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  • Support for early career teachers
  • Education Development Trust
  • Year 1: Second half-term: the importance of subject and curriculum knowledge
    • Spring week 5

    Mentor materials

    Building your bank of examples and resources

    Intended outcomes

    The intended outcomes of this topic are for Early Career Teachers to:

    Learn that:

    • Anticipating common misconceptions within particular subjects is also an important aspect of curricular knowledge; working closely with colleagues to develop an understanding of likely misconceptions is valuable

    Learn how to deliver a carefully sequenced and coherent curriculum, by:

    • Working with experienced colleagues to accumulate and refine a collection of powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations and demonstrations
    • Using resources and materials aligned with the school curriculum (e.g. textbooks or shared resources designed by experienced colleagues that carefully sequence content)
    • Making use of well-designed resources (e.g. textbooks)
    • Collaborating with colleagues to share the load of planning and preparation and making use of shared resources (e.g. textbooks)

    Activities

    Connecting the learning (10 minutes)

    Ask the ECT whether they have explored any misconceptions in lessons since the last topic.

    Possible questions:

    • Did you anticipate any misconceptions in advance?
    • How did you address them?
    • Did any misconceptions reveal themselves during a lesson?
    • How did you address them?
    • We are going to be looking at ways of exemplifying important concepts today. How does this link to the issues we discussed in the last topic?

    Building your bank of powerful examples, resources and analogies (25 min)

    This topic is designed to support the ECT to build up their collection of powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations and demonstrations as well as resource banks that align with the school curriculum.

    If the mentor is not from the same subject area or phase, in advance of the topic it might be useful to speak with another colleague who can advise on what resources (e.g. textbooks, resource banks, websites etc.) are particularly useful for the ECT.

    Pose the question: how do you decide whether a resource or a material is going to help pupils learn so you can add it to your collection? What would make an example, resource or analogy ‘powerful’?

    Some key points to prompt the ECT with during this activity:

    • Some resources and examples will be better than others. Teachers should be discerning and look out for some key indicators such as:
      • Context (is it relevant for the particular age or stage at which it is intended? Does it suit my pupils in this school?)
      • Language (is it clear, simple language that pupils can follow or does it use vocabulary and complex explanations that would be confusing?)
      • Accurate (are there any potentially misleading aspects? Might it lead to any unintended misconceptions?)
      • Efficient (does it make the point clearly and easily without distraction?)
      • Source (who wrote this or designed it? Are they someone who can be trusted?)

    The mentor and ECT might agree a checklist of ‘quality resources/examples’ that can be used throughout the rest of this topic.

    Ask the ECT to share the examples that they have collated on Handout 4.5 since the last mentor topic. Go through each example or ask the ECT to pick out a few ones that they think are particularly strong.

    Pose the question: why did you choose this example to add to your collection?

    Follow up questions:

    • What is it about the resource that you think will help pupils learn?
    • Does it meet all of the criteria that we just discussed?
    • Are there any potential misconceptions it could create?
    • Would you keep, lose or adapt the example now that we have discussed it?

    If there is an example that the mentor agrees would be good to adapt to use with a particular class, they should help the ECT to consider how they could do this easily:

    • Could you change the language?
    • Could you think of a non-example to go with an example?
    • Could you think of an alternative scenario?
    • Could you break it down into smaller chunks?

    Resources (20 minutes)

    Read this quote together from the Independent Workload Review Group (2016): “High quality resources, including textbooks, can support teaching, reduce workload by teachers not having to ‘reinvent the wheel’, and ensure high expectations of the content of lessons and conceptual knowledge.”

    Pose the question: what are the benefits of using existing resources and materials?

    The mentor may want to draw their attention to the following:

    • The value of learning from more experienced colleagues
    • The importance of looking after their wellbeing, perhaps linked to workload especially at the start of their career
    • Using existing resources is often more efficient and they may be high-quality, although do stress the importance of being discerning when using other people’s resources and materials linked to the checklist
    • There is a lot to learn for ECTs from existing high-quality resources and materials, such as sequencing and effective tasks and activities
    • Using existing resources in a department or across a school can ensure consistency and quality between different classes and different teachers.

    Ask the ECT to share some of the resources or materials that align with the school curriculum (e.g. textbooks, materials created by other members of the team).

    Ask the ECT to talk through a lesson or topic that they know they will be teaching soon but haven’t planned for yet. They should explain how they will use the resources available to them to choose appropriate examples or materials for that lesson, narrating their decision making.

    Prompts:

    • What do you want pupils to learn?
    • Where will you start with the resources?
    • How do you discern what is a useful resource and what is not appropriate? (Refer them back to the criteria from the start of the topic)
    • If you need to adapt the resource, what steps might you take? Who could you talk to?

    Be prepared to give advice and tips to the ECT about how to efficiently search through the resources they have brought. For example,

    • Are they searching in a logical order? (First what exists in the school resource bank, previous lessons, then the textbook that matches the curriculum, then looking online)
    • Are they clear on who they should be talking to for advice or support? (Help the ECT to identify people who created the resources originally, or who are known in the school for creating strong resources)
    • Are they discerning about a resource or material or are they just choosing the first one they come across?

    Planning for action

    Pose the question: how has today’s topic influenced your thinking about resources and materials?

    Pose the question: what will you do differently as a result of today’s topic?

    In advance of the next topic, ECTs should spend an hour observing or being observed by other colleagues. This might be one longer observation or a few shorter, focused ones. There are suggestions about what the observations could focus on in Activity 4.5 from the self-directed study materials. ECTs should bring their notes from the observation(s) to the next mentor topic.