The National Strategies | Primary 1

PDM: Modelling and Demonstrating

Modelling and
Demonstrating

Agenda for Professional Development Meeting (PDM)

1 Review and reflect on progress since the last meeting

2 Planning and pedagogy: Improving learning and teaching

Putting it into practice in the school: Developing the professional learning

3 community

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PDM: Modelling and Demonstrating

1: Review and reflect on progress since the last meeting

Review Headteacher to lead discussions
progress
Participants review their personal targets set at the last PDM. They discuss with
colleagues successes and areas which still need addressing. They record their
needs for future professional development and support – noting whether these
are individual needs or part of a wider issue.

Participants reflect on the outcomes from the pupil progress meetings,

reviewing the progress of their class against the age-related curricular targets,
particularly those children in the target groups who need to make accelerated
progress to achieve the age-related expectation.

Notes for Senior See Setting of whole-school curricular targets in the Leading on learning section of
Leadership the professional development materials.
Team
Prior to this PDM, the leadership team should have identified an aspect of
reading, writing and mathematics that needs to be developed as a whole-
school.

This section may require additional session(s) in school to introduce the

whole-school curricular targets and ensure all staff members fully
understand the subject and curricular knowledge required to teach the
curricular targets effectively.
Setting The setting and getting of whole-school curricular targets in reading, writing
curricular and mathematics is a key tool to improve 'quality first' teaching to raise
targets for half standards through the accelerated progress of underachieving children.
term
Remind colleagues that the school has identified from their analysis of children’s
work, test papers, and discussions with teachers and children, key aspects of
literacy and mathematics from the Primary Framework that are more difficult to
teach and/or difficult to learn. These have been set as whole-school curricular
targets.

Remind staff of main messages:

• Whole-school curricular targets are set as a context to improve 'quality first'

teaching in key aspects of literacy and mathematics that are difficult to teach
and/or difficult to learn

• The aim is to raise the expectations of the whole school community in key
aspects of the curriculum and then accelerate the progress of underachieving
groups towards and beyond the age-related expectations.

• Curricular targets should be set each half term and linked explicitly to the
development of teaching and learning strategies in classrooms to improve
'quality first' teaching that is judged good or better.

• Curriculum provision should be reviewed to ensure there are appropriate

opportunities planned to review, teach, practise and apply the curricular
targets within literacy and mathematics units of work and across the whole
curriculum, including the use of precision intervention with the target groups.

• The leadership team should support colleagues to fully understand the

subject, curricular and pedagogical knowledge required to ensure that all
children achieve the expectations set for them.

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PDM: Modelling and Demonstrating

2: Planning and pedagogy: Improving learning and teaching

Notes for These notes are for guidance only and it is expected that schools will choose from
presenter what is suggested and adapt materials to meet their own needs. These notes are
written to be appropriate for the whole school, including the Early Years Foundation
Stage.
Aims of this session are to:

• establish the purpose of modelling and demonstrating in the teaching and

learning of literacy and mathematics.

• help teachers to build modelling and demonstrating into their planning,

teaching and assessment.

• support teachers in referencing a range of practical resources to help them in

developing effective modelling and demonstrating.
Introduction, Purposes of modelling and demonstrating
purpose and
key messages • Modelling and demonstrating are key teaching and learning strategies which
scaffold or support children’s learning to take them successfully from what
they already know into new learning. Modelling and demonstrating are
lynchpins of successful teaching.

• Modelling and demonstrating require children’s full attention. They aim to give
children descriptions, methods and images they can return to, use and apply
again. They build on the objectives for the lesson/unit of work and usually
extend into a series of lessons.

Activity: Ask participants, in pairs, to discuss how children learn from effective
modelling and demonstrating and how well they feel they incorporate effective
modelling and demonstrating into their teaching.
Linking Modelling and demonstrating are interactive whole-class teaching strategies
teaching that involve the teacher in using resources and asking probing questions and
strategy to children contributing and experimenting. Paired work and the use of
progress in whiteboards may be part of these strategies.
literacy and
mathematics In literacy, modelling and demonstrating are the key strategies in shared reading
and writing to ensure that children understand both the process (for example,
writing narrative) and the particular example (for example, writing a further
chapter for a story).

In mathematics, models are used to give children a picture or image to help

them understand the mathematics involved (for example, the counting stick or
empty number line). Demonstrations may show how to do something like
measure an angle, or set out the steps involved in a particular calculation.

Activity: Remind participants of their last literacy and mathematics targets. Ask them to
identify two or three examples of effective modelling and demonstrating that they
included in their teaching and how this supported the children’s learning and helped
them to reach their target.

