We are delighted to confirm that all ECT Mentors are entitled to a two-year programme of training, regardless of where their ECT is on their journey. Your two-year journey will look like this:
The ECT Programme is built upon these key principles:
As a mentor your role is to support the ECT(s) you work with to develop their expertise in teaching. Key aspects of this are: building a strong professional relationship with your ECT(s); running weekly (/fortnightly in year 2) Instructional Coaching and continually refining and developing your own mentoring practice by participating in Mentor Conferences, Clinics and Coaching for Mentors sessions.
All Mentors are now entitled to a two-year programme of training, regardless of where their ECT is on their journey. This means that a replacement mentor who joins part way through, no longer has to ‘catch up’ on missed content. Instead, they start from the beginning. This also means that a replacement mentor’s programme may continue beyond the end of an ECT’s training programme.
Early Career Teachers are entitled to learn all of the content from the Early Career Framework over the course of their two-year induction period. Ambition Institute’s Early Career Teachers programme is designed so that the teacher self-study content is contextualised through instructional coaching, delivered by you as the mentor. This supports teachers to embed this learning into their everyday classroom practice. The facilitated teacher conferences and clinics then complement and deepen this learning. The content is divided into three strands (‘Behaviour’, ‘Instruction’ and ‘Subject’), each designed to be completed over the course of a term.
| Behaviour | ||
| B1 | Strand fundamentals and re-contracting | Introduces foundational elements of behaviour and supports teachers and mentors to set up effective ways of working. |
| B2 | Routines | Explores effective routines, the role of classroom environment and its connection learning. |
| B3 | Instructions | Shares role of high-quality instructions and how to plan and reinforce them. |
| B4 | Directing attention | Examines monitoring and reinforcing expectations with praise, voice and movement(s). |
| B5 | Low-level disruption | Focuses on managing low-level disruption to learning and how to maintain a positive environment. |
| B6 | Consistency | Explores how teacher consistency builds a positive learning environment. |
| B7 | Positive learning environment | Focuses on the classroom culture required for pupils to learn effectively |
| B8 | Making learning manageable | Shares the link between success, behaviour and grain size. |
| B9 | Challenge | Explores the role challenge plays in pupil behaviour. |
| B10 | Independent practice | Considers the link between successful independent practice and expectations routines and feedback. |
| B11 | Pairs and groups | Focuses on how to make paired and group work successful through expectations, routines and culture. |
| B12 | Upholding high expectations | Examines how to continually reinforce established foundations. |
| Instruction | ||
| I1 | Strand fundamentals and re-contracting | Introduces foundational elements of instruction and supports teachers and mentors to set up effective ways of working. |
| I2 | Identifying learning content | Focuses on identifying essential concepts and considering their role in planning and assessment. |
| I3 | Instruction for memory | Considers how teaching can support lasting change in pupils. |
| I4 | Prior knowledge | Examines the implications prior knowledge and misconceptions have on instruction. |
| I5 | Teacher exposition | Explores the challenge(s) when introducing new information and how modelling, explanations and scaffolds can help. |
| I6 | Adapting teaching | Focuses on how effective instruction requires adapting teaching to support and challenge all pupils. |
| I7 | Practice, challenge and success | Examines what constitutes purposeful practice and how practice is an integral part of effective teaching. |
| I8 | Explicit teaching | Explores explicit teaching across a lesson/unit of learning. |
| I9 | Scaffolding | Focuses on how scaffolds and worked examples can help pupils and how to gradually remove them. |
| I10 | Questioning | Looks at how effective questions can deepen and extend pupil thinking. |
| I11 | Classroom talk | Explores how classroom talk can help to develop pupils’ mental models. |
| I12 | Feedback | Examines the link between teacher questions, feedback for pupils and responsive instruction. |
| Subject | ||
| S1 | Strand fundamentals and re-contracting | Introduces foundational elements of instruction and supports teachers and mentors to set up effective ways of working. |
| S2 | Planning backwards from learning goals | Focuses on the importance of subject excellence and starting with what teachers want pupils to learn. |
| S3 | Types of knowledge | Looks at the differing nature of subjects, the importance of mental models, knowledge and identifying core knowledge within subjects. |
| S4 | Gaps and misconceptions | Explores the need to identify and respond to gaps in pupil knowledge and pupil misconceptions. |
| S5 | Acquisition before application | Explores the role secure relevant knowledge can play prior to application and how to build and check for high success rates |
| S6 | Promoting deep learning | Focuses on ensuring deep, hard thinking about key ideas that develops pupil mental models and flexible knowledge. |
| S7 | Developing pupils’ literacy | Explores the varying nature of literacy across and within subjects/phases and the important role of vocabulary, comprehension and oral literacy. |
| S8 | Sharing academic expectations | Examines the links between challenging academic expectations, purposeful planning and breaking down and modelling content. |
| S9 | Assessing for formative purposes | Examines the link between learning goals, formative and summative assessments. |
| S10 | Examining pupils’ responses | Looks at drawing inferences, identifying misconceptions and getting pupils to elaborate as part of formative assessments. |
| S11 | Adapting lessons to meet pupil needs | Explores the ways formative assessments can provide inferences to adapt teaching to meet the needs of their pupils. |
| S12 | Feedback | Focuses on aspects of effective feedback so that pupils can put it into action to improve their understanding. |
