Summer week 2

Induction tutor materials

Training session - building trusting relationships with pupils

Duration: 60 minutes

Session objectives

Learn that:

1.5. A culture of mutual trust and respect supports effective relationships.
1.6. High quality teaching has a long-term positive effect on pupils' life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
7.7. Pupils’ investment in learning is also driven by their prior experiences and perceptions of success and failure.

Learn how to:

Motivate pupils, by:

7n. Providing opportunities for pupils to articulate their long-term goals and helping them to see how these are related to their success in school.

How to prepare for the session

Mentors have asked ECTs to collect pupil voice data about how pupils characterise effective relationships with teachers. Ask them to bring that to this session.

Be aware that ECTs may have had some difficult experiences with pupils over the year. The conversations in this session may be challenging for some, and could degenerate into negativity. Be sensitive and focus discussions on positive experiences.

The following resources may also be helpful:

Session structure:

Effective relationships with pupils (15 minutes)

Ask ECTs to complete the following task.

Thinking as a teacher, write down 3 words that characterise effective relationships between a teacher and their pupils.

Thinking as a pupil, think how those characteristics may differ.

You may choose to share some relevant research material at this point.

The effect of teaching on pupils’ life chances (15 minutes)

Remind ECTs that high-quality teaching can have a long-term positive effect on pupils’ life chances, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The efforts they put into planning and teaching can make a real difference to young people’s lives. This is an opportunity to for them to remember the moral purpose of teaching and a likely reason why they joined the profession.

Ask ECTs to work in small groups and share positive experiences of influencing pupils’ learning.

Occasions when they felt that they had ‘made a difference’ might include:

providing additional support to a pupil with special educational needs or a disability
using exposition and questioning to break down complex concepts in a way that was understood by pupils
spending more or less time on a topic in order to support the whole class
talking to individual pupils about their long-term goals

They should identify the actions they took in adapting their teaching to these pupils, and how this contributed to building a more effective relationship with them.

Pupils’ prior experiences and perceptions of success and failure (15 minutes)

Ask ECTs to identify occasions in their own learning when they were influenced by:

a negative prior experience or perception
a positive prior experience or perception

For example, ECTs might share that they did badly in a physical exercise or mathematics at school, and then felt reluctant to participate in that type of activity again.

They might share how they once had success, they felt confident about engaging in that type of activity again.

Ask ECTs to consider how these experiences are also felt by pupils in both the long-term and short-term.

Thinking back over the year, what reflections do they have on:

the balance of positive and negative feedback they give to pupils
the ways in which this has influenced pupils’ investment in their learning
strategies they can use to give early or more successes to pupils, especially those who arrive in their class or subject with previous negative experiences of learning

Share this example:

Clara starts Year 5 with Mr Stevens and often declares that she is ‘no good at English’. Every time Mr Stevens teaches English to the class, Clara visibly switches off and sometimes messes around.

Mr Stevens decides to approach this by calling home to find out a bit more. He learns that Clara believes that she is rubbish at English and has always struggled with reading. After getting a bad mark in Year 4 for a piece of work she worked hard on, she has decided it’s better not to try.

Together with her parents, he agrees an action plan:

together they’ll have a brief chat with Clara about English work
the librarian will help Clara find a book she’s interested in
her parents will read with her for 10 minutes in the evening and discuss what she has read
Mr Stevens will provide scaffolding for the next task and make this available to the whole class
Mr Stevens will praise the effort Clara puts in to this work and help her have success in the task

Providing opportunities for pupils to articulate their long-term goals (10 minutes)

Teachers can support pupils to think more positively about their learning by helping them to articulate their long-term goals, and seeing how these are related to their success in school.

Ask ECTs to work in groups and discuss how they can achieve this with the pupils they teach. This will look different for different age groups and phases.

Strategies might include:

sharing pictures or short video clips of adults in different roles and asking pupils which they would like to be
asking pupils (individuals or groups) what they want to study at university
asking pupils (individuals or groups) what job they would like to do

ECTs should:

describe how the knowledge and skills they teach are relevant to pupils achieving these goals
plan an occasion in the coming weeks or months when they can try this with a class or group of pupils

Planning for action (5 minutes)

Ask ECTs to note 2 or 3 key actions they’re going to take from this session. They should share these with their mentor.

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