CPD Reflections: Practitioner Inquiries From ECT2s

By Ben Law-Smith, Ayah Malik & Will Glydon

This term some of our Early Careers Teachers (ECT2s) have been busy working on their very first rounds of "practitioner inquiry" as part of the Early Career Framework. This process empowers teachers to identify areas of the teacher standards they would like to develop further and carry out a project to explore this area and trial a new approach in their classrooms. The process can be broken down into the 4-step practitioner inquiry cycle (as shown below) and is an excellent model to make meaningful improvements to our own practice.

I asked a few of our ECT2s to share what they had investigated for their first inquiries and what they had uncovered:

Can peer-led seating plans lead to more positivity in the classroom, improve discussion and maintain teaching and learning outcomes? by Ben Law-Smith

One of my targets this year is to facilitate better classroom discussion - a key part of Citizenship lessons which often have more speaking tasks than other subjects. I noticed last year that seating plans tended to stifle discussion because they were primarily used as behaviour management tools and placed students next to people they didn't necessarily want to talk to. This was especially pronounced in Y10-11.

I have twelve classes from all KS3-4 year groups and I told students to 'sit where they liked' when they came in for the first time. Predictably, they reacted very positively to this instruction. In each class I explained they had an opportunity to show me they could sit next to their friends but that I would move them all to a prepared seating plan if necessary. To date, four classes out of twelve have remained in peer-led seating plans - my two Y7 classes and my Y10 and Y11 classes. The paired discussion tasks are noticeably better in these classes as students are more at ease and willing to speak to the person next to them. The T1 assessments will clearly show whether on track grades have been maintained or improved upon but AfL in the classroom, peer assessments and book scrutinies have been very promising so far.

Whilst it may not be for every class, experimenting with peer-led seating plans could encourage student-talk during paired discussion work and create a more positive atmosphere in the classroom, especially for KS4.

To what extent does parental engagement lead to the engagement and subsequent attainment of pupils? by Ayah Malik

I focused on a group of Year 8 pupils. I planned to build a regular channel of communication with their parents, through frequent phone-calls home, to see whether this would impact their engagement in lessons and attainment. After each phone call, I made a note of the behaviour and engaanding of key concepts in lessons which was made apparent to me through targeted formative questioning of the students and progress made in assessments.

Moving forward I would like to increase my engagement with parents of all classes where appropriate to ensure I am using this to the children's advantage in order to better their learning and understanding.

What factors impact LPA attitudes towards history? by Will Glydon

I decided to focus on my Year 11 class as I had noticed that in last year’s results, the LPAs in my class did not perform as well as the MPAs and LPAs did. I therefore sought to address this. 

To understand which factors were impacting the LPA attitudes towards history, I decided to do a student survey which I made as a google form. The questions had a wide range as I attempted to target many angles to see what the LPAs were struggling most with. The questions were as follows:

• What do you do when faced with a problem in history?
• Which do you find the most challenging aspect of history?
• How clear is the chronology of what we study (which events happen when)?
• How clear are the writing structures (PEL/COPA)?
• What is something that other teachers do that helps you in other subjects that would also help you in history?
• Which topic do you find most challenging and why?
• What would benefit you more in history lessons?
• What is your target grade?
•  What is the best way that I could help you in history?

The responses were interesting and varied. The list below shows the most useful responses and techniques that I am going to use moving forward to address the issues that came up: 

1. Majority stated that they wanted more quizzes and they find them useful for remembering content

• Add in more Knowledge recap quizzes for retrieval- ensuring a knowledge quiz once a week for Do Now 
• Set more Seneca as homework (every other week) 
• Work with LSA and ensure that they quizzing LPAs whilst helping them during lessons

2. Students are self-sufficient and don't use many metacognitive strategies

• Add in slides about BBC (brain, book, Chromebook) before asking the teacher
• Print out writing structures so they have the information clearly in their books so don’t jump to ask me
• Metacognitive modelling when looking at exam questions and other tasks

3. Remembering the writing structures

• Print out writing stuctures sheet for each question
• Include writing structure questions in the weekly quizzes

My LPA students showed in their responses that they are still quite reliant on me as a teacher to lead from the front and they do not deploy metacognitive strategies to aid their work. This inquiry helped me realise that remembering writing structures is difficult and the students need more support with this. Students had also highlighted how important they found quizzes in other subjects and that this needed to be better implemented into our routines in history.