Learning outcomes

The intended outcomes of this activity are for you to:

Learn that

• Pupils are likely to learn at different rates and to require different levels and types of support from teachers to succeed.
• Seeking to understand pupils’ differences, including their different levels of prior knowledge and potential barriers to learning, is an essential part of teaching.
• Adapting teaching in a responsive way, including by providing targeted support to pupils who are struggling, is likely to increase pupil success.
• Adaptive teaching is less likely to be valuable if it causes the teacher to artificially create distinct tasks for different groups of pupils or to set lower expectations for particular pupils.
• There is a common misconception that pupils have distinct and identifiable learning styles. This is not supported by evidence and attempting to tailor lessons to learning styles is unlikely to be beneficial.

In your notepad

Keep a note of your responses to the following questions and bring them with you to your first mentor session for this Block to inform your discussions:

• why is it important to spend time learning about your pupils’ differences?
• what kind of differences can exist between pupils?
• why is it important to consider how you will adapt for your pupils’ differences?