The team of teacher educators I work in has been spending a lot of time since half term thinking about how best to support our trainees as they return to face-to-face teaching for all pupils from next week onwards. As part of this, I thought it may be useful to conduct a RAG rating exercise with trainees in some different areas of their practice. And as TLaC techniques feature so heavily in our curriculum, I further thought it made sense to focus such an audit around the main techniques we have so far covered, and that trainees will have used.
I have attached the RAG rater at the bottom of this post, and it is hopefully fairly self-explanatory. Basically, it features several areas of practice: implementing routines, managing behaviour, questioning, formative assessment, and building ratio. It then provides a description and where appropriate success criteria for using these techniques effectively, in order to remind trainees of what they have learnt about it.
It then invites them to RAG (red – amber – green) rate how effectively they thought they used the technique during term 1, before Christmas. This hopefully enables them not only to identify and remind them what they were doing effectively, but also to give them a clear idea of which techniques they need to develop. The techniques are presented in what I considered to be roughly chronological order of development, ie the first technique one would focus on in questioning would be Cold Call, followed by No Opt Out, followed by Right is Right. However, the document further asks trainees to prioritise the different techniques according to their own context – for example, Cold Call might be school policy, and so they have mastered this and students are comfortable with it, in which case they do not need to prioritise it.
The idea would be this document would of course be used as part of a professional conversation with a mentor, tutor, head of department etc, with the trainee or NQT supported to identify which techniques in one or two areas that they might focus on immediately upon their return to the classroom.
I’d be really interested to hear how people use this, if indeed they do at all, so please do comment or let me know on Twitter.
Best of luck to all trainees, NQTs and indeed all teachers for the Great Return next week!
Lee Donaghy 