent as a Head Teacher of two different primary schools. He has an interest in curriculum design and assessment and empowering schools to take ownership of their curriculum to meet the needs and aspirations of their learners.
The quality from start to finish has been excellent. From the initial booking, we have been greeted by friendly, knowledgeable individuals, who wanted to make the day fit our needs. We were well supported through all the rebookings due to the Covid 19 pandemic and Craig made the day interesting and kept a good pace, meaning that we were able to focus on the more important aspects of education and our school. A big thank you for being able to remind us of what is really important to our young people in the middle of a chaotic time.
Considering the training had to be virtual due to COVID restrictions, it was excellent. We had such a brilliant day, please pass on our warmest thanks to Craig. Craig is professional, extremely knowledgeable and really helped us to see the path we now need to take as a school on the next stage of our curriculum development. The virtual training ran really smoothly and our key objectives for the day were covered in detail, and were both relevant and insightful. The feedback from our staff has been really positive. We know this training will underpin all of our curriculum development this year. The communication and support from the whole Chris Quigley team has been excellent from our first enquiry to the delivery on the day. We really enjoyed the training and would recommend Chris Quigley and Craig to other schools - please pass on our warmest thanks to Craig for such a great day, it was exactly what we were looking for. Thank you so much!
The whole day was extremely useful but the part that stood out was having professional discussion around long-term memory learning and how consideration needs to be given to how we plan the curriculum to have fewer concepts and more time. Key was also the time given after each point to discuss this in the context of our own school and actually have time to start thinking about how we will plan changes. Craig was extremely knowledgeable, passionate and inspiring. The day was organised professionally and was exactly on brief.
Our training last night was exactly what we needed but for about another 10 hours! The PoP task examples to assess at what level pupils are accessing the curriculum will give clear expectations. I will be in contact with Craig about future training. The communication in the lead up to and quality of training was high.
The day Craig delivered was incredibly useful. It has given us a really clear idea as to where we need to make changes to our curriculum. It was good to identify the key concepts within each subject area and to look at how these can run throughout the school.
The session Craig delivered was very focused on our needs and our development as a school. We were able to deepen our understanding of teaching for mastery particularly looking at memory and we have been able to make rapid and realistic improvements over the last academic year.
Craig was knowledgeable and engaging. The information he provided was interesting and thought provoking. The opportunities he gave for discussion and the activities provided enabled our thinking and will inspire improved practice in the classroom. We will take the learning from these sessions and develop it further as part of our school development work over the next 2 years.
My thanks to Craig for a great day, the training on Infusing Rich Vocabulary was very good and feedback from staff has been positive.
Craig was able to provide useful knowledge & experience on curriculum development and those key aspects we needed to bear in mind in developing a creative, high-quality humanities programme of study. We were very happy with Craig’s support.
The vocabulary suggestions and strategies were extremely useful and staff followed up from the first day’s training in the classroom. Craig’s suggestions were eagerly taken up by the teachers and will be used in their lessons. The back up administration for the event has been outstanding.
Useful to know that we can cut down what we do whilst being compliant with regulations. The information about mastery and the chance to begin a review of our current curriculum provision using the matrix were very useful too. Craig was very helpful and patient.
Alex worked with staff to provide support with mastery. It was outstanding! Alex is highly effective and very inspirational - thank you!
Craig delivered Questioning for Greater Depth to the North Liverpool Learning network. All of the course was useful but the most useful was getting Headteachers to think of basic, advanced and deepening questions. Craig was very good at adapting the session slightly to include HT / curriculum considerations. The quality of the training was very good.
I think that the biggest compliment that can be paid to Craig and the content delivered is that even on a Friday afternoon teachers were enthused by the input – to the point that they were planning lessons/activities that could incorporate the ideas being delivered. Our school’s objective for the training was to develop our curriculum further to ensure that children are being challenged to attain highly – particularly in the humanities – and that teachers have the tools they need at their disposal – particularly in relation to the questions that they are asking. The approach that Craig explained to create a blend of basic, advancing and deep questions into activities, lessons and units of work was one that really appealed to our teachers and curriculum leaders so that our Greater Depth children have the opportunity to be challenged in a way that means they can demonstrate their greater understanding. I feel that teachers were challenged too to ensure that the questions they were generating were deep – as initially many had the misconception that ‘Advanced’ questions were ‘Deep’. Meaningful examples demonstrated in a clear way how this questioning approach could be used in many different curriculum areas and how important those skills linked to oracy were. Teachers grew in confidence in their understanding of the role that deep questions can play in the short term (an activity or lesson) and the long (over a unit of work) – and how such questions could be used as a stimulus to a lesson so that formative assessment can take place to more accurately pitch a unit of work. The training matched the brief perfectly and will play a real role in driving up the confidence of teaching staff and standards in our school.
Craig delivered a half day session on ASP. It was a great session and pitched just right. 10/10.