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  • Support for early career teachers
  • Teach First
  • Year 2: Second half term: revisit how to anticipate and address common misconceptions in your subject or phase
    • Spring week 2

    Mentor materials

    Discussion - using meaningful and memorable explanations in the ECT’s subject or phase

    Duration: 60 minutes

    Outcome

    By the end of this session your ECT will have:

    • identified abstract concepts in a specific subject
    • explained why it’s important to make abstract concepts concrete
    • identified different ways to make concepts meaningful and memorable
    • considered how to incorporate these strategies into explanations
    • planned to incorporate one strategy into an explanation

    Reference materials

    Key questions and talking points

    1. What abstract concepts did you identify in training session 1?
    2. Why is it important to make abstract concepts concrete?
    3. How have you made the abstract concrete in your lessons?
    4. What strategies did training session 1 identify that could help make concepts meaningful and memorable?
    5. How do you currently model concepts to your pupils?
    6. How do you identify pupils’ prior knowledge and build on this in your models?
    7. Which strategies do you think would have an impact on the pupils you teach?
    8. Let’s agree on a focus for this half term, linked to meaningful and memorable explanations.