Contents of this article:
What Are Groups?
Groups are a powerful collaborative tool. They enable you to share knowledge, experience, practice and theory with colleagues both inside your organisation, and the wider IRIS Connect community.
Through this virtual space, you can securely share resources, including text, videos, files, plans, discussions, presentations and images. You are able to choose who can access your Group, and allow your members to contribute and develop the Group over time.
There are 3 types of groups:
How Can I Use Them?
As a sharing space, Groups have a huge amount of flexibility in how they can be used, whether you're an individual organisation, multi-academy trust or anything else in between.
As an individual organisation, perhaps you want somewhere to share information with new starters, including an introduction video and a questionnaire. Maybe you want a place where colleagues across the organisation can share reflections of their most proud lesson moments with the rest of the school. Or how about a space where staff can post snippets of their work and receive constructive feedback?
If you're a MAT, Maths hub or anything in between, you can use Groups to help you overcome geographical and time limitations. You could connect subject educators from different organisations to support each other with peer-coaching, create a Group to share useful, reusable resources with every educator in your network or conduct a lesson study project across organisations to tap into expertise both within and beyond your own four walls. The list goes on.
Groups Landing Page
The landing is divided into 5 parts:
1. Search bar
- Here you can search for a group
2. Create Group +
3. Your Groups
- This tab shows you all groups you are a member of
- On the group preview image, you can also see if the group is a Student Group and whether you are an Admin of the group
4. Local Joinable Groups
- If your organisation has any local groups that are either Open or Approval Required type, they will be presented here
- You can either Join (Open group), Request Join (Approval Required group) or Open (if you're already a member of it)
- On the group preview image, you can also see if the group is a Student Group and whether you are an Admin of the group
5. Group Store
- Here you will see any group that is available at the Group Store
- You can either Buy (Paid for group), Join a Group (Free group) or Open (if you're already a member of it)
- You can easily see from the preview whether the group is FREE or what is its Subscription price
- Additionally, on the group preview image you can also see if the group is a Student Group and whether you are an Admin of the group
20 ideas for Groups you could create
1. Record your staff meetings
Record staff meetings and share them into a Group along with minutes and actions so that anyone
who didn’t make it on the day can catch up later.
2. Internal training sessions
Film these and make them available to everyone across the organisation via a Group. Use this to disseminate training resources across the wider staff and everyone can go back for a refresher when needed.
3. Share practice with your department
Share subject-specific resources and video examples of teaching and learning into a Group just for your department.
4. Capture governors' meetings
Capture governors’ meetings and create a Group to keep a record of them and the accompanying minutes. Your governors can revisit them when needed or catch up on meetings they’ve missed.
5. Help staff induction
Create a Group for new staff where they can get a sense of the environment they’re joining by accessing videos and resources that will help with their induction.
6. Encourage ECTs
If you have lots of early career teachers, give them a space to collaborate and share their experiences, provide mentoring support and resources to help them excel in their first year.
7. Support trainees
Bring all of your trainees together, share examples of specific teaching/coaching strategies with them and point them to relevant resources that will help their growth.
8. Celebrate excellence
Recognize great teaching and encourage staff to share snippets of their favourite T&L moments. This is a brilliant way of celebrating what goes on in learning environments, creating a shared vision and gets educators talking more about teaching!
9. Professional learning communities
If you’re part of a PLC in your school, be it 3 members of staff or 25, you could create a Group to share practice, resources and ideas on your particular community focus.
10. Whole school priorities
Are you focused on developing Growth Mindset learners, educator feedback or questioning? Whatever your priorities, create a Group to provide background research, links to useful resources and examples of what this looks like in your school.
11. Save time in Lesson Study
Are you doing Lesson Study? Save time doing in-class observations by filming your study lessons, share them into a Group and keep your research together in one place alongside video resources. Once you’ve completed your Lesson Study you could even open the Group up to the wider school to share your findings.
12. Ease pupil transition
If your local primary schools (or secondary if you’re a primary) have IRIS Connect, create a Group to give year 7 teachers an insight into their new students and give year 6 teachers an insight into what they’re preparing their students for.
13. Support EAL across the school
Do you have successful strategies for supporting students who have English as a second language? Get other lead practitioners in this area on board to provide a resource for the rest of the team through an EAL Group.
14. Share SEN strategies
Bring your SEN specialists into one place to share successful strategies for supporting SEN pupil learning. Create examples and make them available to all of the staff at the click of a button.
15. Collaborate over distance
If you’re part of a local federation, an academy trust or teaching school, why not create a Group to share practice with colleagues over distance on a particular area?
16. Behaviour management
Are there educators in your school that are particularly great at behaviour management? Create a Group to share strategies and ‘what works’, to support the rest of your colleagues.
17. AfL
Build up a bank of successful AfL strategies that you’ve used in your classroom or across your school. You could subscribe to the T&L Essentials Group to find research and examples that will help you put theory into practice.
18. Effective learner behaviours
Join the SSAT’s Effective Learner Behaviours Group to get all of the theory. Then create your own Group to reflect on, analyse and share what effective learner behaviours look like in your school.
19. Leadership development
Create a Group for aspiring leaders within the school to provide advice, resources and video examples that will help with their career progression.
20. Action research
Gather your research and evidence in one place, build this over time to create a research hub that’s accessible to you and your fellow researchers. Open this up to your wider community to make your findings visible to your colleagues.
Click here to access the guide for creating groups.