Skip to main content
Beta
This is a new service – contact continuing-professional-development@digital.education.gov.uk with any feedback
  • Support for early career teachers
  • Teach First
  • Year 2: Second half term: revisit how you support pupils to develop subject-specific skills
    • Autumn week 2

    Induction tutor materials

    Training session - supporting pupils to develop subject-specific skills

    Duration: 90 minutes

    Session objectives

    By the end of the session early career teachers (ECTs) will have:

    • identified skills and their component parts in their subject
    • identified strategies to help pupils develop knowledge and skills as they develop expertise
    • identified 2 strategies to implement that will support pupils to develop key skills in their subject
    • reflected on their own practice and areas for development

    Session structure

    Introduction and settling task (10 minutes)

    Settling task: Ask ECTs to consider the subject-specific skills they teach in their subject or phase, and how these skills are developed throughout the phase.

    Explain the purpose of the training session, session outcomes and the related ECF statements.

    Why teach subject-specific skills? (5 minutes)

    1. Explore the importance of teaching subject-specific skills.
    2. Explain that teachers need to have knowledge of how pupils learn, good subject knowledge and an understanding of how to teach their subject effectively (pedagogical content knowledge).
    3. Demonstrate how a subject-specific key skill can be broken down into component parts.

    Understanding the differences between novice and expert learners (10 minutes)

    1. Explore the differences between novice and expert learners (briefly explore ‘the curse of knowledge’).
    2. Consider the impact that instructional procedures can have on novices and experts. Explore how to avoid overloading the working memory (briefly explore the ‘expertise reversal effect’).
    3. Explore how to support pupils as they develop expertise, such as by adapting instructional procedures and strategies and removing scaffolds.
    4. Activity: Ask ECTs to reflect on a time when they did not provide enough structure when teaching a skill, and the impact this had on learners.

    Developing subject-specific key skills (55 minutes)

    1. Explain how strategies (such as modelling and combining verbal and graphical representations) can help pupils to develop knowledge and master key skills.
    2. Explore how 2 of the following strategies can provide cognitive support, and support pupils to use and build on prior knowledge to develop key skills:
      • Think Aloud or demonstrations
      • worked examples
      • combining verbal and graphical representations (sometimes referred to as ‘dual coding’)
    3. Exemplify each strategy through subject-specific examples.
    4. Activity: Ask ECTs to consider the impact that the strategy can have on learning, for example by asking ECTs to analyse effective and ineffective examples of using Think Aloud, demonstrations or worked examples. Or, ask them to script and share their own example of how Think Aloud or worked examples can be used to teach a key skill. ECTs could share their example with a partner and provide feedback to each other.

    Next steps and close (10 minutes)

    Ask ECTs to reflect on the learning from the session and record their actions and next steps related to their classroom practice. Options include re-visiting certain areas of the course, talking with their mentor, watching another teacher, planning to adapt their practice, and more.

    Subject and curriculum

    • 3.2 Secure subject knowledge helps teachers to motivate pupils and teach effectively.
    • 3.5 Explicitly teaching pupils the knowledge and skills they need to succeed within particular subject areas is beneficial.
    • 3a. Identifying essential concepts, knowledge, skills and principles of the subject and providing opportunity for all pupils to learn and master these critical components. 
    • 3b. Ensuring pupils’ thinking is focused on key ideas within the subject.

    Classroom practice

    • 4.3 Modelling helps pupils understand new processes and ideas; good models make abstract ideas concrete and accessible. 
    • 4.4 Guides, scaffolds and worked examples can help pupils apply new ideas, but should be gradually removed as pupil expertise increases.
    • 4a. Using modelling, explanations and scaffolds, acknowledging that novices need more structure early in a domain.
    • 4g. Combining a verbal explanation with a relevant graphical representation of the same concept or process, where appropriate. 
    • 4i. Narrating thought processes when modelling to make explicit how experts think (for example, asking questions aloud that pupils should consider when working independently and drawing pupils’ attention to links with prior knowledge).