Learning Intentions and Introduction

Session Elements

• self-assessment
• independent planning

Learning Intentions for this session

You will learn that:

• High-quality classroom talk can support pupils to articulate key ideas, consolidate understanding and extend their vocabulary.
• Paired and group activities can increase pupil success, but to work together effectively pupils need guidance, support and practice.
• How pupils are grouped is also important; care should be taken to monitor the impact of groupings on pupil attainment, behaviour and motivation.

Introduction

You have been looking at the importance of explicitly teaching metacognitive strategies and how you can support pupils by narrating thought processes aloud when modelling, making the steps in a process memorable and exposing potential pitfalls.

This work built on your earlier learning, where you explored the importance of good modelling in helping pupils to understand new processes and ideas and the importance of guides, scaffolds and worked examples in developing pupil expertise.

In this self-study session you will extend your knowledge of the importance of high-quality classroom talk (which you last looked at in Module 2) in order to help pupils to articulate key ideas, extend their vocabulary and consolidate their understanding of key knowledge and processes. You will also consider how thoughtful grouping of pupils can be a powerful tool for supporting more effective learning.

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