Mentor materials
Reviewing learning - adapting teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils
Learning intentions
Learning Intentions for this session:
A review of your mentee’s progress on this module, focusing on Standard 5 – Adapting Teaching.
Topic introduction
Over the course of this module, your mentee has learned how to:
- develop an understanding of different pupil needs
- provide opportunities for all pupils to experience success
- meet individual needs without creating unnecessary workload
- group pupils effectively
At the start of the module, you together analysed your mentee’s development needs in relation to these aspects of adaptive teaching by conducting an audit of their needs and strengths against Standard 5. Now that you have reached the end, it is time to review their progress.
Meeting activities
Review and Plan 5 mins
- Start this session by briefly following up the actions that the mentee set at the end of last week’s session. Ask your mentee to summarise:
- what they did
- the impact of this on pupil learning (including how they are evaluating this)
- what they will do going forward to build on these actions
- Clarify the Learning Intentions for this session with your mentee.
Theory to Practice 40 mins
Self-Assessment:
Ask your mentee to return to the audit for Module 3 (Standard 5 only) and to self-assess again against each criterion. They should base their judgement on their current knowledge and/or practice, having benefited from their self-directed study and their mentor meetings. Some suggested definitions to support this assessment are offered below. All should be interpreted in relation to the mentee’s context and what can reasonably be expected of an early career teacher.
Emerging: I don’t feel very confident in this area. I have substantial gaps in my knowledge and / or practice which definitely need to be addressed.
Developing: I have some knowledge about this, and/or there is evidence in my practice that I do this some of the time or to some extent. I am in a position to build on this with further work in this area.
Secure: I know a lot about this, and/or I do it in my practice consistently and well.
Discussion with mentor:
Ask your mentee to talk you through their audit and to explain the reasoning behind their self-assessment. Where possible, prompt them to support their assessment with references to specific experiences during the course of their learning on this module. Use your expertise and experience to shape your mentee’s reflections and to draw their attention to aspects of their practice which they may be overlooking (either by judging themselves too harshly or too kindly). You might use questions or prompts such as:
- In what areas have you made the most progress? What are you happiest with?
- In what areas do you still need to develop your practice?
- Can you provide examples from your practice which support your assessment in relation to these statements?
- As you have developed your adaptive practice, what overall impact on your teaching has this had?
Having explored Standard 5, it may be helpful to identify two sub-groups that seem to be areas of greatest strength and two that are priorities for development. By identifying clear goals for this module, both you and your mentee may find it easier to identify which tasks to pay particular attention to as you move on to the sessions in subsequent modules.
Consider these sub groups:
- Develop an understanding of different pupils
- Provide opportunities for all pupils to experience success
- Meet individual needs without creating unnecessary workload
- Group pupils effectively
Collaborative planning:
It takes a considerable amount of time to embed effective changes in practice, and consistent focus is required in order to build new teaching and learning habits. With this in mind, it may be useful to set a specific goal in relation to Standard 5. This could either be building on an existing strength and something that your mentee is excited about developing or it might be working on something that they currently find more difficult.
It might be worth looking again at the programme overview to see which elements of upcoming modules relate more closely to the goal you have identified arising from Standard 5.
You might find it useful to translate this into ‘goal statements’ e.g.,
‘By the end of the year_ _I will improve pupil outcomes by making more effective use of pupil groupings. I will develop high expectations for all groups, make greater use of changing groups and ensure that groupings are based on subject-specific criteria.’
Next Steps 5 mins
Agree with your mentee how they will now put their learning from this week’s session 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)