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  • Support for early career teachers
  • Teach First
  • Year 1: Second half-term: how do pupils learn?

    • Related Early Career Framework strands

    How Pupils Learn

    2.5 Long-term memory can be considered as a store of knowledge that changes as pupils learn by integrating new ideas with existing knowledge.

    2.6 Where prior knowledge is weak, pupils are more likely to develop misconceptions, particularly if new ideas are introduced too quickly.

    2.7 Regular purposeful practice of what has previously been taught can help consolidate material and help pupils remember what they have learned.

    2.8 Requiring pupils to retrieve information from memory, and spacing practice so that pupils revisit ideas after a gap are also likely to strengthen recall.

    2h. Balancing exposition, repetition, practice and retrieval of critical knowledge and skills.

    2i. Planning regular review and practice of key ideas and concepts over time.

    2j. Designing practice, generation and retrieval tasks that provide just enough support so that pupils experience a high success rate when attempting challenging work.

    2k. Increasing challenge with practice and retrieval as knowledge becomes more secure (e.g. by removing scaffolding, lengthening spacing or introducing interacting elements).

    Subject and Curriculum

    3.2 Secure subject knowledge helps teachers to motivate pupils and teach effectively.

    3.3 Ensuring pupils master foundational concepts and knowledge before moving on is likely to build pupils’ confidence and help them succeed.

    3.7 In all subject areas, pupils learn new ideas by linking those ideas to existing knowledge, organising this knowledge into increasingly complex mental models (or “schemata”); carefully sequencing teaching to facilitate this process is important.

    3i. Providing tasks that support pupils to learn key ideas securely (e.g. quizzing pupils so they develop fluency with times tables).

    3j. Using retrieval and spaced practice to build automatic recall of key knowledge.

    Adaptive Teaching

    5.6 There is a common misconception that pupils have distinct and identifiable learning styles. This is not supported by evidence and attempting to tailor lessons to learning styles is unlikely to be beneficial.

    Managing Behaviour

    7m. Supporting pupils to master challenging content, which builds towards long-term goals.

    Professional behaviours

    8d. Engaging critically with research and discussing evidence with colleagues.