Checking for Learning: Classroom Strategies That Work

How do we know that students are actually learning while we are teaching—not just listening, completing tasks or appearing engaged?

This three-part webinar series focuses on practical, in-the-moment strategies teachers can use to check for understanding and respond to what they see.

Session 1 is free for all participants. Sessions 2 and 3 are available exclusively to Leadership Hub members.

What we will cover:

The difference between engagement and learning
Practical strategies to check for understanding (e.g. questioning, mini whiteboards)
Identifying misconceptions in real time
Responding and adapting teaching in the moment

Episodes 1 & 2: Classroom Strategies for Checking for Understanding

These sessions focus on practical strategies teachers can use to check for understanding and strengthen classroom practice.

What we will cover:

Refining questioning for deeper understanding
Structuring effective checks for understanding
Avoiding common pitfalls and ineffective habits
Building simple, consistent classroom routines

Episode 3: For Middle & Senior Leaders

In this short session, we focus on how middle and senior leaders can support teachers to embed effective classroom strategies that help us check for learning and improve pupil understanding.

What we will touch upon:

- Effective approaches to supporting teachers in embedding these strategies in the classroom.
- Supporting staff through modelling, coaching, and feedback
- Using department meetings to revisit, refine, and embed key strategies

Bonus Session: Strengthening Formative Assessment with EdTech

For all teachers
ECT Mentors
Heads of Department
Subject Leads
Lead Practitioners

Lisa Jane Ashes

Lisa believes that education is about developing minds for the future. She also believes that many schools fall short of producing a fully rounded end product’ because they fail to coordinate learning across their departments.

She has therefore made it her mission to transform how teachers think about the curriculum so that they can begin to deliver a whole school approach to education. To achieve this, she helps teachers develop personally and professionally by empowering them to collaborate with others within and outside their particular department.

In Lisa’s most recent book, ‘Teacher in the Cupboard,’ she helps teachers examine their approaches to the many problems educators face. Tried and tested solutions to myriad issues are examined from all perspectives. This book provides a mindset to facing problems and is a human approach that can be adopted to solve them.

Lisa’s first book ‘Manglish’, considers how English and Maths can be creatively brought together to improve literacy and numeracy throughout the school, providing practical ideas and strategies for doing this. Lisa is passionate about writing and appears in many teaching and learning publications such as: ‘There Is Another Way and ‘Don’t Change the light bulbs — A Compendium of Expertise from the UK’s most switched-on Educators’.

She has also written many articles to help reflect on her work in education and share her evolving ideas as she goes. Lisa takes her message of curriculum collaboration around the world. Through her work with the charity ‘Reach Out to Schools,’ Lisa has developed teams in Ghana and Nepal where she uses her strategies to help create a culture of continual self-improvement among the country’s teachers.