Mentor materials
Review and looking forward
Intended outcomes
The intended outcomes of this topic are for Early Career Teachers to:
Learn that:
- Learning involves a lasting change in pupils’ capabilities or understanding
- 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
- An important factor in learning is memory, which can be thought of as comprising two elements: working memory and long-term memory
- Working memory is where information that is being actively processed is held, but its capacity is limited and can be overloaded
- Long-term memory can be considered as a store of knowledge that changes as pupils learn by integrating new ideas with existing knowledge
- Where prior knowledge is weak, pupils are more likely to develop misconceptions, particularly if new ideas are introduced too quickly
Learn how to avoid overloading working memory, by:
- Taking into account pupils’ prior knowledge when planning how much new information to introduce
- Breaking complex material into smaller steps (e.g. using partially completed examples to focus pupils on the specific steps)
- Reducing distractions that take attention away from what is being taught (e.g. keeping the complexity of a task to a minimum, so that attention is focused on the content)
Learn how to build on pupils’ prior knowledge, by:
- Identifying possible misconceptions and planning how to prevent these forming
- Linking what pupils already know to what is being taught (e.g. explaining how new content builds on what is already known)
- Sequencing lessons so that pupils secure foundational knowledge before encountering more complex content
- Encouraging pupils to share emerging understanding and points of confusion so that misconceptions can be addressed
Activities
Reflecting on learning (10 minutes)
Welcome the ECT to the final mentor topic in this module. Offer praise where appropriate for the hard word undertaken in the module.
- The purpose of this topic is to review what the ECT has learned throughout this module through the lens of observations. They should come to the topic having carried out one or more observations of colleagues based on Activity 2.6 in the self-directed study materials.
- Ask the ECT who they observed and with which focus. They may have completed more than one observation.
Pose the question: Who did you choose to observe and why? What was the focus of the observation?
Questions for reflection (20 minutes)
Ask the ECT to reflect on the following questions related to their focus area of the observation(s)
- What did you notice?
- What surprised you?
- What did you learn?
- How did X affect the pupil’s learning?
Implications for practice (10 minutes)
In light of the previous discussion, focus now on what the ECT will do as a consequence.
Pose the question: What will you do differently in your practice as a consequence of this observation?
Review of the module (20 minutes)
Look through all the statements that have been covered by module 2. The ECT will have considered two key questions as part of this activity:
- What have you learned in this module?
- What do you need to learn more about?
Ask the ECT to share their responses. Support the ECT to come up with an action plan for how they can address the areas they identify in Question 2. Some prompts could be:
- Which colleagues could the ECT go to, to learn about X?
- What might be the focus of further reading?
- What might ECTs need to work on in terms of their classroom practice moving forward? How could they be supported to do this?