Whole School Progress the LAZY Way: Follow me, I'm Right Behind You

Based on Jim Smith's learning and leadership work with schools across the country, this book is packed with highly practical solutions and suggestions that are proven to help you improve the quality of learning (and therefore progress!) both in your classroom and across the school. And as it's all done in the laziest possible way, it will be the pupils working harder, not you! Following on from the acclaimed The Lazy Teacher's Handbook, Whole School Progress the LAZY Way applies Jim Smith's lazy philosophy to the thorny issue of 'making progress'. Aimed at improving learning both in the classroom and across the school, this book once again shows how you can use Jim's renowned 'lazy way' to put student's learning first rather than your teaching or paranoia about progress. And the result? Outstanding progress in your lessons without even a hint of traffic lights, mini-whiteboards or thumbs up! Be it planning for progress, capturing evidence of progress in a lesson or using lesson observation techniques that make progress explicit, the book offers lots of new techniques which have led to 'outstanding' judgements during Ofsted inspections. Just ask the author! What's more, Jim extends his ideas across the whole school. Drawing on his experience with 'lazy leadership' he shows how his philosophy can have a dramatic impact on areas such as lesson observations, performance management and professional development. It's not about leading the learning. It's about the learning leading you. And when you let it, your school is never the same again.

About the Author :
Jim Smith, the laziest (yet still professional) teacher in town, is a head of school, education consultant, Independent Thinking Associate, speaker and bestselling author. Since establishing Independent Thinking 25 years ago, Ian Gilbert has made a name for himself across the world as a highly original writer, editor, speaker, practitioner and thinker and is someone who the IB World magazine has referred to as one of the world's leading educational visionaries.The author of several books, and the editor of many more, Ian is known by thousands of teachers and young people across the world for his award-winning Thunks books. Thunks grew out of Ian's work with Philosophy for Children (P4C), and are beguiling yet deceptively powerful little philosophical questions that he has created to make children's - as well as their teachers' - brains hurt.Ian's growing collection of bestselling books has a more serious side too, without ever losing sight of his trademark wit and straight-talking style. The Little Book of Bereavement for Schools, born from personal family experience, is finding a home in schools across the world, and The Working Class - a massive collaborative effort he instigated and edited - is making a genuine difference to the lives of young people from some of the poorest backgrounds.A unique writer and editor, there is no other voice like Ian Gilbert's in education today.

Review :
Reviewed by Barry J Hymer, Professor of psychology in education, Education Faculty, University of Cumbria.A welcome sequel to Jim Smith's first book, and again jam-packed with ideas for invisibly transferring the learning load onto students - this time with an emphasis on whole-school processes. Readable, amusing and quirky, I expect this to do as well as its predecessor. Reviewed by Geoff Cherrill, Vice Principal, Nova Hreod, Swindon.Being a self confessed fan of the Lazy Way and having read The Lazy Teacher's Handbook, seen Jim Smith deliver INSET and been fortunate to visit the home of Lazy Teaching in Clevedon, I greeted this book with a measure of excitement and a dose of Ofsted weary cynicism. Excitement at the idea of more off beat, yet enormously effective, strategies for delivering effective progress in my classroom; and cynicism at the potential for the approach to have taken on the age old appearance of simply being last year's educational fad.Fortunately, I am writing this with yet more excitement and not a trace of cynicism. The book and its author maintain a sense of infectious enthusiasm, wonderful humour and genuinely intelligent comment on the educational landscape in 2012, allied to a rock solid approach to dealing with the challenging concept of ensuring every child makes progress in every lesson they encounter.It is written in an easy, flowing style which allows you to take ideas on board and see how they relate to both current Ofsted requirements and contemporary educational thinking in general. It contains a constant stream of useful tips and strategies which can be adopted wholesale or picked carefully and adapted to your, and your class's, own style.The lesson model provides real scope for development in your own school, whilst maintaining its theme of children developing the capacity to understand the concept of checking their own progress. Whilst the book attempts to be light hearted and humorous, it addresses