26th-28th November 2025
All beginning teachers are at Romsey School for the first two days of this ITAP as they were last year
Session Content
The first day is a series of workshops based on an introduction to formative assessment and then exploring assessment strategies for use at the beginning, middle and end of a lesson to elicit learning. Practical tasks then focussed on the language that beginning teachers were using to frame each task so that they were structuring their questions in the right way to find out the information they want: lots of planning of hinge questions, multiple choice questions, questions to pose on mini whiteboards etc. The original Powerpoint is quite bulky as beginning teachers are there for the entire day. However, the slides below give some of the key theory from Inside the Black Box and other theory discussed. The second powerpoint gives an insight into the structure of the day’s activities so that you can see what your beginning teachers were thinking hard about.
School Schedule
This was this year’s schedule.
Friday Subject Follow-Up
Tutors then use Friday’s subject input to explore the language of assessment from a subject specific viewpoint. This may be structuring hinge questions or multiple choice questions within English, for example.
Follow-Up Tasks for Mentors in School
Beginning teachers should:
Be observed teaching a lesson with the ITAP focus: for this ITAP this will be on assessment and the focus should be on the appropriateness of the methods of assessment – for example, were whiteboards the best way to assess whole class understanding in the middle of the lesson or need to be used could targeted questioning have been more appropriate and saved pace? Did the whole class need to write answers at this point?
Practise providing meaningful feedback to pupils in both verbal and written form over the remainder of the term.
Discuss what beginning teachers know and understand about Coe’s poor proxies for learning listed below and ask beginning teachers to consider how learning can be assessed during a lesson.
1. Students are busy: lots of work is done (especially lots of written work).
2. Students are engaged, interested in learning and motivated.
3. Students are getting attention from the teacher through feedback and explanations.
4. Classroom is ordered, calm, under control and students are well behaved.
5. (At least some) students have supplied correct answers.
A summary of these can be found here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c47c0b3e17ba324ad0c9d7f/t/68059f2ff006790ff263d0f5/1745198899260/Poor+Proxies+for+Learning.pdf
A Flavour of the Days
These pictures were taken during last year’s ITAP but hopefully give you a feel for the experience that beginning teachers had.