Now that we have reached the end of January, many trainee teachers will be starting to think about their evidence folders.
For some, you have considered this already, and may have begun to collect individual pieces of work for each sub-standard, or even have already started putting together your evidence bundles. For others, the evidence journey has only just begun! All training providers are different; therefore, it is not always easy to find advice online that completely meets the requirements of your providers.
As an Assistant Professional Tutor, a huge part of my role is to support trainees with the compilation of their final evidence portfolios, and my school welcomes trainees from 4 different providers/routes, all with different expectations when it comes to evidence portfolios. In this post, I’ve taken some of the golden nuggets that my trainees have found most useful to hopefully support those of you out there who currently feel the way I felt when I first started looking at evidence:
For anyone feeling this way, I would first like to remind you of all the things you ARE doing and that, actually, you are proving what you can do every day.
Have you ever planned a sequence of lessons, then adjusted any of those lesson plans because your class didn’t reach the objective?
Have you ever made a phone call home about a student who has been misbehaving, and as a result of that phone call, the behaviour has improved?
What about all those times you have set homework to support students’ overall understanding of the topic?
These are just a taster of the things that you are most likely doing all the time! And all of these can be used as evidence to prove how great a teacher you are.
The very first thing I recommend doing before you even start to collate evidence is to create your own Teachers’ Standards tracker or monitoring form. This can be done in many simple ways, such as a spread sheet or even a RAGged table in word or docs. I have a few forms that I am more than happy to share with anyone, just simply contact me in the form below or email me: aswrittenbyhazel@gmail.com.
If you want to make your own, have a single column with all the sub-standards, and a number of columns depending on how many times you need to evidence each one. You can then simply RAG each box based on how far into the evidence bundle you are.
For example:
You can tailor your tracker to include your ideas for each sub-standard or to include links to folders if you are compiling an electronic portfolio, or for any other features that you will find helpful. My tracker made my life so much easier when it came to planning each individual bundle, and simple RAGged trackers are what I recommend for my trainees.
Next, you need an easy way to note down your ideas. Most training providers have their own documents with ‘ideas’ or ‘suggested evidence’; mine certainly did. However, I did not find a 25-page-long document very helpful at all! In fact, I saw the document and just felt overwhelmed and couldn’t bear the thought of looking at it again. I recommended putting your heads together with the rest of the trainees in your school or any trainees who you attend training days with. When I trained, I produced an ideas document, that my fellow trainees and I all jotted notes onto whenever we had one of those lightbulb moments or if we had completed a bundle. It was a simple list of all the substandards, with a second column for ideas for a bundle of evidence. Again, if you would like a copy of this, please contact me!
Now to the evidence itself!
In the early days of my training, my instinct was to upload lots of individual documents and photographs and emails and anything else that I could find that I thought linked in some way to a standard. This is NOT the way to! After my initial panic stage subsided, and after speaking any teacher who dared cross my path in my moment of panic, I began to think about evidence differently:
Evidence = The journey you and your students undertake.
This thought process is applicable to the majority of sub-standards, and I found that I was able to work my way through the sub-standards with ease and at a good pace once I had realised this. Generally, you can divide the substandards into two categories:
1) Progress based evidence
2) Personal achievement based evidence
For progress based evidence, your evidence should consist of a ‘bundle’ that responds to these questions:
1. What did it look like at the beginning?
2. What did you do?
3. How did you do it?
4. What did it look like at the end?
So if you are compiling a piece of evidence for Teachers’ Standard 4d, where you ‘reflect systematically on the effectiveness of lessons and approaches to teaching’, you could prove you are able to do this by evidencing a time where you changed an upcoming lesson plan based on a previous lesson’s outcome. So, you could provide the following:
1) Two lesson plans with clear objectives and how you will achieve them
2) A copy of the second lesson plan, highlighting where you have made adjustments.
3) Photographs of students’ work in the both lessons. Make sure you write down next to each photography why you have included them.
4) A reflective piece of writing, explaining what your original plans were, why you adjusted the next lesson plan, and why the adjusted lesson plan was successful in helping students make progress.
This will result in a 5-document bundle that will make a perfect piece of evidence for sub-standard 4d!
For personal achievement based evidence, consider these questions when compiling your evidence:
What did you achieve?
What did you do to achieve this?
How did you do it?
What was the outcome?
So if you were to be compiling a bundle for sub-standard 4d (contribute to the design and provision of an engaging curriculum), you could include bundle of evidence that shares how other teachers have used a lesson that you have planned:
1) A full lesson plan for a lesson that other teachers have borrowed
2) Screenshots of some of the lesson resources, such as slides and work sheets
3) Photographs of some of the work produced by students in other classes
4) An email(s) from another teacher(s) thanking you for the lesson and explaining why it was so fantastic
5) You could also consider including a screenshot of your lesson’s position on the SOW/SOL if it is on there
And again, here you have another piece of solid evidence showing off what you can do!
I found that I was able to use either of the two approaches or the majority of substandards, but I understand that there are few sub-standards that may not fit like this. I will post a separate blog on those at a later date, once your folders have started coming together.
I’m hoping you have found these approaches helpful, but before you go I’d also like to share some tips that will support you along the way to creating these bundles.
TIPS:
Zoom in! It often helps to focus on a small number of students and focus on their journey rather than a whole group. So if you have identified a 2-3 students with specific needs or who are at a particular starting point, reflect on the progress made by these students for the purposes of your evidence.
Keep everything! Don’t delete any emails or throw away any old exercise books, or any notes made during training days. If you have read an article, don’t bin it! If you read an article online, screenshot it or print it! Eventually, when you are searching for a document that will tie all of your bundle together, you may just find it sitting in this pile of keepsakes :)
Use everyone around you. Your department, fellow trainees and other teachers in your school are all there to support you, so use them!
Anything you are involved in - ask for an email from the organiser about your role in this. Whether this be an afterschool club, an intervention session, a school trip, homework setting, lunchtime support clubs, or catch-up days… anything! If you are involved in it, as for an email thanking you for this.
Emails, emails, emails! I used SO MANY emails in my evidence portfolio. Think of them as testimonials about your dedication and performance.
Take before and after pictures. This can be for anything – students’ work, your plans, anything! Training providers love real-life proof of what you can do, so photographs are a fantastic way to prove what you can do.
Re-use where possible. Most training providers allow you to use the same evidence bundle for 2-3 sub-standards. If you have a bundle that can be used for another sub-standard, note this on your tracker and save yourself some time!
Most importantly? Don’t stress about it! Compiling your folder is about you proving what you are already doing. If you start now, and follow the advice given to you, you will find that your evidence will come together, and it is just a case of documenting it.
I hope you have found this helpful! Please contact me if you have any questions or if you would like me to share any of my resources with you. I’d love to hear in the comments below how you have been getting on with your Teachers’ Standards Evidence Portfolios! Feel free to share any advice you have too :)
xx
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