Wednesday and Thursday will be in schools; the handbook for schools can be found here.
Reading
Pre Reading materials and questions to ask Beginning Teachers to reflect on:
- In a recent lesson, how did you adapt your teaching for different pupils?
- Were those adaptations planned beforehand or responsive during the lesson?
- Which pupils needed additional support? What did that support look like?
- How did you extend pupils’ thinking during the lesson?
- Did you change the task, the support, or the questioning at all and, if so. why?
Adaptive Teaching and EAL
Whilst the focus of ITAP is on high quality teaching for all pupils, we will introduce this through the lens of EAL learners. to facilitate this discussion, you could watch the clip below and reflect on the following:
- What are the key needs for the EAL learners within your classes?
- How do you ensure that you maintain the pitch and challenge of the subject knowledge for these students whilst supporting them to develop their English?
- What is most important in ensuring your classroom is inclusive for students who are developing their English?
- How can you support EAL students with key subject vocabulary and how might this also benefit non-EAL learners too (for ideas see this link: EAL Strategies and Great Ideas – The Bell Foundation)?
- If there are not very many EAL learners in your own school context, how might you be able to learn more about how to support these learners in order to be prepared for your ECT year and beyond?
Summary of ITAP Sessions in University
The Powerpoint contains key slides and a summary of the ITAP sessions within University to assist with linking these to the observation tasks in schools. https://youtu.be/hQDzfsqpFTU
Post ITAP Reading
After this ITAP it would be useful to read the guidance together and to reflect on how adaptive teaching incorporates and builds on elements of previous ITAPs from assessment for learning through to clear instruction and scaffolding. Beginning Teachers can think back to a recent lesson and reflect on the following questions:
How was the lesson structured to support all pupils to achieve the same challenging objectives?
Which pupils struggled in the lesson? How did you know this?
How did you ascertain what pupils knew and understood in the lesson?
What did you do when you realised some pupils were struggling?
How did you adapt your explanation or instructions?
Did you change your questioning based on pupil responses?
Did you provide additional scaffolds or modelling?
In particular the second page has some helpful prompt questions which you could ask as part of a lesson de-brief or, even more helpfully, when co-planning a lesson together.
Using these questions you could help your Beginning Teacher to rehearse in advance how they might adapt at key moments within a lesson sequence.