Teaching and learning approaches for session

Following on from the micro teach you now have to talk about some of the decisions that went in to that. As long as you planned it out properly in your session plan back in P2 this isn’t going to be hard and you will just have to talk about the theory behind the activities you did and resources you used. This is all part of the continual learning process and you’re demonstrating you understand why you did stuff not just what you did.

Level 3 – Explain and justify the reasons behind your choice of teaching and learning approaches and use of resources for your delivered session. Recommended word count: 150-250 words.

Level 4 – Evaluate the teaching and learning approaches and effectiveness of resources, for your observed session. Evaluate how your session met the needs of individual learners. Recommended word count: 250-450 words.

Teaching and learning approaches

These are all the issues you’ve been learning about:

• How did you provide for visual, aural and kinaesthetic learners?
• How did you have the room laid out? Why like that?
• Did you split up in to groups? Why?

It depends so much on what you actually did do that it’s hard to summarise here! Basically everything that you did you need to know why you did it. You need to show you took the concepts you learnt in the course and applied them to your own actual teaching in the lesson plan, in the lesson and then again reinforced in this assignment.

Use and effectiveness of resources

Again, you have your resources list so you need to go through that and talk about why you made the choices you did, showing the links between what you wanted from that particular activity and how you organised it. You need to show your background understanding and not just that you did an activity “because you should”, that there was a well-reasoned plan behind it.

How your session met the needs of individual learners

Your level 4 bonus part of the question is about looking at the individuals in your group and you’re thinking along the lines of…

• What different needs did you think you might have? Did you find out?
• Did you differentiate? Did you have back up tasks for early finishers?
• What assessment and feedback methods did you use to check you had met everyone’s needs?

Level 3 and 4

This is an actual written essay-style question and there is a level 3/4 difference.

Level 3 you have to “explain and justify” whereas in level 4 you have to “evaluate” which would probably involve some explanation of the options you considered but discarded. There’s also an extra part to the level 4 question which is covered above. The dictionary definitions:

explain: make (an idea or situation) clear to someone by describing it in more detail or revealing relevant facts

justify: show or prove to be right or reasonable

evaluate: form an idea of the amount, number, or value of; assess

Okay! Hope that helped. It’s a tricky one because everyone will be so different based on their own session. Hopefully I’ve been able to give a few pointers as to the general direction to be going in. Drop a comment if you have anything to add. All the other Ptlls essays are also covered, so check them out if you need.