Tips for Mentoring a Student Teacher - Communicating



I hope you found my third set of tips useful! You can click on the picture above to see all the posts in this series.

Communication is very important when working with your student teacher.


As soon as your student teacher takes on responsibilities, it is important to communicate with him/her.  You need to make sure your expectations are clear.

Here are a few simple guidelines to remember:

1.  If a problem comes up, discuss it IMMEDIATELY!  Don't wait.  It won't resolve itself on its own.  Even if you think it will just go away.  It won't.  So talk about something when it is a little problem so you don't have to deal with it as a big problem.

2.  Make sure to give verbal and written feedback after lessons.

3.  Ask your student teacher how he/she thinks things went.  Get their opinion before giving yours.  This encourages reflection.


To go along with these blog posts, I have created a guide. This guide will be for sale in my TpT store. It is currently $3.50 in my store! If you purchase it now, you will be able to get all the updates for free just by downloading it again when I add tips to it. The graphic below shows you the printables you will get in addition to the pages of tips that are summarized here.


You might be wondering why you should purchase it since I'll be listing the tips for free here. Well, in addition to keeping all the tips together in a uniform guide, I will be creating printables that you can use with your own student teacher. You won't be able to get those here on my blog.

Remember, the price will go up in 2 weeks when I post the next tip here on my blog!

Here's a guide for you so you can see when to expect the tips.




What other tips do you have about communicating with your student teacher?


Follow on Bloglovin

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Double Down Dice Game for Near Doubles Addition Strategy - Freebie

Image
Make practicing math facts fun with this double down dice game for the near doubles addition strategy.  Click on the image below to receive your copy of the game for free! This math game helps students practice their near doubles facts. An example of a near doubles fact is 5+6.  They need to use 5+5=10 so 5+5+1=11.  That needs to translate to 5+6=11.   When we played, I had 16 students in class.  This worked out perfectly for rotating partners. I had 4 tables of 4 students.  I paired them up with a partner and let them play for 5 minutes.   After 5 minutes, the students added their sums.  The partner with the highest total was the winner.  He/she became partners with the winner of the other pair at the table.   The non-winners (I didn't call them losers) paired up and played another round.  I continued this until math was over.   We had a short math period this day, so the students really only played for about 25 minutes o...
Read more

Tips for Mentoring a Student Teacher - Releasing Responsibilities to Student Teacher

Image
I hope you found my second set of tips useful! You can click on the picture above to see all the posts in this series. Once your student teacher is introduced to the families, you need to set up a schedule for releasing responsibilities to your student teacher. If your student's school gives you a suggested schedule, you should follow that.  If not, you can use these guidelines to help you. You need to think about how long your student teacher should spend observing.  Make sure they have a few days to observe and take notes on routines.  This also gives them time to learn the names of your students. Once your student teacher has a chance to observe your teaching, then you can think about giving him/her more responsibilities. Start slowly.  Give your student teacher easy routines first - walking students to other places in the building, read alouds, transition times, etc. Then start planning and co-teaching with your student teache...
Read more