Mentor materials
Making judicious use of practical skills in relation to promoting good progress and demonstrating good subject and curriculum knowledge
Mentor materials content
ECT Mentor session
Module 7: Engaging pupils in learning
Week 6: Making judicious use of practical skills in relation to promoting good progress and demonstrating good subject and curriculum knowledge
Learning Intentions for this session
- a presentation by your mentee of their findings from their short practitioner inquiry
- using the Module 7 ECT audit as a stimulus for discussion around your mentee’s current knowledge and practice in relation to Module 7 (ECF Standard 2 & 3)
- supporting the mentee to make accurate judgements about their progress in this module so far
- to agree with the mentee areas for particular focus and further development
Introduction
Your mentee has come to the end of Module 7. In this module, they devised an exploratory question—one which helped them to interrogate an aspect of their normal practice in relation to promoting good progress (Standard 2) or demonstrating good subject and curriculum knowledge (Standard 3). They collected some evidence about the impact upon pupils of their normal practice, and they agreed with you an ‘alteration’ to their practice. Over the past two to three weeks, they have been collecting some evidence as to how far this has made a positive difference to their pupils.
In this session, you will listen as your mentee describes what they did and what they found. This is not a formal presentation but should at least be a structured oral report. You will help them to understand that getting better at teaching means both having ‘practical fluency’ and the wider knowledge, experience and beliefs to make judicious use of these practical skills in the specific situation that the teacher is in at a given time.
You will revisit the audit from the start of the module and use it to recognise your mentee’s progress and areas for further development.
Case Studies
There is no case study for this session, but you could refer back to the studies of Yemi (promoting good progress) and Kishan (demonstrating good subject and curriculum knowledge).
Mentor 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.
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 mentor meeting. 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 35 mins
Sharing Practice
Structured oral report of their Module 7 inquiry. Encourage your mentee to share with you the results of their inquiry. If they need help with structuring their comments, you might say:
Please tell me what your original exploratory question was and how it related to the ECF.
Remind me what you discovered about the impact upon your pupils of your normal practice in that area.
Tell me again what alteration to your practice you agreed to implement and how it related to the ECF.
What improvements did you hope to see?
How did you collect evidence of any improvements?
What did you discover?
Self-assessment
At the start of this module, you looked at all of the learn how to statements for Standards 2 and 3 and conducted a module audit with your mentee. Look back at this audit now. We understand that getting better at teaching means both having ‘practical fluency’ and the wider knowledge, experience and beliefs to make judicious use of these practical skills in the specific situation that the teacher is in at a given time.
Encourage your mentee to review the learn how to statements from Module 7 and make claims for where they now feel they know how and when to make use of the practical skills (i.e. they can be ‘judicious’).
To support this self-assessment, you might share with them a model, e.g.,
- I know it is important to avoid overloading the working memory of my pupils, and I am developing my practice in this area; in my planning, I now routinely break complex new material into smaller steps by using partially completed examples— this works well with my middle-attaining pupils in maths when I show them how multiplying by 23 is the same as multiplying by 20, multiplying by 3, then adding the two together
- I have realised that it is important in my scheme of work to make sure my pupils have a secure grasp of the foundational skills before I introduce more complex material; pupils always struggle with making objects look realistic, and I now give them lots of practice with drawing regular 2D shapes (for example, a circle) and shading them with an HB pencil (so they look like a sphere); only when they have mastered that technique do I ask them to draw from reference, introducing an irregular object for them to draw and shade using the same techniques
- I have started to build regular retrieval practice into the start of most lessons— usually through a quick quiz—and this has helped my pupils recall their knowledge quickly; I am still trying to find ways of spacing this practice over, say, a term: I am thinking of using homework as a way of revisiting material we covered earlier in the term
- I have highlighted in my scheme of work all the high-utility vocabulary my pupils will need for key stage 3 Drama and mapped out where I will explicitly teach these words in my lesson; I have planned to use word games around this vocabulary and to award merits for pupils who use it accurately
Collaborative planning
Having completed the inquiry and the audit for Module 7, you and your mentee will have a clear idea of strengths and areas for development.
Agree on a specific development goal for either a strength or an area where your mentee needs to build more secure practice.
You might find it useful to translate this into ‘goal statements’ e.g.,
(1) ‘By Easter, I will have embedded retrieval, practice and challenge into my teaching, thereby promoting good progress. I will know that this is having a positive effect because my pupils will have stronger recall, fewer misconceptions will appear in their work, and there will be a higher success rate in retrieval quizzes. They will say things like, ‘I used to find this much harder. Now I get it more easily.’
‘I will achieve this by (for example):
- repeating questions which ask pupils to recall the core concepts
- asking pupils to make predictions based on their knowledge of the core concepts
- increasing the complexity of the tasks once they have mastered the key knowledge and skills’
(2) ‘By Easter, I know I will have built critical thinking and transfer skills—and be demonstrating good subject and curriculum knowledge—because my pupils will be more secure in foundational knowledge and have greater success when different contexts require similar skills. They will be able to articulate when this is similar to that, and they will enjoy making connections between different subjects or topics
‘I will achieve this by (for example):
- making sure that my pupils have mastered core knowledge and skills in one area first, and giving them lots of practice getting it right
- making clear how the same skills and knowledge could apply in another area, and giving them lots of practice again
- using classroom talk to generate further ideas of where similar knowledge and understanding could be applied elsewhere’
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 toimproving 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, which will be at the start of Module 8.