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PDM: Modelling and Demonstrating

Linking Modelling and demonstrating should:

teaching
strategies to • make explicit to the children the underlying structures and key elements of
literacy and what is being taught;
mathematics
units of work. • provide a supporting structure, which can be extended and used to apply the
knowledge, skills and the objective that has been taught within new situations
and contexts;

• clearly and precisely demonstrate the steps involved in promoting a technique

or skill, and when solving a problem.
Review and Provide one or two examples from the whole-class session, for example, in
teach shared writing of an advertisement for ‘Gummo Glue’ (a persuasive text), the
teacher would:

• identify, discuss and plan with the class (using notes/diagram) the important
features of advertisement (for example, exaggeration, snappy slogans);

• demonstrate the important features, rehearsing ideas orally and explaining

decisions (for example, I need to exaggerate the claims, so I need to write
something that makes it sound the best, therefore I am writing ‘Gummo is the
world’s strongest glue');

• use basic resources (for example, cubes, bead string, number line,) to model
the process (for example, of division as repeated subtraction).

The modelling and demonstrating takes the children into new learning, so it is
important that this is scaffolded through the use of visual prompts, questioning
and paired discussions.
Practice and At the end of the whole-class session, the children should be able to begin to
apply apply what has been modelled and demonstrated in the independent and
guided sessions (for example, to write their own advertisements).
Review In the plenary the teacher returns to the models introduced to the children and:

• asks them how the models, images, prompts and other features helped them
to learn;

• assesses how well the children applied what was taught to new situations and
examples.

Activity: Participants look at a video extract or observe a colleague modelling a

process. Use the following discussion prompts:

• What was the teacher modelling/demonstrating and what learning did it

promote?

• What did the teacher/children do?

• Did the teacher use paired talk and resources to support the children’s
learning?

• How could the children use/apply the model in the lesson or later?

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 The National Strategies | Primary 5
PDM: Modelling and Demonstrating

Improving the It is suggested that schools identify one or two key messages from those outlined
conditions for below for improving the conditions for learning and developing the school as a
learning professional learning community and link these to the PDM.

Improving the conditions for learning in the classroom needs to involve the
children in their own learning. The following key points support this PDM.

• Children are clear about the purpose of what is being taught because the
processes and structures have been well modelled and demonstrated.

• Children understand how to apply the model to future learning.

• Children play an active part in the modelling and demonstrating by answering

questions, contributing points for discussion and giving explanations to the
identified audience.

• The topics, presentations and structures of the modelling and demonstrating

generate curiosity, interest and interaction.

• Adults listen carefully to the children’s responses and respond constructively in

order to take the learning forward.

Key conditions to support an effective learning environment in the classroom

are as follows:

• teachers display, use and refer to resources to support modelling and

demonstrating – images, pictures, sequences and vocabulary;

• additional adults are aware of what is being modelled or demonstrated;

• additional adults are situated close to those children who need support; for
example, own set of resources, repeated demonstrations, or prompts in their
first language;

• children are allowed to work in a variety of groupings and settings to facilitate

effective learning.

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6 The National Strategies | Primary
PDM: Modelling and Demonstrating

3: Putting it into practice in the school: Developing the professional

learning community
Ensuring CPD ‘Adults are the most important resource in any school’ (DfES Making Great
impact on Progress 00443-2007BKT-EN)
children’s
learning Effective CPD is collaborative, contextualised in classrooms and gives teachers
time and space to refine their practice.

Ask participants to identify a literacy or mathematics unit they are about to teach
over the half-term. With the curricular targets in mind, ask them to discuss, in
small groups, the strategies, pictures and images that may be deployed so that
modelling and demonstrating is effective in:

• establishing the starting point and children’s understanding of the curricular

target;

• helping the teacher and children to assess their progress to and beyond the
age-related curricular target;

• reviewing the children’s achievement of the target and the next steps in their
learning.
Personal CPD Identify one or two personal professional development strategies to try.

Reviewing These should include working with other teachers, collaborative planning, joint
children’s observation of children, evaluation of learning to gather information, reflecting
progress on what has worked well and why, feeding back to the whole school.

Identify opportunities to review the achievement of the curricular targets by the

target group through discussions with children, samples of work, and pupil
progress meetings with colleagues.

These can be noted on the personal CPD log.

Useful resources:
Useful resources can be found on the Primary Framework website www.standards.
dcsf.gov.uk/primaryframeworks and the Standards site www.standards.dcsf.gov.uk

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Personal CPD log
Focus of PDM:
Date of meeting:
Targets
Whole-school curricular
target(s):
Class and age-related
curricular target(s):
Names of target group:
Focus
Raising standards and
accelerating progress:
Review and progression:
Improving the quality of
teaching and learning:
Improving the conditions
for learning:
Planning and pedagogy:
Developing the learning
community:
Putting it into practice in
the school:
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The National Strategies | Primary 7
PDM: Modelling and Demonstrating
Class:
Reading Writing Mathematics
Outcome(s) Personal Action(s) and
comments
Children in the target group
make accelerated progress –
more children are working at
age-related expectations
Identified teaching strategy
explicitly planned for and
used to support the
achievement of the high-value
curricular targets
Classroom climate,
organisation, and
environment support the
learning of the high-value
curricular targets
Collaborative models of CPD
impact on both adult and
children’s learning
Children know where they are,
and what they need to do
next
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