Mentor materials
Assessing prior knowledge
Intended outcomes
The intended outcomes of this topic are for Early Career Teachers to:
Learn how to check prior knowledge and understanding during lessons, by:
- Using assessments to check for prior knowledge and pre-existing misconceptions.
- Structuring tasks and questions to enable the identification of knowledge gaps and misconceptions (e.g. by using common misconceptions within multiple-choice questions).
Activities
Reflecting on learning? (10 minutes)
Discuss the lesson observation agreed in the last topic.
- What was successful?
- What could be better?
- What will the ECT do next?
Assessment to check prior knowledge (10 minutes)
Pose the question: what are some of the assessment activities you can use to check prior knowledge?
Answers might include:
- Concept map
- Multiple-choice question
- Multiple-choice quiz
- Giving pupils a picture and asking them to ask questions of it
- Graphic organiser
- Mind-mapping.
Thinking about an upcoming lesson, create an activity that will check prior knowledge. You can use one of the suggestions above.
What will the ECT do with the information they gather from this? What decisions will it inform?
Assessment to check for pre-existing misconceptions (15 minutes)
Ask the ECT to select a topic they will be teaching next. Together (or with the help of a subject specialist) list all the potential misconceptions that could come up. Use the example below to help you:
Example:
Biology – cells
- Thinking the nucleus is the brain of the cell.
- Not recognising or being able to explain that the cell membrane and cell wall are different things.
- Thinking that mitochondria create energy.
- Thinking that enzymes die.
Pose the question: why is it important to identify pre-existing misconceptions before teaching a topic/lesson?
Answers might include:
- Predicting misconceptions will allow us to address them before they become an issue.
- We need to correct misconceptions before they influence the way pupils think of new knowledge.
Look at the following example:
Potential misconception: thinking the nucleus is the brain of the cell.
Assessment which will check understanding:
Pupils will answer a multiple choice exit ticket to identify misconception.
Decision this will support
I want to know whether pupils have grasped the concept so I can move on or whether I need to reteach it.
Potential misconception: not recognising or being able to explain that the cell membrane and cell wall are different things.
Assessment which will check understanding:
Hinge question during the lesson.
Decision this will support:
I want to know whether pupils have grasped the concept so I can move on or whether I need to reteach it.
The ECT should select one misconception from their list and decide how they are going to check pupils’ understanding of this. Together with the mentor they should plan the assessment.
In class tasks and questioning to enable identification of knowledge gaps and misconceptions (15 minutes)
Together, look back at the ECT’s list of potential misconceptions from an upcoming topic. Select a different one to the previous activity.
Together, draft two hinge questions that can be used to check for understanding and to identify pupils’ misconceptions and knowledge gaps. Remember, answers should:
- Allow you to make inferences about pupils learning
- Focus on key learning
- Be quick to answer
- Be phrased in a way that will allow you to target misconceptions.
Together, plan how ECT should respond to pupil answers.
- Whether a pupil responds correctly or incorrectly, ECTs should ask pupils to explain their thinking.
- Hold out for 100%.
Together, identify strategies which can support pupils who give the wrong answer and/or wrong explanation.
- Which misconception does the pupil hold?
- What questions would help them unpick their thinking?
Together, consider how to check whether the misconception is evident in work the pupils undertake after the use of the question.
- What follow up task or questions will you ask pupils to complete?
Checking understanding (5 minutes)
The ECT should have a go at the following multiple-choice quiz. There may be more than one correct answer for each question.
Why is it important to check prior knowledge?
A. To identify what pupils know already B. To check understanding C. To link new knowledge to existing schema
When should we consider the misconceptions pupils might hold?
A. In the planning stage B. While teaching key concepts C. After teaching the key concepts
Name three ways you can check pre-existing misconceptions.
A. Exit tickets, hinge questions, do now activities B. Closed questions, exit tickets, multiple-choice questions C. Multiple-choice quiz, re-teaching, exit tickets
Planning for action
Agree when the ECT will teach the lesson for which they have planned the assessment to identify misconceptions, and, if possible, arrange for the mentor to observe part or all of the lesson with a focus on identifying misconceptions
Alternatively, the ECT could record the part of the lesson to share with their mentor or write down their reflections after teaching it.
Extending pupils
Intended outcomes
The intended outcomes of this topic are for Early Career Teachers to:
Learn how to check prior knowledge and understanding during lessons, by:
- Prompting pupils to elaborate when responding to questioning to check that a correct answer stems from secure understanding.
- Monitoring pupil work during lessons, including checking for misconceptions.
Learn how to provide high quality feedback, by:
- Focusing on specific actions for pupils and providing time for pupils to respond to feedback.
Activities
Activating the learning (5 minutes)
This topic focuses on checking pupils’ prior knowledge and understanding during lessons.
Pose the question: from the knowledge you have developed so far, why is checking pupils’ prior knowledge and understanding during lessons important?
Answers might include:
- Prior knowledge supports new knowledge.
- If we know what pupils understand and know, we can plan accordingly.
- We need to know what misconceptions pupils hold so we can address these.
- To activate prior knowledge.
- To support pupils to make connections.
Supporting pupils to elaborate on their responses (10 minutes)
Read together the extract of a teacher talking about how she supports pupils to elaborate on their responses.
