Role of the mentor

What is the role of the mentor - Taken from PYP Exhibition guidelines (IB Publishing)

If a school uses mentors, it is important that their role is clearly defined. A mentor can help the students set and meet their goals by asking questions, suggesting resources, helping to interpret difficult information and facilitating interviews or telephone calls. Community members, older students, parents and teachers may be invited to act as mentors.

Some examples of mentor participation include the following.

Members of the school community are encouraged to identify areas (knowledge, skills and interests) where they could support the students, and an inventory of “experts” is developed. Students contact these experts and arrange support as needed.
Each group of students is assigned a mentor who will support the group through the process leading towards the exhibition. Groups will meet with their mentors on a weekly basis or as needed. The mentor will guide the students and help them monitor their progress, assisting them in setting new goals. They are responsible for some aspects of student assessment. Ultimately, the students are responsible for the completion of work.
The mentor’s primary role is to act as a guide and resource in the accomplishment of specific tasks during the exhibition process. Members of the school community are invited to mentor in one or more areas of interest or expertise, for example, research, writing, or information and communication technology (ICT). They are available at different stages of the exhibition. For instance, in the early stages of the inquiry, research mentors come in two to three times a week. Mentors have a purely advisory role, and while they do not participate in the summative assessment of the exhibition, they may contribute to formative assessments regarding their area of support, as well as reflecting on the exhibition process.
After the students have written their central idea for their inquiry, teachers and other adults within the school who have nominated themselves for the mentoring role are matched up with a group of students. The students are responsible for contacting and organizing meetings with their mentor. The mentors are encouraged to meet the students at least three times in the beginning stages of the exhibition but may reduce their involvement over time to increase student responsibility. They are not involved in formal assessment but are encouraged to make anecdotal observations and to give feedback to the students and teachers.

What do we expect from mentors?

Visit our PYPx Page https://sites.google.com/anglo.edu.co/anglo-pypx/home it contains many useful resources for you and your student. Encourage them to visit and use the page as well.
Make sure you record your session in student journals (use the mentor meeting gdoc) and if you wish, use your own google folder to include any resource, information, etc you believe is important to help guide the process. This is here to help you. If you don´t have any information to place in here don´t worry. You are not expected to.
After every meeting, ask children to include in their bullet journal:
- - Tasks/research/discussions etc completed since the last meeting
  - Meeting notes
  - To do list
  - Date/time for next meeting)
Encourage regular meetings - Make sure students know when and where you will be meeting.
Maintain close communication with your student (s) could be F2F, via email, Skype, etc.
Make sure you are in contact with your student group director
Set achievable goals with the students and provide time management advice (use the bullet journal)
Ask lots of guiding questions about the students passion
Suggest experts inside and out of the school community and guide them in how to reach them. (e-mail…, skype, appointment)
Facilitate appropriate inquiry sources for students to use. (age, proficiency…)
Suggest different ways of research/collecting information and data beyond the internet eg surveys and questionnaires, interviews (email, skype), observation, experiments, focus groups
Request support from librarians, how to research/ access sources such as Databases, online Encyclopaedias, etc. Remember they can use any library they wish (Preschool, primary and Bach)
Help interpret sophisticated/technical information (they are 10 and 11 years old!)
Guide them to plan their action step, beyond informative way (share the two slides showing the types of actions found in the student section of the webpage https://sites.google.com/anglo.edu.co/anglo-pypx/students/what-do-i-do-with-my-idea-taking-action?authuser=0 )
Ensure students reflect on the Learner Profile and the development of those attributes. Suggest they include some sort of reflection, or connection with the Learner profile in their presentation. (For example, there is one project on How to become a formula 1 driver… What attributes of the Learner profile do you need to have and why?)
Share your experience and expertise with the student related to their passion.
Ensure they cite information properly. (Where did they take this from? How to quote webpages, online resources, people) They can use http://www.easybib.com/v2/home
Help them think on creative ways in which they can stage their Exhibition. Encourage them to plan ahead (What resources? What do you need to prepare? How much space?)
Enjoy your time with grade 4 children
Come and visit the staging of the PYP Exhibition and celebrate this fantastic day with us.

Image developed by Cindy Blackburn

A note to mentors...

Students will contact you by email to request that you become their mentor, and to arrange meetings with you. You should ensure the students’ topic match your interests before confirming, and if you do not feel you would be able to be their mentor, you can decline. You can accept as few or as many students as you feel able.

Students will be recording their project in a Google Sites website. Within this website, which children can share with you, there is a Helpful Links page with resources explaining the process. You can also find useful links on our Anglo PYPx page: https://sites.google.com/anglo.edu.co/anglo-pypx/home

Students are responsible for contacting you as mentors to request meetings. They are responsible for arriving on time for their meetings, and for recording down notes, either in their journals or their Mentor Notes slides. As a rough guide, students should meet mentors for 20-30 minutes per cycle. If you have students with similar topics, you can meet with them at the same time.

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