A: Getting started: training and release of resources

You will know from your local Opening Worlds Project Lead, that all newcomers to Opening Worlds go through an Implementation Phase, normally during the time prior to full roll-out. This consists of two training sessions (Implementation 1 and Implementation 2), a period of practice, teaching a Year 2 Stone Age booklet to get used to the materials and our high-leverage pedagogy, and then an optional 4pm surgery to ask questions arising from your early efforts at teaching. Once the Implementation period is complete, your Project Lead will share the password to the site, and you can begin the programme, usually the following term.

Attendance at both Implementation 1 and Implementation 2 is essential for understanding and teaching the programme. The training will ensure that you understand the rationale behind the materials. This will better enable you to use the materials skilfully and flexibly. If you want to tweak and adapt things, you will find you can do this far better if you fully understand what the materials are designed to achieve. In the training, you will also meet the two friendly faces behind the materials – Christine and Steve. You will be able to ask them questions at the end, get to know them a bit, and feel comfortable raising questions with them thereafter.

All Implementation training is 8.45am – 12.15pm.

Find your Project Lead’s contact details here.

You can, but only with the Year 3 materials!

You need to teach the material in sequence because each part makes the next part much more understandable. Numerous words that are explicitly taught and practised in Year 3 are taken for granted in the Year 4 lessons.

Many Year 4, especially those with weaker literacy, would be stumbling over much vocabulary if they hadn’t done the Year 3 work. This would slow progress and limit enjoyment. You will be startled by how future Year 4s will fly with their reading and all the Year 4 tasks once they have done the Year 3 programme.

Yes! For as long as you are a subscribing member, you are entitled to two development sessions (again 8.45 to 12.15), every year. So as each year goes by, you will become more and more skilled and knowledgeable about history, geography and religion, equipping you to teach and to lead in these subjects. Your Project Lead will give you details of when these sessions are.