Assessment Only Route to QTS: Interview Presentation

By Pete on November 12, 2024 • ( 1 )

Part of the interview process for the AO Route to QTS (Sunderland) is delivering a presentation. You do this during the live interview. The presentation lasts approximately 20 minutes, and it’s recorded for moderation.

During the interview you should respond to these 5 questions:

So, you’ve got 4 minutes per point if you give equal weighting. I chose to frontload mine a bit. Here’s how I approached it.

1a) What does a good lesson look like?

I highlighted the teaching and learning principles we outlined in our EAL dept, as these were specific to my immediate context. I also highlighted what made them ‘good’ (i.e principled).

1b) Ensuring my learning environment is inclusive

I highlighted the 5 core principles of EAL provision outlined by the Bell Foundation. I outlined general aspects of my practice that align to these.

I realise this might be a little too on the nose for some, but I also listed the teaching standards that these aspects of my practice showcased (see screenshots for examples). It all comes back to the standards – might as well make it explicit.

2a) Explain your taught curriculum

I used our parent-facing curriculum overviews for this, and talked through some ways that we adapt these e.g. changing the curriculum sequence. I’ve since created a slightly more detailed long-term planning doc which links to each unit of work and relevant Bell descriptors – parent-facing doc a bit easier to view for a snapshot in a 20 min interview though.

For departmental and team planning, I screenshot part of our quality assurance doc that showed how we share planning duties.

2b) Staying up to date with subject knowledge

I screenshot my resources for that. I realize how that might come across – I just wanted to make it a clear that my roles aside from teaching keep my knowledge up-to-date to an extent.

3) Assessment and progress

For this I explained aspects of our initial, formative, and periodic assessments. I explained our ‘considered for exit’ levels.

Then I talked through our data collection for formative and periodic assessment, and how the Bell assessment Framework is tailor-made to for setting future targets.

I also touched upon our reflection tasks to help learners establish next steps, but only briefly. I think this was drawn out for discussion by the assessor after the talk actually.

4) Behaviour management and behaviours for learning

I talked through some of the typical behaviour management tools in our context (recognitions, cause for concern, restorative approaches) but focused more on behaviours for learning. I gave an example about collective responsibility for learning, with the whole class recording new vocabulary in our word envelopes. Bit of a weak section for me tbh, but apparently this was covered well in my portfolio.

5) Adhering to professional standards and safeguarding

I screenshot CP certificates from TES, our policies folders on G-Drive, and my attendance record, and talked them through. There’s one standard about upholding British values so I included screenshots of a lesson sequence we taught on civil rights, democratic values, and equality.

After the presentation…

The assessor followed up with some questions about certain aspects of the presentation. Mine was interested in my planning – he asked me to talk through a lesson sequence and explain how I used formative assessment to inform future content. Luckily, he had chosen an example lesson sequence from what I’d uploaded to the portfolio already – I’d have struggled to answer that off to cuff and under interview conditions.

Advice

Overall, I found the presentation kinda daunting, but also a confidence boost. The points to cover feel a bit ‘aaargh’ at first, but they do help you to identify aspects of your good practice and areas for development.

My top tip would be to flag how all your evidence on the slides relates to the standards. This should keep your presentation more focused too. Also, I’d say that the assessor really is on your side. Mine was Ian Elliot, who was just really supportive and interested in what I had to say – totally put me at ease and I felt like he was really advocating for us EALers actually!

Anyhow, good luck and feel free to ask any questions.