Welcome to the first weekly update

When an update is posted on the partnership website, beginning teachers and mentors will receive an email notification informing them of this new post and containing a link to it. All the email addresses we have are now in the system, but please could we ask beginning teachers and mentors to check with each other that they have also received it. Sometimes these notifications land in people’s trash and spam folders, so please do check these if you can’t find it in your inbox.

All posts can be viewed directly on the updates page and the most recent are always listed in the footer of every page.
The partnership website also has all the relevant documentation including planning templates, observation forms and handbooks.

Induction

As part of beginning teachers’ induction to the school, they should familiarise themselves with the content of the policies listed on pages 6 and 7 of the Professional Development Journal and follow the guidance on p5.

Word versions of these pages are available on Blackboard so that beginning teachers can maintain electronic copies of them and maintain electronic copies that can be kept in their OneDrive PDAs folder.

iPads

All beginning teachers have now been issued with a university iPad or iPad Air. These are to be used strictly for the purposes of recording their formal lesson observation each week. These devices should remain in school and should only leave the premises once all the recordings have been deleted. Beginning teachers and mentors should therefore review the recordings in school. More detals can be found here.

This Week

Further details of this week’s activities and responsibilities can be found in the Weekly Expectation grid on p32 of the School Placement 1 Handbook.

For Mentors the week will involve:

• providing informal feedback on things that have been observed;
• identifying with trainees the Professional Development Activities (PDAs), from the Professional Development Journal (PDJ), that can be completed whilst on placement in the school;
• identifying a Reading Buddy and a Maths Mate with the beginning teacher;
• modelling the planning process to their trainees;
• discussing targets for next week.

Weekly Theme

This week’s theme is Behaviour for Learning. Trainees have set themselves an informal target on this area of practice and will also set next week’s FIA on it as well after reviewing the video from this week’s formal observation.

There are also two activities for the trainees to complete this week which can be found on this page. They are both straight forward and are likely to be completed as part of the usual SP1 routine. Activity 2, for example, is essentially the formal lesson observation and the guidance provided for this activity can be used in reflecting on the recording.

Targets

Three targets related to this week’s theme have been set for beginning teachers to work on during the week. They can be found on this page for reference and in beginning teachers’ ePortfolios for week 1.

During the week, it is important that beginning teachers get to know the children and their current attainment. We suggest that they should, therefore:

• work with individuals and groups in two or three English lessons and two or three maths, for which they plan;
• observe and assist in at least one English and one other maths lesson;
• observe and assist in at least one other subject each day;
• complete some whole class teaching, some of which can be team teaching with the mentor.

Formal Lesson Observation

This week, a formal lesson observation should take place, and be recorded, of the beginning teacher teaching the whole class. To help prepare for this, we recommend that mentors and beginning teachers team teach some lessons which could be recorded on the iPads and informally reviewed together. This will help the trainee begin to feel more comfortable in watching themselves on the video.

As outlined in the briefing meeting, mentors are now required to identify two teaching moments from the lesson observation (see p.15 of the handbook) and record these on the form. Because it is very early in the placement, we suggest that Teaching Moment 1 relates to this week’s targets related to promoting positive learning behaviours, and Teaching Moment 2 should focus on any area of practice that mentors feel appropriate bearing in mind this teaching moment will lead to the setting of next week’s FIA target (see p.8 of the handbook).

Weekly Review

The agenda for the weekly review, which should take place on Thursday this week to allow beginning teachers time, can be found on p.8 of the handbook. Discussions that take place will include mentors feeding back on the formal lesson observation, especially the identified teaching moments.

Reading Buddy and Maths Mate

Beginning teachers need to identify with their mentors the two children who will become their Reading Buddy and Maths Mate. Regular intervention with these children should not start until week 3 as beginning teachers need time to develop an appropriate intervention programme. They should spend some time with their Reading Buddy and Maths Mate during this week so they can get to know each other. Further details can be found on the Reading Buddy and Maths Mate page.

Planning

In preparation for next week, trainees should start to become familiar with any planning from which they will be creating lesson plans. Please could mentors therefore take time during this week to model the planning process to their beginning teachers.

Primary Entitlement Document

Please could mentors ensure they are familiar with the expectations that are laid out in the Primary Entitlement Document which can also be accessed from the homepage.