Mentor materials
Setting the scene and becoming an ‘effective teacher’
Intended outcomes
The intended outcomes of this session are for Early Career Teachers to:
Learn that:
- Effective teaching can transform pupils’ knowledge, capabilities and beliefs about learning
- Effective teachers introduce new material in steps, explicitly linking new ideas to what has been previously studied and learned
- Modelling helps pupils understand new processes and ideas; good models make abstract ideas concrete and accessible
- Guides, scaffolds and worked examples can help pupils apply new ideas, but should be gradually removed as pupil expertise increases
- Explicitly teaching pupils metacognitive strategies linked to subject knowledge, including how to plan, monitor and evaluate, supports independence and academic success
- Practice is an integral part of effective teaching; ensuring pupils have repeated opportunities to practise, with appropriate guidance and support, increases success
Activities
Introducing the module: what does it mean to be an ‘effective teacher’? (10 minutes)
Preparing for this module:
- Each school will have policies in relation to teaching and learning and what in their view constitutes effective teaching.
- The ECT will need to be aware of these policies as they are likely to be important for performance management purposes.
- It would be worth the mentor identifying who the school’s most effective teachers are, so that they can guide the ECT towards these colleagues for observations and discussions.
Some questions for discussion:
- What do you think it means to be an ‘effective teacher’?
You may discuss things like:
- Influence on pupil grades/outcomes
- Influence on pupils’ beliefs about education and learning, i.e. that it is valuable
- Influence on pupils’ future choices, e.g. studying your subject at A-level or university
- Influence over pupils’ enjoyment of school and their wellbeing
- Influence on pupils’ social skills
- That ‘being popular/funny/strict’ do not necessarily _equate with being effective
Read the following extract from Coe et al (2014) What makes great teaching (Handout 3.1 could also be used to support the discussion):
Great teaching is defined as that which leads to improved student progress. We define effective teaching as that which leads to improved student achievement using outcomes that matter to their future success. Defining effective teaching is not easy. The research keeps coming back to this critical point: student progress is the yardstick by which teacher quality should be assessed. Ultimately, for a judgement about whether teaching is effective, to be seen as trustworthy, it must be checked against the progress being made by students.
Understanding the evidence (20 minutes)
Guidance for mentors:
- The ECT should have read the ‘Understanding the Evidence’ section of the self-directed study materials ahead of the topic.
- The mentor should also read them to familiarise themselves with the content.
- In this portion of the mentor topic, the mentor will be asking questions to check the ECT’s understanding of what they have read. The guidance below provides a full range of responses that show understanding. However, the mentor should not treat this as a ‘test’ of the ECT’s knowledge; use the prompts to elicit fuller answers or clarify if they have misunderstood any aspect.
Suggested dialogue for mentors: You completed Activity 4.2 of the self-directed study materials ‘Understanding the Evidence’ in relation to what makes effective teaching ahead of this topic. Let’s discuss your response to the questions to check your understanding of that material.
Why is introducing new material in steps so important?
- Pupils can only hold a small amount of information in their working memory at any given time.
- If we present large quantities of material in one go, pupils working memory can become overwhelmed (cognitive overload).
Why should you explicitly link new ideas to what has been previously studied and learnt?
- Pupils draw on schemas within their long-term memory to support them to process and understand new material.
- By explicitly drawing attention to the correct schema that pupils can draw on, we support their ability to process information.
What does effective modelling look like?
- Effective modelling supports pupils to know both how and what to do.
- We should model how we want pupils to complete a task, e.g. the way we want the information to be presented.
- As an ‘expert’ we should model the thought processes used to arrive at a correct solution e.g. the next thing I would do to solve this problem is….
- We help pupils to understand ‘what a good one looks like’.
Why should you consider when and how you will remove support and/or scaffolding?
- Whenever we are teaching, we should be thinking about helping our pupils move towards independence.
- This means that we must think about how we are going to remove support and scaffolds so that they do not rely on them to succeed in any given task.
Why is it important to teach pupils metacognitive strategies?
- There is evidence to suggest that there is a link between pupils’ thinking skills and achievement.
- Supporting pupils to understand why and how to make choices about their learning makes them more effective learners.
- Pupils do get better at this naturally as they mature, but they don’t spontaneously become excellent at it – that is why we need to teach them explicitly.
Why is pupil practice important?
- The adage ‘practice makes perfect’ is true!
- Learning is the ‘residue of thought’ (Willingham), i.e. what we are able to transfer to our long-term memory is information that is ‘learnt’.
- We need to support pupils in transferring knowledge from their working memory to their long-term memory and practice is the way to do this.
Reflecting on your own practice (20 minutes)
Becoming an ‘effective teacher’ can feel like a daunting task for. By this point in the year, they will already have had some successes and so this task should help them identify what they need to build on.
Use the questions below to help identify successes and where development might be needed. The mentor should introduce the activity and share their own experience:
Mentor: “At the start of your career, it can feel daunting or a lot of pressure to become a really ‘effective teacher’. [The mentor should share some experience of how this was for them when they first started]
It is important to remember that there are lots of resources available (including more experienced teachers) who can help you to develop the effective teaching practices you need and we will do a lot of this through our weekly topics. You will have already taught something you think has gone really well this year, so I want you to reflect back on that experience, take a moment to appreciate your successes and to recognise the resources that you found useful and why”
Questions to ask ECT:
- What lesson or sequence of lessons do you think you taught really well this year?
- How were you feeling before you taught the lesson(s) – was it a topic you already felt confident in?
- Why do you think it went particularly well in terms of your teaching? [Prompt the ECT to think about the characteristics of effective teaching from the self-directed study materials].
- What resources did you draw on? Did you work with any colleagues? How did this help?
- What did you learn about your teaching from these lessons? Did you do anything differently afterwards?
Planning for action
Ask the ECT what their goals are for this term? What aspect of their teaching would they like to improve? Agree on one or two things which they will work on. These could be linked to the observations which the ECT has an opportunity to plan as part of the self-directed study time. They could observe a teacher linked to this area – make suggestions of which teachers they could observe.
In the next topic, the ECT will need to bring along a lesson that they plan to teach the following week. Work with them now to identify an appropriate lesson which they would like some help planning with.