Learning Intentions and Introduction
Session Elements
- analyse artefacts
- independent planning
Learning Intentions for this session
| You will learn that: |
|---|
| 5.3 Adapting teaching in a responsive way, including by providing targeted support to pupils who are struggling, is likely to increase pupil success. |
| 5.4 Adaptive teaching is less likely to be valuable if it causes the teacher to artificially create distinct tasks for different groups of pupils or to set lower expectations for particular pupils. |
| 5.5 Flexibly grouping pupils within a class to provide more tailored support can be effective, but care should be taken to monitor its impact on engagement and motivation, particularly for low-attaining pupils. |
| 5.6 There is a common misconception that pupils have distinct and identifiable learning styles. This is not supported by evidence and attempting to tailor lessons to learning styles is unlikely to be beneficial. |
Introduction
In the self-directed study sessions from Week 9 and follow-up meetings with your mentor, you looked at how to make use of formative assessment and adapt lessons, whilst maintaining high expectations for all, so that all pupils have the opportunity to meet expectations. In your script, you reframed questions to provide greater scaffolding or greater stretch.
In this self-study session you will extend your knowledge of why it is important to evaluate pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills - this could be via discussions with pupils, during whole class feedback, checking classwork or summative assessment of their work. When certain pupils need more help to improve their knowledge, understanding and skills, it is crucial that the teacher identifies what help they need and the best way to adapt their teaching to support them. It is best if this does not involve creating a separate lesson plan, tasks or set of resources. The idea that lessons need to cater for pupils’ ‘learning styles’ has been debunked and does not improve learning.
You can apply insights from these exercises to examples from your own past experience with pupils and to future lesson plans.