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  • Support for early career teachers
  • Teach First
  • Year 1: First half-term: how can you support all pupils to succeed?

    • Related Early Career Framework strands

    Classroom practice

    4.6 Questioning is an essential tool for teachers; questions can be used for many purposes, including to check pupils’ prior knowledge, assess understanding and break down problems.

    4.10 How pupils are grouped is also important; care should be taken to monitor the impact of groupings on pupil attainment, behaviour and motivation.

    4.11 Homework can improve pupil outcomes, particularly for older pupils, but it is likely that the quality of homework and its relevance to main class teaching is more important than the amount set.

    4n. Providing appropriate wait time between question and response where more developed responses are required.

    Adaptive teaching

    5.1 Pupils are likely to learn at different rates and to require different levels and types of support from teachers to succeed.

    5.5 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.

    5b. Making use of formative assessment.

    5f. Balancing input of new content so that pupils master important concepts.

    5g. Making effective use of teaching assistants.

    5j. Building in additional practice or removing unnecessary expositions.

    5k. Reframing questions to provide greater scaffolding or greater stretch.

    5l. Considering carefully whether intervening within lessons with individuals and small groups would be more efficient and effective than planning different lessons for different groups of pupils.

    5m. Applying high expectations to all groups, and ensuring all pupils have access to a rich curriculum.

    5n. Changing groups regularly, avoiding the perception that groups are fixed.

    5o. Ensuring that any groups based on attainment are subject specific.

    Professional behaviours

    8.5 Teaching assistants (TAs) can support pupils more effectively when they are prepared for lessons by teachers, and when TAs supplement rather than replace support from teachers.

    8j. Sharing the intended lesson outcomes with teaching assistants ahead of lessons.

    8k. Ensuring that support provided by teaching assistants in lessons is additional to, rather than a replacement for, support from the teacher.