Review Statement 3
This is now available for download from the Review Statement Templates page.
Mentors are asked to complete this and discuss the contents with their beginning teachers before submitting to partnership@soton.ac.uk on 22 April.
Please note that a review of the Tracker is required in order to complete the RS3 so that the descriptors selected accurately reflect the beginning teacher’s practice. Contents of the RS3 will inform discussions when the tutor visits.
Planning
We make no apologies for consistently flagging the importance of detailed and thorough planning that beginning teachers need to be creating at this point in the programme.
More information about this can be found in the Week 3 update.
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 2 Handbook. This is provided as guidance and need not be adhered to if it is not in the interest of the beginning teacher’s learning to teach. If mentors have any concerns regarding the pace at which their beginning teacher is progressing, they should contact the relevant tutor.
This Week’s Theme
The placement theme for this week is Adaptive Teaching and targets have therefore been pre-set in ePortfolio. There are also activities that must be completed this week as part of the theme and they can be found on the Theme 3 page.
The Weekly Review
The agendas for the weekly reviews from this week onwards will no longer need to be amended and will follow that which is set out on p.8 of the placement handbook, which also contains further discussion points. Please note, there is now a need to set three targets for next week (Week 5) and the following weeks because there are no more pre-set targets. The agenda is therefore:
- Review pupil progress
- Discussion the reflection on the targets beginning teachers have been working on
- Review teaching moments 1 and 2
- Set three targets, and their action plans, for next week
- Discuss any findings from the PDAs completed during the week
- Plan which lessons will be taught next week and discuss any other logistics for the week ahead
Further details can also be found on the Weekly Reviews page.
Mentors will find further guidance on how to support the Weekly Review discussion on this page.
Lesson Observations
In response to feedback and observation, we would like to encourage mentors to note the time of each teaching moment during the lesson observation. Recording the elapsed time in the appropriate teaching moment box on the lesson observation form helps to support a more focused reflection by drawing the beginning teacher’s attention to the precise moment that needs to be reviewed and developed. It also helps beginning teachers locate these teaching moments within the lesson recording more easily.
Please remember, both teaching moments identified during the formal lesson observation this week can focus on any area of the beginning teacher’s practice.
Teaching Moments
As a reminder, the selection of the right teaching moments is key to beginning teachers’ professional development. Guidance for mentors on how to identify ‘rich and deep’ moments can be found here. Guidance on how to discuss them can be found here.
For beginning teachers, guidance on how to reflect on them can be found here.
Reminders
Last week’s update is available to read here and the things to remember from it are:
- Formal lesson observations: must be video recorded on the university iPads. Further details can be found on this page.
- Delayed Debrief: A reminder for mentors that there is no longer a formal approach. Further details are in this post.
- PDAs: Beginning teachers should continue with these activities found in the PDJ.
- Please could all mentors and beginning teachers ensure they have read and are familiar with the contents of the Primary Entitlement Document. Thank you.
- Beginning teachers should begin completing the appropriate Professional Development Activities (PDAs) found in the Professional Development Journal (PDJ).