“In my school, one of the strands of our literacy policy is that when pupils are giving verbal responses either to me or when speaking to each other they must use full sentences. This is an idea that is embedded within the school and I reinforce during lessons. For example, I will make sure that I remind pupils that they need to respond in full sentences and I usually model an example of a full sentence. If pupils respond with just one or two words, I ask pupils to rephrase and put their response into a full sentence. This means that pupils tend to respond fairly fully to questioning. However, there are levels of sophistication with full sentences – quite often pupils will respond in a full sentence but won’t have justified their answer for example. So, say I asked the pupils ‘what was the most effective response to the earthquake’, a pupil might answer ‘I think the early warning system was the most effective response’. In this instance, I would prompt a pupil by asking him or her ‘why do you say that?’ or ‘can you say a bit more about that to explain your answer?’. This helps me to establish whether the reasoning behind the answer is sound. It is helpful to remind pupils that the word ‘because’ should feature in their answer because this supports them to provide a justification without a prompt."
- What strategies does the teacher have to get pupils to elaborate on their responses?
- Is this something you are doing?
- Are there strategies you will try?
These are example stems that could be given to pupils to support them to elaborate on their responses:
How are _______ and _______ alike?
What is the main idea of _______?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of _______?
Compare _______ and _______ with regard to _______.
What do you think causes _______?
How does _______ tie in with what we have learned before?
Which one is the best _______, and why?
What are some possible solutions for the problem of _______?
Do you agree or disagree with this statement: _______?
What do still not understand about _______
Rosenshine (2012)
Pose the question: can you come up with some more stems that are relevant to your subject area and/or a lesson you plan to teach in the near future?
Monitoring pupil work during lessons (25 minutes)
One way that you can check prior knowledge and understanding during lessons is to monitor pupils’ work. This can be done using ‘live marking’ as a strategy. Together, watch the video from the self-directed study materials.
Questions for discussion:
- Have you had a go at live marking yet?
- How did it go?
Together, you are going to plan for the ECT to use live marking in an upcoming lesson.
- Identify a task in which pupils are going to be working independently
- Plan out a checklist of what you will be looking at pupils work for.
- What common errors did you see in the last independent task?
- What are the potential misconceptions around this topic?
There is an example below to help you.
Example:
Descriptive writing - lesson objective: to use descriptive techniques to have an effect on the reader
Things I will be looking for:
- Understanding of descriptive techniques
- Using descriptive techniques
- Using descriptive techniques for effect
- Understanding how to use adjectives
- Choosing powerful adjectives
- Sentence structure
- Pupils understanding when to use punctuation.
Common errors identified in the previous assessment:
- Forgetting full stops
- Making poor adjective choices.
Potential misconceptions:
- Confusing a simile and metaphor
- Not knowing how to structure their sentences.
In the moment you will need to make a decision about what feedback to give each pupil. To do this you will need to ask yourself:
What will be the highest leverage feedback you can give to each pupil?
Example:
Megan has incorrectly used a simile but also has not used any capital letters. I don’t want to overwhelm her with feedback, so I make the decision to just focus on capital letters for the moment. I put a ‘c’ in the margin of her work which tells her she needs to read through her work and check her capital letters. I will circle back in a few minutes and check she has addressed this.
What will you do if you see misconceptions?
If you see the misconception from one pupil you might want to address it with that pupil.
If you see the misconception occurring in more than one pupil’s work, you may want to stop the class and address the misconception in the moment.
Example:
I have noticed that at least 3 pupils have incorrectly used a simile. I decide to stop the class and use questioning to check understanding and model an example on the board. It will be best if I stop the whole class here to clarify as it will benefit all pupils – some to clear up the misconception, others to recap. If some pupils do know how to use a simile and are confident, I will get them to model an example for the rest of the class or I will challenge them to improve the simile.
Ask the ECT:
- Decide what the priorities are for your pupils in the task you have planned.
- Select one misconception and plan how you will re-teach this.
- What questions will you ask to check understanding?
- How will you challenge those pupils who have understood?
Providing time for pupils to respond to feedback (15 minutes)
It is important to provide time for pupils to put the specific feedback you have given them into action.
Pose the question: what does high-quality feedback look like? How can we ensure our feedback helps pupils improve?
Answers might include:
- It is clear and accurate.
- Tells the pupil where they are and where they need to go.
- It should encourage effort from the pupil.
- We can ask the pupil to redo part of the work.
- We can ask the pupil to answer a new related question.
- We can ask the pupil to extend their thinking.
We need to plan the time for pupils to act on this feedback. Ask the ECT to look at an upcoming lesson in which they will be giving feedback to pupils. This could be individual written feedback, verbal feedback like in the previous activity or whole-class feedback responding to common errors and misconceptions. Together look at the books the ECT has brought with them and identify specific actions they could give individual pupils.
They should plan:
- How are they going to give feedback? What form will this be in?
- How will they plan in time for pupils to respond to this feedback?
- How will pupils respond?
The ECT might want to make a structured responding to feedback sheet for the pupil to use. See Handout 5.5 for an example.
Planning for action
The ECT should write down two things they will take into their practice from the learning in the topic today.
The next topic covers high-quality classroom talk and questioning. The ECT will need to bring to the topic an example of a lesson they have taught or one they have planned to teach soon which has an element of classroom talk in it.
Examples of classroom talk could be:
- Paired talk activities
- Group talk activities
- Discussion activities
- Teacher questioning.