Mentor materials
Building on pupils’ prior knowledge through formative assessment
Learning intentions
Your ECT will learn how to:
Develop an understanding of different pupil needs by:
- making use of formative assessment.
Provide opportunity for all pupils to experience success by:
- adapting lessons, whilst maintaining high expectations for all, so that all pupils have the opportunity to meet expectations.
Meet individual needs without creating unnecessary workload by:
- reframing questions to provide greater scaffolding or greater stretch.
Topic introduction
In the last few self-directed study sessions, your mentee extended their knowledge of how flexible grouping can impact upon pupil achievement. They have considered how flexible grouping helps pupils to access work at the right level of challenge and enables effective interventions to take place.
In their most recent self-study session, they have considered how establishing pupils’ prior knowledge is an essential part of teaching, that different pupils have differing levels of prior knowledge and that this affects the rate at which they learn. Your mentee experimented with scripting parts of their lesson, so as to help them to embed formative assessment: they will bring this script with them to your session.
In this session, you will help your mentee build on this activity by focusing on its practical implications. You will assist them in refining activities and approaches to be tried in the classroom: start by helping them explore their current practice and clarifying the ways in which the research might help to develop their impact on pupil success. Key goals for the session include helping them to understand a) why identifying prior knowledge is an essential classroom practice and b) how to identify the needs of individual pupils and support them effectively through formative assessment strategies.
Meeting activities
Throughout the session, try to refer explicitly to the Learning Intentions and encourage your mentee to record key points in their Learning Log. Tailor your use of the Theory to Practice activities below in response to the Review and Plan section of this session.
Review and Plan 5 mins
Clarify the Learning Intentions for this session with your mentee.
At the start of this module, you looked at all of the ‘learn how to’ statements for Standards 4 and 5 and conducted a module audit with your mentee: in some areas they will already be confident and skilled; in others they will want more practice and support from you and others. Look back at this audit now and use it to help decide how you and your mentee will make the most productive use of the suggested Theory to Practice activities below.
Theory to Practice 40 mins
Rehearsal
Your mentee has scripted some lines that they can use with their class when deploying formative assessment strategies to understand and build upon pupils’ prior knowledge. They had 3 different pupils in mind. Ask them now to rehearse these with you. This was the grid they used.
| Parts of the lesson | Ideas for your script |
|---|---|
| Introducing learning intentions | Who can tell me what our learning intentions mean? |
| Asking and responding to questions | Would someone like to agree with C’s answer there and give a reason? |
| Giving instructions | Now that you have heard the instruction from me, tell your partner in your own words what it is I want you to do |
| Setting up peer- and self-assessment | What were the three best parts of the work? What one thing would make it better? |
Try not to interrupt, but listen for and make your own notes on:
- how they have allowed for the different needs that their pupils have, the different rates at which they learn and their differing levels of prior knowledge (5.1, 5.2, 5.7)
- how they adapt the next phase of their lesson after assessing their pupils formatively (5b.)
- the extent to which they adapt their language while maintaining high expectations of all (5e.)
- the extent to which they reframe questions to provide greater scaffolding and greater stretch (5k.)
Discussion with mentor
Now share your notes with your mentee. There is a very strong chance that they will not have done all of the above.
Decide whether you ought to work with them to improve on an area where they are already confident or one that they have paid little attention to before. Help them to rescript their lines.
To support this discussion:
- you could point out to them language that is better avoided (because it is personal or tends to fix a mindset):
- You can’t do this You are great at this You are lazy; you aren’t trying That’s the right answer!
- you could advise them to use language like this (because it maintains high expectations and is responsive to the pupils):
Why do you think this is...? Let me put that another way What extra information would help you answer...? Let’s look at... again to see if we change our answers After this feedback, how can we improve...?
- you could help them to reframe questions and instructions
Rehearsal
If there is time, rehearse their script again.
Next Steps 5 mins
Agree with your mentee how they will now put their learning from this week’s session(s) into practice in their teaching. Help your mentee to clarify:
- the action(s) they will take and how these action(s) are expected to contribute to improving pupil learning
- what success will ‘look like’ in relation to these action(s)
- how they will evaluate their success in taking these action(s)
Note the date of your next mentor meeting, when you will check on your mentee’s progress.