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  • Support for early career teachers
  • Education Development Trust
  • Year 2: Second half-term: continuing your professional development
    • Summer week 4

    Mentor materials

    Looking back and reflecting on progress

    Intended outcomes

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

    Learn how to develop as a professional by:

    • Engaging in professional development focused on developing an area of practice with clear intentions for impact on pupil outcomes, sustained over time with built-in opportunities for practice.
    • Reflecting on progress made, recognising strengths and weaknesses and identifying next steps for further improvement.

    Activities

    Lesson observation discussion (10 minutes)

    This topic will be an opportunity to look back at the year and reflect on successes and challenges. Reflect on the lesson observation agreed in the last topic. Discuss the conversation the ECT had with a colleague:

    • Who did the ECT speak to?
    • What did they learn?
    • What are their reflections on this?

    Reflecting on progress made (20 minutes)

    The ECT has covered the following professional development areas in the last year, which have all built on the previous year:

    • A people profession
    • Embedding a positive culture for learning
    • How pupils learn – making it stick
    • Enhancing classroom practice- grouping and tailoring
    • Revisiting the importance of subject and curriculum knowledge.

    Ask the ECT:

    • What have you learnt this year?
    • How has your learning built on the previous year?
    • What has been your biggest challenge? Why?
    • What has been your biggest success? Why?

    Ask the ECT to summarise:

    • The teacher they were at the very start of the programme
    • The teacher they were at the end of the previous year
    • The teacher they are now.

    Discuss what steps the ECT has taken to get to where they are today. They might discuss:

    • Working with colleagues.
    • Finding a key piece of evidence that informed their practice.
    • Practising techniques.
    • Receiving feedback.

    Ask the ECT how they can continue to keep progressing.

    Reflecting on professional development (25 minutes)

    Guidance for mentors:

    This part of the topic requires the ECT to reflect on how they have engaged in professional development. Below are some areas of practice the ECT has covered this year:

    • Establishing a positive climate for learning
    • Grouping pupils strategically
    • Responding to individual pupil needs
    • Supporting working memory
    • Addressing misconceptions.

    For each one, the ECT and the mentor should discuss:

    • How have you developed this specific area?
    • How has this supported pupil outcomes?
    • How have you sustained this over time?
    • What further steps could you take?

    Ask the ECT if they can think of any other areas of practice they have worked on and discuss the same questions for these.

    Next steps (5 minutes)

    In the final mentor topic, ECTs will be thinking about their steps moving forward. They should use this part of the topic to consider what areas they have most improved in. At the start of the next topic, the mentor will go through the areas they believe the ECT has most improved in.