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  • Support for early career teachers
  • Education Development Trust
  • Year 2: First half-term: enhancing classroom practice - grouping and tailoring
    • Spring week 2

    Mentor materials

    Setting the scene and reflecting on your own practice

    Intended outcomes

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

    Learn that:

    • Paired and group activities can increase pupil success, but to work together effectively pupils need guidance, support and practice
    • How pupils are grouped is also important; care should be taken to monitor the impact of groupings on pupil attainment, behaviour and motivation
    • Flexibly grouping pupils within a class to provide more tailored support can be effective, but care should be taken to monitor its impact on engagement and motivation, particularly for low attaining pupils.

    Activities

    Introducing module 9: Enhancing your classroom practice (20 minutes)

    Guidance to mentors:

    The first part of this topic will be a chance to look back at the progress the ECT made in this area. Support them to articulate what successes they have had as well as areas they still feel need work.

    If you were the mentor last year, it may be relevant/appropriate for you to offer your opinion on successes and ongoing areas for development.

    Suggested dialogue for mentors:

    Welcome to module 9 called ‘Enhancing your classroom practice’. As you know, this module builds on your learning from Year 1, focusing on pupil grouping and tailoring. In Year 1, you looked at what it means to be an ‘effective teacher’.

    Some questions for discussion:

    • You’ve had a whole year since you learned about what it means to be an effective teacher in module 3. We looked at things such as modelling, scaffolding, effective expositions, breaking materials down into steps and practice. How do you think you have developed in these areas in the last year?
    • Being an effective teacher means being able to influence pupils’ beliefs about learning as well as their grade/outcomes. Have you got any examples where you think that has happened?
    • What areas do you feel you still need to work on?

    Understanding the evidence (20 minutes)

    Guidance to mentors:

    The ECT should have read the ‘Understanding the evidence’ section of the self-directed study materials ahead of the topic. The mentor should also read them to familiarise themselves with the content. In this portion of the topic, the mentor will be asking questions to check the ECT’s understanding of what they have read.

    Suggested dialogue for mentors:

    You completed Activity 9.2 of the self-directed study materials ‘Understanding the evidence’ in relation to pupil grouping and homework ahead of this topic. Let’s discuss your response to the questions to check your understanding of that material.

    In what different ways could you group pupils?

    • Random pairs
    • A pair of higher and lower attainment
    • Random trios
    • Trios of similar attainment
    • Mixed attainment trios
    • Larger groups of four or more either of similar or mixed attainment.

    Why is it important that you don’t assume that pupils will be able to do group work?

    • As with anything, pupils need to be taught how to do group work well.

    In what ways can you guide and support pupils to work more effectively together in groups?

    • Ensure that pupils are taught how you want them to do group work.
    • Set out success criteria for effective group work.
    • Provide support during the activity with feedback on how groups are doing – “this group is doing really well; I can hear them discussing the ideas with each person taking a turn at speaking”.
    • Explicitly teach your pupils strategies for listening and working together, e.g. turn taking protocols.

    How can you ensure that the homework you set pupils is of high quality and therefore maximises progress for pupils?

    • Make sure it is linked to what you are and will be studying.
    • Use homework as an opportunity to regularly review and practice key ideas, spaced over time (As explored in module 8).
    • Include retrieval tasks in homework to increase cognitive benefit of the materials and therefore the usefulness of the task.
    • Provide just enough support so that pupils experience a high success rate when attempting challenging work (e.g. include a worked example or partially completed examples to support pupils).

    Reflecting on your own practice – pupil grouping and homework (10 minutes)

    The self-directed study materials focus on pupil grouping and homework. Support the ECT to reflect on their own practice in relation to this area. Use the questions below to help identify successes and where development might be needed. The risk for new teachers is that they set up group and pair work, and set homework, just ‘because’. The mentor can help them to think through the purpose of group work and what successful group work achieves. The pupils enjoying the task or appearing engaged are not necessarily bad things, but nor are they a clear indicator that learning is taking place (see Coe’s ‘poor proxies for learning’). Equally, pupils completing homework diligently is not a good marker that it is improving learning.

    Suggested dialogue for mentors:

    It is important to remember that there are lots of resources available (including more experienced teachers) who can help you to develop in relation to effective pupil grouping and homework and we will do a lot of this through our weekly topics. You will have already had experiences in these two areas which you thought were successful. I want you to reflect back on those experiences, take a moment to appreciate your successes and to recognise the resources that you found useful and why

    Questions to ask ECT:

    • Can you think of any examples where you have had a lesson with paired or group work that went really well?
    • Why do you think it went so well? What were the benefits to the pupils? How did you know?
    • What resources did you draw on? Did you work with any colleagues? How did this help?
    • What has it been like setting homework? Have you been consistent?
    • How have you achieved a link between classwork and homework?
    • What aspects of this example represent ‘quality’ homework?

    Planning for action

    Ask the ECT what they will do differently as a result of today’s topic? When will they do this by?

    In the next topic you will be looking at paired and group work and how to facilitate it successfully. Ask the ECT to reflect on what group work they use already in their classroom? Ask them to be particularly observant of any paired or group work between now and the next topic so they can reflect with you on what works well and what the main challenges are.