Adaptive Teaching (ITaP Day)

Intensive Training and Practice (ITaP) is a focused component of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) designed to deepen trainees’ understanding of evidence-based teaching principles and their application in professional practice. It involves trainees completing activities that include observation, critical analysis and practice application in school, as well as studying the underpinning theory and research. In doing so trainees link theory to practice and begin to foster long-term improvements in teaching that they can adapt to various contexts, ensuring a sustained and transferable impact on their professional development.

The PGCE (Primary) Programme has five ITaP themes:

  • Behaviour for Learning
  • Effective modelling
  • Questioning for learning
  • Early Reading (including SSP)
  • Adaptive Teaching

Each theme lasts for four days and one day of the Adaptive Teaching ITaP theme takes place in School Placement 1. On this day the trainees should complete the following activities

Activity 1: Observation

Trainees should observe a lesson and write down all the adaptive teaching strategies they notice. They should make a note of why/what the purposes of the adaptive teaching strategies and how effective they were.

Activity 2: Shadowing a child

With the guidance of the CM, trainees should choose a child to shadow for the remaining lessons of the day. Trainees should observe:

  • who the child works with
  • the scaffolds that are put in place to support learning
  • any interventions carried out
  • seating arrangements
  • other adult involvement

Activity 3: Interviewing a TA or LSA

Trainees should interview a TA or LSA, where there is one. They should explore their role, who they work with and how they communicate with the class teacher.

Please note: The activities above must occupy the trainee for the entire day. They are therefore not expected to undertake any thing else.

Activity 4: The Weekly Review

At the end of the week, during the Weekly Review an extra agenda item should be added.

  • This involves a discussion of the trainee’s observation notes and the adaptive strategies they observed in Activity 1. Together trainee and CM discuss some of these strategies and what makes them successful.
  • They should also discuss some of the observations the trainee made in completing Activity 2 so that the trainee can gain a better understanding of why the approaches observed were adopted and what makes these successful as well.
  • The CM should highlight anything they feel the trainee has missed in their observations and discuss its importance to adaptive teaching.