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  • Support for early career teachers
  • UCL
  • Year 2: Second half-term: inquiry into developing quality pedagogy and making productive use of assessment (part 2)
    • Spring week 1

    Mentor materials

    Observation and feedback to improve the quality of pedagogy and the productive use of assessment

    Mentor materials content

    ECT Mentor session

    Module 8: Developing quality pedagogy and making productive use of assessment

    Week 7: Observation and feedback to improve the quality of pedagogy and the productive use of assessment

    Learning Intentions for this session

    The observation:

    • is to gather evidence, useful for your mentee’s development focus and inquiry, into the changes they have introduced into their practice and the effects they appear to be having

    • should not be judged or be used for performance management purposes

    The feedback meeting:

    • should closely relate to the Early Career Framework (ECF) standards and statements relevant to your mentee’s inquiry

    • could, by agreement, lead to further adjustments to their practice and inquiry

    Introduction

    Your mentee is developing their practice in aspects of Standards 4, 5 and 6, and is focused on an inquiry question that they agreed with you, where they are clear on the outcomes they want to see and the evidence they would need to collect.

    You are using the time allocated to this week’s mentor meeting to observe your mentee for about 20 minutes and have a 30-minute feedback meeting.

    You have already agreed the date, time and focus for this observation.

    Case Studies

    There are no case studies for this week. You may, if you find it helpful, read back to the four case studies which are featured across this module.

    Mentor Meeting Activities

    Observation 20 mins

    Hopefully you will have agreed the following with your mentee already. These are questions to help guide your observation:

    • where will you sit – will you be circulating the classroom?
    • will you sit quietly, or engage with the pupils?
    • will you take notes, or film the lesson?
    • will you use a school-standard observation form, or a blank sheet of paper?
    • will you be looking at artefacts, such as the mentee’s plans and resources, and at displays and pupils’ work?
    • will your attention be on the whole class, on individual pupils or a specified group?
    • will your attention be on your mentee?

    Remember, your purpose is not to assess the lesson but to gather evidence which will be helpful to your mentee’s development and their inquiry.

    Feedback 25 mins

    Reflection

    Both you and your mentee should use this time to reflect on what the evidence from the observation is saying about your mentee’s teaching and its impact on their pupils. You do not want to over-interpret what you have observed, but recognise it as a snapshot. Still, it will be useful for your mentee to record these insights in their Learning Log. Here are some examples based on the teachers in the case studies:

    • when the teacher switched the class from mixed attainment to near attainment groups, two of the high prior attaining girls said… (4o, 5l, 5n, 5.5)
    • when the teacher introduced the ‘speaking sentences’ scaffold for the Speech, Language and Communication Need (SpLCN) pupils, they were able to work independently for 7 minutes; when she withdrew the scaffold… (3s, 4c, 4d)
    • when the teacher used a visualizer to model how she expected pupils to respond to each of the marking codes, all of the boys in the front row… (4f, 4g, 6h, 6i, 6j)
    • when the teacher asked his pupils to elaborate on their answers to his questions, most of the Pupil Premium girls… (6f)
    • the books of the 5 boys that I checked seem to suggest that, when the teacher gives verbal feedback in lesson, they are able to…(6g, 6h, 6n)

    Discuss with a mentor

    This is a discussion that you may want to repeat later. Having tried out their ‘alteration to practice’ for 4 weeks, your mentee might be ready to make an adjustment.

    When discussing these adjustments, you should always refer first to the research within the ECF. The best place to look may be the Research and Practice Summaries across the modules of Year 1. You can navigate to an overview of these summaries in the Glossary. Even better, use the module overviews to locate a particular session material. The summaries there offer lots of guidance as to how to make the ECF statements work in practice. Finally, your mentee may have made notes in their Learning Log that will be useful again now.

    Here are some other thoughts to bear in mind:

    • If this is working well with one of my classes, is it time to introduce it to another, and would I do it in the same way?
    • If my pupils have responded well, it might be because it is novel - over time, they could ‘revert to the mean’. Can I introduce small innovations, to maintain my pupils’ positive response?
    • If I have introduced scaffolds, are these still providing enough challenge? Can I withdraw the scaffold for some, or amend it?
    • If overall it is going well, are there some pupils for whom my altered practice is working less well? What should I do to ensure that all pupils are supported and challenged to make good progress?
    • If I have not involved colleagues in my inquiry, when would be a good time to do that? How would I explain it to them?

    Agree with your mentee any adjustment they will make to their practice and inquiry and, if necessary, help them to amend their evaluative inquiry question.

    Next Steps 5 mins

    Agree with your mentee how they will now put their learning from this week’s feedback session into practice in their teaching. Help your mentee to clarify:

    1. the action(s) they will take and how these action(s) are expected to contribute to improving pupil learning
    2. what success will ‘look like’ in relation to these action(s)
    3. how they will evaluate their success in taking these action(s)

    Note the date of your next mentor meeting, when you will have reached the midpoint of the module and so will revisit the Module 8 audit.

    Finally, remind your mentee that they have self-directed study time next week. They will use this to continue collecting evidence for their inquiry, and attempt to make a ‘claim’.