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  • Support for early career teachers
  • UCL
  • Year 1: Second half-term: engaging pupils in learning

    • Learning Intentions and Introduction

    Session Elements

    • practical exercise
    • independent planning

    Learning Intentions for this session

    You will learn that:

    • Learning involves a lasting change in pupils’ capabilities or understanding.

    • Prior knowledge plays an important role in how pupils learn; committing some key facts to their long-term memory is likely to help pupils learn more complex ideas.

    • An important factor in learning is memory, which can be thought of as comprising two elements: working memory and long-term memory.

    • Working memory is where information that is being actively processed is held, but its capacity is limited and can be overloaded.

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

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

    • Anticipating common misconceptions within particular subjects is also an important aspect of curricular knowledge; working closely with colleagues to develop an understanding of likely misconceptions is valuable.

    • Explicitly teaching pupils the knowledge and skills they need to succeed within particular subject areas is beneficial.

    Introduction

    In the Week 1 meeting with your mentor, you worked through the Module 2 ECT audit, reflecting on your current knowledge and practice in relation to Module 2 of the ECF and agreeing on areas for particular focus in relation to Module 2. You should pay specific attention to these areas as you work through the module sessions.

    In this first self-study session, you will look at the impact of pupils’ prior knowledge on their learning (2.1, 2.2) and how knowledge changes through the cooperation of working and long-term memory (2.3). Information in working memory about a current activity (2.4) is linked to things pupils already know that are stored in long-term memory (2.5). You will work through an illustrative exercise to examine how prior knowledge in long-term memory is used to help reduce working memory load (2.4) and create new knowledge. This then provides the basis for further learning (3.5). You will also look at how weak, inaccurate or misapplied prior knowledge can have a negative effect on subsequent performance and learning (2.6, 3.4).

    You should apply insights from these exercises to examples from your own past experience with pupils and to future lesson plans.