Group profiles

Approach and purpose

Building a relationship is a key component of effective teaching. Getting to know your students not only increases trust and engagement, but it also helps you differentiate instruction and personalise learning.

The more a teacher knows about a student’s background, strengths, knowledge, and skills, the better he or she can target instruction toward their learning needs. In fact,  studies show that knowledge of individual students does have a measurable positive impact on achievement.

With so many students in your classroom, how can you get to know each of them on an individual level? A group profile is a document, project, or even conversation that helps teachers learn more about their students.

Simply put, a group profile allows a teacher to get a holistic and academic view point of the students in the group/class. A sufficient group profile should offer an all-round look at student strengths, SEN needs, medical issues, academic levels, learning styles, plus any other information that a teacher deems important to enable them to effectively plan and tailor learning to suit the needs of each student.

Teachers need a group profile for all of the classes that they are responsible for. It is expected that the first six weeks of the academic year will be used to gather appropriate information about students, and for group profiles to be fully populated by October half term 2020. Further additions and changes to this information can be made as required throughout the year.

Group profiles will be hosted online using eTrackr. There are a few advantages to using this system:

• The template for the group profile is already on eTrackr

• Information is automatically taken from the college’s systems and put in the profile, including the student names, their English and maths GCSE grades, their BKSB levels and scores, ALS needs and teacher notes

• Notes are shared across all of the student’s teachers. As each teacher adds their notes to a student we build a more complete picture of their progress in all lessons.

• The group profile can be printed if a physical copy is needed.