Professional Learning Community
Life is Learning PLC.
Our school-wide Professional Learning Community. Structured collaborative learning for every educator, organised by the six L.E.A.D.E.R. Phases.
The principle
The educators who teach learning must also live it.
Life is Learning — for children and for us.
Learn
L — Knowledge acquisition and exploration.
Three topic areas educators explore, discuss, and document together as they build their foundation at Cosmos.
Exploring New Horizons
New pedagogical ideas, international education trends, cross-cultural learning practices. Widen the lens.
Curriculum Chronicles
Deep dives into the Cambridge Primary curriculum — scope, sequence, and intent across subjects and year groups.
Pedagogical Pathways
Teaching methods grounded in Hattie, Rosenshine, Lemov, and the EEF. What the evidence says, and how we apply it at Cosmos.
Engage
E — Student interaction and relationship building.
How educators build the relationships and classroom culture that learning depends on.
Positive Behaviour
The S.T.A.R. Matrix in practice — how to embed expectations, run morning meetings, and manage the energy of a class.
Classroom Communication
Language that works — scaffolds, sentence stems, questioning frameworks, oracy routines.
Social and Emotional Intelligence
The Skills of the Heart, applied to adults — self-awareness, co-regulation, and relationship management.
Acquire
A — Instructional methodology and techniques.
Teaching craft — the moves that translate good intention into effective practice.
Modern Methods
Retrieval practice, spaced repetition, worked examples, cognitive load theory — the science of how learning actually sticks.
Differentiation Dynamics
How to meet every child at their level without lowering the ceiling for anyone. Scaffolding up, not dumbing down.
Assessment for, as, and of Learning
The three assessment modes — formative, peer/self, and summative. When to use which, and how to act on what you find.
Develop
D — Professional growth and improvement.
Refining practice through observation, intervention, and coaching cycles.
Classroom Chronicles
Sharing classroom practice through video walkthroughs and written reflections — celebrating what works, dissecting what doesn’t.
Interventions
MTSS in practice. Designing and running Tier 2/3 interventions — R.E.A.D Intervention, M.A.S.T.E.R intervention, SEL intervention.
Classroom Coaching
Structured observation + coaching cycles, using the Team Initiated Problem Solving (TIPS) model.
Empower
E — Leadership and community engagement.
Leadership at Cosmos is distributed — this is where educators step into school-wide roles.
Inclusion
Designing practice for children with additional needs, multilingual learners, and those finding things challenging right now.
Community Collab
Working with the Nurture Parent Club, external partners, and the wider Pendurthi community.
Leadership Lessons
What distributed leadership looks like in practice — running Impact Teams, mentoring new educators, leading assemblies.
Reshape
R — Research and evidence-based practice.
Senior educators reshape the school through research translation and policy design.
Research Reflections
Reading groups on current education research — from the EEF, the Education Development Trust, Cambridge Assessment, and more.
Evidence Based Education
Implementation science — how to take research findings and embed them reliably in a school’s daily practice.
Theory to Practice
The bridge from academic research to what a child experiences in a lesson. Systems thinking applied to teaching.
The PLC runs fortnightly during scheduled professional learning time. Each educator rotates through L → E → A → D → E → R over their L.E.A.D.E.R. progression, with sessions mixing structured input, discussion, and classroom application.
Impact Teams (see next page) connect the PLC to live school improvement — what educators learn in the PLC feeds directly into what changes in the school.