Primary

In School you have overall responsibility for enabling your student teachers to:

• Acquire classroom competency

• Carry out any school-based tasks from the programme devised by the university/college and the school in partnership

• Test ideas and develop their own thinking about the kind of teachers they want to become.

Remember, the start is important. They should not be thrown in at the deep end; they should be given time to progress from sound, positive experiences in the classroom. Therefore, in the first weeks in school it is advisable for your students to work with individuals and small groups rather than whole classes, to work alongside you and other experienced teachers rather than on their own.

As mentor, whatever your position in the department or faculty, you are responsible for ensuring that colleagues working with the student teachers:

• Are realistic and do not expect the trainee teachers to be 'super-teachers' from day one

• Understand the nature and principles of the school-based scheme you are operating

• Are kept fully informed of the trainee teacher's programme and progress

• Are supported in their work with trainee teachers and helped to develop the skills needed for this work.

Checklist for preparing for the arrival of the trainee teachers in school

Ensure that all teachers who will be working with the trainee teachers understand their legal responsibilities.

Try to guide colleagues in their work with trainee teachers by passing on (and discussing with them) any relevant materials concerning initial teacher training produced by the University.

Discuss with colleagues how trainee teachers are to be introduced to pupils.

Alert colleagues to the range of ways in which they might usefully work with trainee teachers, including:

• discussion with trainee teachers prior to a lesson so they know the teacher's initial plans

• structured observation of experienced teachers in action enabling student teachers to practise those same skills in part of a lesson in a 'protected way'

• giving trainee teachers feedback on that practice

• joint lesson planning for future lessons.

We believe that collaborative teaching is essential so that student teachers have:

• some responsibility in the classroom but in a 'protected way'

• enabling trainee teachers to take full responsibility for a single lesson or series of lessons

• discussing critically the ideas they have been exploring elsewhere.

You need to familiarise yourself with the school-based training tasks, which make up a large part of the programme, and form the core part of the trainees entitlement whilst on placement.

It would also be helpful if you could draw up a detailed plan for inducting the trainee teacher into your school.

Finally, please make sure everyone is clear about trainee teacher access to photocopying and other resources.

Checklist

Colleagues

Formally introduce the student teachers to all of your primary colleagues including teaching assistants.

Facilities and resources

Show them around the school, explaining the use of any offices, work and preparation areas.

Show them where resources are stored and take them through procedures for their use.

Procedures and routines

Inform them of any important routines and practices; these could range from arrangements for pupils' use of the library to use of coffee/tea-making facilities in the staff room.

Curriculum

Give them a brief introduction to school policy on such matters as assessment, feedback and marking use of display boards.

Provide them with medium/long term plans, or schemes of work, to help them get a feel for the year group they are working with.

Expectations and plans

Go through what you expect of your trainee in terms of commitment, reliability and enthusiasm. All trainees have signed an agreement with the university in terms of our expectations.

Go through a preliminary programme with them and discuss ways in which they will be working with you and your colleagues.

Go through the school calendar and pick out events and dates relevant to the trainee teacher. Be clear about which meetings - full staff, parental consultation - they are expected to attend.

Checklist

At the end of the induction period, check that your student has copies of:

• The school/staff handbook (staff lists, whole-school policies, plan of the school, school calendar, school management structure, lines of responsibility, school guidelines /rules)

• school prospectus

• class timetable

Try to ensure they have been introduced to:

• The head and deputy head teacher

• Professional mentor (if different to class mentor)

• Immediate teaching colleagues, e.g. other year group teachers, PPA cover teachers

• Staff in the school office

• Library and resource staff

• Site Manager

Ensure students are familiar with:

• Health and safety rules

• Procedures for staff absence

• The nature of the school day

• The time they need to arrive by and signing in arrangements

• Parking arrangements

• Any unwritten rules about staff appearance and dress

• Areas where they can work during unstructured time

• Coffee, lunch and staff room procedures.

Time and place

To be most useful the debriefing needs to take place:

• as soon as possible after the observed lesson and

preferably within 24 hours

• away from other people and possible interruptions.

Listening

It is very important to give your student an opportunity to talk about the lesson. By finding something out about how they are feeling and how they saw the lesson, you can decide what they are capable of understanding and learning at that particular time. Unless you know what is going on in a student's head you can't always know how to help them.

It is helpful, therefore, to start the debriefing with a general open question such as:

What did you think of the lesson?

How do you feel it went?

What do you think went well?

Being positive

Student teachers can very easily feel battered and bruised. For many of them, learning to teach is very demanding and frustrating and is quite different from any other kind of learning they have done in the past.

Breaking it down

Student teachers need help in breaking down teaching into its component parts. They tend to make blanket judgements about their teaching. Thus lessons are 'brilliant', 'chaotic', 'disastrous' or 'awful'. If a lesson has gone well they are often relieved and don't want to examine it; if it has gone badly, they are embarrassed and don't want to dwell on it.

Follow a broad set pattern

Mentor begins with a general open question finding out how the student teacher feels about the lesson.

The student is encouraged to talk about the strengths of the teaching.

You as the mentor add your perceptions of these or other strengths and ask the student teacher to identify aspects of the teaching which could have been different.

Together, look at possible ways in which the lesson could have been improved.

Finally, you jointly make plans for the future and set targets in the mentoring log. These are checked at the professional interview.

The feedback that we offer Trainee Teachers is one of the most important aspects of the time which they spend in schools and crucial in their confident development as teachers.

The following suggestions are distilled from discussions with Mentors:

1. Have regular mentoring slots available which are always respected (this is a Partnership agreement).

2. Provide a quiet environment, to enable real discussion to take place.

3. Try to adopt a supportive and positive manner (eye contact, body language, sitting diagonally rather than face-to-face can be less authoritarian).

4. Be clear about how the session will develop and make sure that the Trainee Teacher knows how you will work together during the debriefing. Start with something encouraging, something positive. Suggest that part of the session will be devoted to going through the lesson and part will cover future planning.

5. Begin with open-ended, general questions which stimulate Trainee Teacher talk:

• How do you think that went?

• Did the lesson work out as you had planned?

6. Where Trainee Teachers are too self-critical and have too high expectations for this stage of their work ask them to identify some strong points.

7. When you begin to go through the lesson observation sheet the Trainee Teachers need to be encouraged to explain:

• The context of their planning eg. previous lessons, knowledge of class or classroom etc.

• Why they chose to offer activities in a particular order.

• Why certain activities were successful or problematic.

• Whether their objectives had been achieved (pupil learning outcomes).

• What evidence of assessment was available.

8. Discuss facts rather than opinions. Concentrate on the pupils' reactions:

• How did the pupils react to the lesson?

• They couldn't do activity x very well - what do you think was the problem?

• Did the pupils understand what they were required to do?

9. Suggest alternative strategies, leaving a choice for the Trainee Teacher to make but ask what they would choose to do in subsequent lessons.

10. Refer to lessons which they have observed and which could act as a model. Offer them other suitable classes and teachers to observe in order to build up particular skills.

11. Refer to the school-based tasks in the Subject Handbook regularly in order to focus on the Trainee Teacher's development and to establish targets.

12. Constructive feedback rather than destructive feedback is essential for good Trainee Teacher development.