Intensive Training & Practice (ITAPs)
The Intensive Training and Practice element of the Kingsbridge curriculum is intended to consolidate your understanding of how the evidence base shapes your teaching practice. Kingsbridge has selected key foundational aspects of their curriculum that are specific and pivotal – these are the elements that the ITAPs will focus upon. Focusing on these elements will increase coherence between taught theory and practice in placement schools and will provide you with the opportunity to pay close attention to these elements and receive feedback to refine your practice further. ITAPs are different from general teaching practice as they have an intense focus on a specific element, for example, setting up behaviour routines.
The Design and Implementation of Intensive Training and Practice (IT&P)
The design of ITAPs at Kingsbridge is underpinned by this framework (Grossman (2018) and Teaching Works (2022):
The duration of ITAPs will be 5 blocks of 4 days (20 days in total)- this is additional to the general school placement. In line with the design model above, the ITAPs may involve:
- Introduce: Engaging with lectures, seminars, or training from Kingsbridge; engaging with assigned reading, podcasts, videos or interviewing/meeting with expert professionals.
- Analyse: Observing experts (live or asynchronous video recordings); engaging with classroom artefacts including relevant teaching materials such as textbooks or expert modelling and deconstruction of specific components.
- Prepare: Engaging in low stakes practice of the component to gain feedback which may be deliberate practice with a mentor, role play or scenario planning.
- Enact: Receiving further support to apply and transfer learning to the classroom through instructional coaching, team teaching and planning or lesson study.
- Assess: Identifying the impact on trainee’s knowledge and skills through lesson observations and instructional coaching, trainee’s own reflections or engagement with multiple choice quizzes to gauge understanding and where further targeted support may be required for improvement.
