Co-op Academy Leeds — A CPD journal that turns nine teaching principles into a year of structured reflection

The brief.

Co-op Academy Leeds came to us with a fully developed teaching and learning framework — nine Teaching Principles ranging from retrieval practice and explicit instruction to faded scaffolding and "Quality Time" — anchored in Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction and the Science of Learning. They wanted a single physical journal that would put that framework into every teacher's hands and turn it into daily practice. The journal needed to support three things at once: (1) reflection against the principles after observations or self-review, (2) a record of CPD attended through the year — courses, edubooks, research, learning walks — with space to track impact rather than just attendance, and (3) a termly target-setting page that connects an individual's development focus to the school's wider coaching offer. The format had to feel like a teacher's working notebook, not a compliance folder.

What we designed

Working with the Teaching & Learning team, we built a journal that opens with the school's framework and then repeats a clean reflection cycle six times across the year.

An opening "Quality First Teaching" page setting out the mission — improve student outcomes by improving the quality of teaching — followed by the nine numbered Teaching Principles as a single reference page teachers can return to.
The Co-op Academy Leeds Lesson Journey diagram on a full spread, showing the flow from Retrieval Do Now → Explicit Instruction 1 & 2 → Quality Time → Review, with questioning and formative assessment running underneath.
A Science of Learning spread mapping the same lesson stages onto the novice-to-expert journey (Know → Understand → Use → Master), tying the school's daily practice to the underlying cognitive science.
A Staff Development Target Setting page used at the start of each term: Teaching Principles to focus on, a coaching focus, specific practice to embed, and a checklist of ten ways to develop in the area — observing a beacon colleague, recording and reviewing a lesson, departmental PDL, the National College, leading a research group focus, blogs and edubooks, a learning walk with the T&L team, a classroom-based research project, writing for the newsletter, or another route the teacher proposes.
A repeating Course / Book Log spread for every piece of CPD undertaken, with five consistent fields: Course/Book title, Overview, Date, Notes / Key Takeaways, Action Plan, and Impact — the last field deliberately separated so teachers come back to the entry weeks later and record what changed in the classroom.
A full Lesson Reflection Form that runs across four pages and covers all nine Teaching Principles. For each principle, the left column states the principle, the middle column lists what good practice looks like (drawn directly from the school's framework and Rosenshine), and the right column is a notes panel for the teacher's own observations against that principle. The form ends with the three references the school anchors its CPD on: Rosenshine, the Great Teaching Toolkit, and Making Every Lesson Count.

The repeating cycle. Two Course/Book log spreads, then the full nine-principle Lesson Reflection Form, repeated six times through the journal. A teacher logging their year fills the same structure each time — no decision to make about where things go, just the next blank spread for the next book read, course attended, or lesson reflected on.

The finished book

A slim, working-document CPD journal — one per teaching member of staff at Co-op Academy Leeds — that puts the school's framework, the science behind it, and the year's reflection in a single place on the desk.