Mentor and trainee, week six of the placement, post-lesson supervision. The trainee taught a Year 8 history lesson with iPads. The mentor wants to give a useful note on the technology choice. The default conversation goes: "Did the iPads add anything?" "I thought so, yes." Pause. "Maybe more next time." Both sides leave the room satisfied that the tech was discussed, with no shared language about what would actually change next lesson.
That conversation is the one PICRAT rebuilds. The framework gives mentor and trainee a shared placement, two questions to answer together, and a clear smallest move. The supervision becomes about which cell the lesson lived in, why, and the one prompt that would have shifted it.
Why PICRAT works in mentoring
Three reasons.
It is observable. The mentor can see what students did with the iPad in the lesson they observed. The trainee can describe what they intended the technology to do. Both sides have evidence to bring to the conversation, and the placement is something they decide together.
It avoids judgement language. "Was the iPad worth it?" is a verdict; "Which cell did the lesson live in?" is a description. The first invites defensiveness; the second invites curiosity. Trainees who feel judged about their planning shut down. Trainees who are placing their own lesson on a grid lean in.
It produces a smallest move. Once the placement is on the table, the next step is small and concrete: one teacher prompt that would have shifted the lesson up the activity axis from PR to IA, or one part of the brief that should have been cut to keep a CT lesson achievable. The trainee leaves the meeting with a single change to try. Cloud-of-advice supervisions die on the way back to the staffroom.
Three trainees, three conversations
Most mentor conversations about technology fall into one of three patterns. PICRAT helps with all three.
"The iPads were definitely useful."
The trainee taught a Year 9 English lesson where students typed an essay in Google Docs. After the lesson, the trainee defends the iPad use because the spell-check and the live comments felt useful. The conversation tends to stall here, with the mentor reluctant to seem dismissive of a tool that did, technically, do something.
PICRAT moves past the defence. The mentor and trainee place the lesson together: students are typing, the technology is replacing pen and paper. CR. The placement is fine. CR is the right cell when the writing itself is the work, which it was. The mentor's note becomes "your placement was honest; CR was the right call here". The trainee learns the framework while being affirmed for a defensible choice.
"I wanted them to make a podcast."
The trainee planned a Year 7 history lesson with a podcast outcome and ran out of time. Students recorded fragments, the audio mostly does not work, and the trainee feels the lesson failed. Without a framework, the post-mortem becomes either reassurance ("it was ambitious, well done for trying") or correction ("simpler next time"). Both leave the trainee in the same place.
PICRAT names what happened. The placement was CT. CT lessons cost more in planning and lesson time and go wrong more often. They are worth the cost when the substance carries them, and a Year 7 introductory lesson on a new topic rarely does. The mentor's note becomes "your aim was CT, which is a high-cost cell; the smallest move is to drop to IA next lesson with a paired source-tagging task on Padlet". Concrete, kind, framework-grounded.
"It was probably just OK."
The trainee taught a Year 8 geography lesson on biomes where students worked in pairs on a shared Padlet, posting one example and one counter-example of each biome's defining features. The trainee is hesitant about the lesson because it felt unspectacular. The risk in mentoring is to under-recognise solid IA work because it is not flashy.
PICRAT names what they did. The placement is IA: students were reasoning interactively with examples the technology made possible. IA is the workhorse cell of any good department; lessons that live there reliably teach the stuff that matters. The mentor's note becomes "your placement was IA, which is what most lessons should aim for; do this kind of lesson more". The careful trainee gets to see their own quality named.
The one-prompt move
Most lessons that need shifting do so on a single teacher prompt. The simplest demonstration: a Year 8 history slide-recap on the feudal system that started life at PR.
The lift from PR to IA is the most common mentoring move PICRAT names. It almost never requires a different lesson plan; it requires a different student instruction inside the same plan.
The four-step weekly mentor pattern
Use this in the post-lesson supervision when technology has played a role.
- Place the lesson together. Two questions: what were the students doing with the technology, and what was the technology doing for the lesson? The placement is the trainee's, with the mentor checking.
- Name the cell. Use the letters. Saying "this was a PR lesson" is faster and less judgemental than describing the activity.
- Decide if the placement was right. PR is fine for a recap. CT is fine for an anchor lesson with serious substance. IA is the default workhorse. The placement is honest if it matches what the lesson was for.
- Name the smallest move. Usually one teacher prompt that shifts the lesson up the activity axis. Sometimes the honest answer is that the lesson was correctly placed and no move is needed.
Four steps, ten minutes, one shared placement and one concrete next step. The supervision is sharper and the trainee is calmer.
The placement is shared work. The smallest move is the gift.
What to do tomorrow
If you mentor a trainee, take next week's lesson plan from them in advance. Place it with them on the grid before they teach it. Note the cell you both expect, then revisit after the lesson with what actually happened.
If you are a trainee, place every lesson you plan on the grid before you teach it. The placement should be honest. Ambition can wait. The first ten lessons in a placement are usually a mix of PR (recaps and homework checks) and IA (the real workhorse). Knowing where each lesson lives is the start of being able to defend the choices you are making.
If you want a faster start, drop the lesson plan into Coach. Coach reads the lesson, places it on the grid, and walks you through the smallest move that would shift it. The output is the spine of the conversation a mentor and trainee should be having anyway.
Andy Perryer is the head of digital learning at a group of international schools and the creator of PICRAT Suite. The PICRAT framework was developed by Royce Kimmons, Charles Graham and Richard West in their 2020 paper in the CITE Journal.