Autumn week 3

Mentor materials

Training session - prior knowledge, misconceptions and worked examples

Duration: 90 minutes

Session objectives

Learn that:

2.2. Prior knowledge plays an important role in how pupils learn; committing some key facts to their long-term memory is likely to help pupils learn more complex ideas.
2.6. Where prior knowledge is weak, pupils are more likely to develop misconceptions, particularly if new ideas are introduced too quickly.
2.9. Worked examples that take pupils through each step of a new process are also likely to support pupils to learn.

Build on pupils’ prior knowledge, by:

2d. Identifying possible misconceptions and planning how to prevent these forming.
2e. Linking what pupils already know to what is being taught (for example, explaining how new content builds on what is already known).
2f. Sequencing lessons so that pupils secure foundational knowledge before encountering more complex content.
2g. Encouraging pupils to share emerging understanding and points of confusion so that misconceptions can be addressed.

How to prepare for the session

The ECT doesn’t have a self-study element this week. Instead, you should use the materials below to help you plan a session with them about this topic.

The mentor materials on prior learning may be helpful too.

You’ll need to prepare a worked example for the session’s last activity to demonstrate what you want ECTs to do.

The following resources have key findings that you might find helpful. You could share them with ECTs for reference too.

Session structure:

Introduction to the session (15 minutes)

Welcome the ECTs. Explain that the aims of the session are to:

understand the important role that prior knowledge plays in learning
develop practical tools to uncover weak prior learning, and subsequent misconceptions or points of confusion that are emerging
practise creating worked examples that will be useful in the classroom

Activity: Agree, disagree or do not know.

Tell ECTs that you’ll read a set of statements.

They need to choose the corner which best represents their understanding, then explain their choice.

The 4 corners are:

agree
disagree
it depends
no idea

You may include the rule that ECTs can only go to the ‘it depends’ corner once.

The statements should represent possible misconceptions teachers may have about pupils’ learning. Examples include:

pupils are all blank slates when they come to school
there's only so much our memory can hold: when we learn new things, we’ll forget something else
there’s nothing I can do if they always give up when the work gets hard
our brains get bigger as we get older so we can remember more things
memorising facts is not a good use of time when they can just look up information
pupils learn best by doing

After you read each statement:

ask ECTs to briefly share why they chose their answer
draw out their experiences
try to steer them with some expert guidance
make direct links to the self-directed study materials that ECTs have read

Committing some key facts to memory is likely to help pupils learn (15 minutes)

Share the following quote from the character Thomas Gradgrind in Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times:

“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

Ask ECTs to work in pairs or groups to discuss:

what is your initial reaction to this quote?
to what extent do you agree with Thomas Gradgrind?
are there any instances where you do want to plant facts in your pupils’ minds?

Explain that there’s often confusion about what is meant by ‘knowledge’ in education and the type of rote memorisation portrayed in the quote.

Knowledge accumulates and builds upon itself. Subjects have foundational concepts (often ‘facts’) that act as the gateway to lots of other learning. The more we know, the more we can know.

We should recognise that there are occasions where it’s useful for pupils to have a particular set of facts stored in their long-term memory.

Key points to remember:

working memory is limited and can become overloaded
when we have information in our long-term memory (organised into schemas), it frees up working memory
having some key facts memorised in the long-term memory is also useful when introducing new content, so pupils can connect the new material to existing knowledge or schema and build understanding of more complex concepts over time

Organise ECTs into groups by phase or subject.

You may ask ECTs may bring a list that they wrote during the self-directed study materials as the starting point for this activity. Or you can ask them to make a list now.

The list should include key facts or knowledge that ECTs think would be useful for pupils in their subject or phase to have committed to long-term memory.

Ask:

why did they choose these facts or knowledge?
how would having these in their long-term memory help them to learn more effectively?

As an example: having times tables in the long-term memory means that pupils can more easily do long multiplication or work with ratio and proportion.

Where prior knowledge is weak, pupils are likely to develop misconceptions (15 minutes)

Clarify that misconceptions are ‘a belief or an idea that is not based on correct information, or that is not understood by people’ (Oxford English Dictionary).

They’re different from mistakes because they’re conceptual misunderstandings, not just errors caused by inattention.

For example, a pupil might spell a word incorrectly but know how to correct it when it’s pointed out to them. This is a mistake.

If a pupil has a false belief or assumption, such as that all underwater animals must be fish, they have a misconception and would not be able to correct themselves to tell you that a whale is a mammal.

Remind ECTs that:

information in our long-term memory is organised into groups called schemas
if our schema is weak or insecure, when we encounter new content we’ll forge faulty connections (called misconceptions)

Ask ECTs to work in pairs. The group should then form 2 concentric circles that face each other. One partner should stand in the outer circle, and the other should stand opposite them in the inner circle.

Ask the inside partner to spend one minute sharing a strategy that they’ve used to successfully uncover pupils’ prior knowledge. They should explain the approach, what they did, and how it worked.

Then ask their partner to do the same.

Ask the outside circle to step one place to the right. Everyone should have a new partner.

Ask ECTs to repeat the task. This time they should share a second example of their own, or the example their previous partner shared with them.

Repeat these steps as many times as you like.

Ask each ECT to tell the group about a strategy they heard that they now want to try in their own classroom.

Planning a lesson (30 minutes)

Ask ECTs to work in small groups to plan the start of a lesson that introduces some new content. They can choose their own topic, or you can provide some options.

The lesson must:

establish what prior knowledge pupils have about the topic
link what pupils already know to what’s being taught
include a worked example
begin with foundational knowledge and build up to more complex content

You may choose to model a worked example that meets all of those criteria. Here’s an example.

Example

Lesson aim: teach how to do a forward tumble

Starter activity:

put the word tumble on the board
Think-Pair-Share: What do you know about tumbling already?
ask how confident pupils are with doing a forward tumble
explain the aims of today’s session

Show a worked example:

show a video of myself doing a tumble
explain what I’m doing as pupils watch the video
write down the steps on the board

Put pupils in pairs (with one confident pupil in each pair who’ll take the role of the coach).

Pupils practise step 1: getting into the ball shape.

Whole class:

watch the clip again, and discuss moving to step 2
pupils now practise step 2

Reviewing learning and next steps (15 minutes)

If there’s time, get the ECTs to demonstrate their lesson to the group.

Ask ECTs what they’ll do next in their own teaching practice as a result of today’s session.

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