Tips for Mentoring a Student Teacher - Planning the Lessons



Did you like part 4 of this series about communicating?  If you missed it, you can click on the picture above to see all the posts in this series!

Today, I'm going to share some tips with you about planning.  Keep reading to see what I have to say!


I feel like I tell you how important each stage is every time I write a post.  But, if you don't take the time to plan with your student teacher in the beginning of the placement, you will spend more time trying to catch up later.

So... shortly after your student teacher starts with you, you need to start planning together.  This means spending time planning while sitting with your student teacher.

In the beginning, you will do all the planning.  You will explain your thought process.  Now is a good time to give your student teacher copies of the curriculum if that hasn't been done already.  Your student teacher needs to see the how of planning.

After a few weeks, you can start to turn some of the planning over to your student teacher.  Pick one subject and let your student teacher lead the planning meetings between both of you.  Of course, you will be there to provide support and talk about the ideas, but you should ask your student teacher what he/she wants to do to teach that unit or standard.

You are working toward letting your student teacher plan on his/her own.  When that happens make sure he/she submits plans to you at least 48 hours before he/she will be teaching the lesson.  This gives you time to read over the plans to give feedback.  It also allows for the student teacher to fix or change anything in the lesson plan.


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 $4.00 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 part of 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 about planning do you have?


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Comments

  1. Primary Teaching ResourcesMarch 27, 2015 at 12:39 AM

    My school very rarely gets student teachers, but I've worked alongside several first year teachers, and many of their needs are the same. One tip I have for planning is to introduce your student teacher to several great websites or teacher blogs where they can go for lessons and ideas.
    Primary Teaching Resources

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