Lytchett Minster School
A Training School
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Lytchett Minster School
A Training School
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Initial Teacher Training
A few comments from our previous trainees ...
A Brief Outline ( © University of Exeter) Principal Subject Tutors Tutors are specialists in classroom craft, with a wide knowledge and understanding of their specialist teaching area. Each trainee is given a Principal Subject Tutor (PST) who is responsible for their day-to-day training. This will usually be the teacher within the subject area who coordinates their work in the department. The trainee should meet once a week, in a Weekly Subject Training Meeting, for about an hour with the tutor to plan, discuss and reflect on their work. The tutor will also be expected to give regular feedback to the trainee and to assist in the self-evaluation of them by completing an annotated agenda prepared by the trainee twice a week. The Teaching Timetable The trainee’s timetable should be sufficient to allow enough non-contact time for reading, preparation and other training activities, and should not exceed a two-thirds timetable. It should include classes in both key stage 3 and 4, and post-16 if the training is designated as 11-18. In addition, it is helpful to be allocated to a tutor group so that the trainee develops understanding of the important role of the tutor. In the early stages of the training programme, trainees should be involved principally in observation, demonstration and modelling of short episodes. As confidence and competence develop, the trainees start to take longer episodes of lessons, building up to whole lessons, and sequences of lessons. Phase 1 of school-based work involves working in partnership with Tutors in the classroom, assisting and practising episodes of teaching that Tutors have demonstrated. In this phase, Tutors provide maximum assistance to ensure success. As the trainee becomes more proficient and confident, he or she will assume a greater degree of independence, characterised by the Phase 2 and Phase 3 statements of the Dimensions of Teaching. Tutors decide when the trainee is ready to move into the various phases, based on the evidence collected in the Individual Development Portfolio. Tutors continue to demonstrate teaching throughout all phases of school-based work. Tutors assist the trainee in thinking about teaching so that he or she becomes knowledgeable in the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of teaching and not just the ‘what’. Episode/lesson plans and Agendas An episode plan covers a selected section of a lesson; a lesson plan covers the whole of a lesson. In writing an episode or lesson plan, trainees work out what to teach and which teaching strategies to use. The focus in an episode or lesson plan should be what pupils will learn and what activities they will undertake to achieve this. As trainees progress through the three phases of training, their planning will develop from episodes to whole lessons. A teaching agenda is an essential training tool in the Exeter Model of ITT. It is used for self-evaluation of a specific aspect of professional classroom practice and it is intended to help trainees to become independent critics of their own teaching, rather than being dependent on others to give feedback. A teaching agenda with its accompanying self-evaluation is usually the end product of the weekly training cycle that begins with targets set at the Weekly Subject Training Meeting or Supervisory Conference. It is important to maintain an element of personal challenge when working with agendas, rather than seeking to work always within a safe comfort zone. If writing an agenda is easy, the trainee is not setting an appropriate level of challenge. It is important to note that an agenda is not the same as a lesson plan. The agenda focuses on what you will learn in relation to the Dimensions of Teaching; it develops understanding of specific skills involved in teaching. In preparing an agenda, the trainee should consider how he or she will teach, rather than what he or she will teach or what activities pupils will undertake in the lesson (this is planned for in the episode or lesson plan). The agenda will be based on a clear and concise focus on a particular aspect of teaching that needs development. When possible, reference the agenda to the Dimensions of Teaching, but it is not essential to do this every time. Do not try to cover too wide an area; concentrate on a single dimension or even a sub-section of a dimension of teaching. The most appropriate strands for agendas have been highlighted in bold in the Dimensions of Teaching. An observer (usually the teacher) makes notes, or annotations, on the right-hand side of the form, as an objective record of events relating to the chosen teaching skill during the episode. This record should be factual and non-judgemental. After the teaching has taken place the trainee should use the annotated agenda to prompt own reflection about what went on in the lesson and what was learnt about the chosen focus as a result. The trainee writes a detailed evaluation based on this reflection. After this, it is discussed with the observer, the PST and/or the Mentor as appropriate. The annotated agenda is the basis for detailed written reflection about the teaching in the episode or lesson with respect to the chosen focus. It is important to reflect on positive outcomes as well as any problems that arose during teaching. Because there is a considerable amount of work involved in setting up and reflecting on a teaching agenda, we ask that only two per week are completed. For all other lessons the observing class teacher can give as much immediate and evaluative feedback as they would like to offer. Agendas may provide some of the evidence for the Record of Evidence of Achievement during the training programme. However, their principal purpose is not as a mechanism for collecting evidence, but as a training tool to develop the trainee’s reflective practice. If a planned episode or lesson happens to go seriously wrong, as they sometimes do, especially in the early phase of the training, it may well be that the agenda becomes partly irrelevant to the subsequent discussion. Difficulties in class are uncomfortable, but good learning about the skills of teaching follows from supported reflection in such circumstances. In this case, the trainee may need to complete a wider written evaluation of the episode or lesson rather than sticking just to the focus of the teaching agenda. Level 1 agendas will be linked to episodes of teaching and are likely to be relatively short and straightforward. As the trainee progresses to Level 2 in their training and take on more responsibility for whole lesson teaching, the agendas may either still relate to a discrete episode within a lesson or they may look at a teaching skill that runs through a whole lesson. At Level 3 the trainee will be working largely independently in class, while still having access to regular demonstrations of teaching on which to model practice. Level 3 agendas in this phase of the training become significant in maintaining their development beyond mere achievement of the Dimensions of Teaching. Level 3 agendas based on reading and research can be used as a powerful tool for high-level development of teaching skills. Weekly Subject Training Meetings In addition to regular daily contact with subject teachers, the Principal Subject Tutor will meet with the trainee at least once a week to discuss progress and planning ahead in a subject-specific context. The weekly meetings are dedicated, timetabled time of approximately one hour in which the trainee and the Principal Subject Tutor: q review targets achieved since the previous weekly meeting; q discuss subject-specific input initiated by the subject tutor; q discuss progress in the subject context using the Dimensions of Teaching; q enter evidence in Record of Evidence of Achievement; q identify weekly subject-specific targets to focus upon; q agree appropriate demonstration(s) and teaching agendas to be carried out in the week ahead. After the meeting, the trainee completes a Subject Training Meeting Record as a record of the meeting. Supervisory Conferences - The Mentor will meet with the trainee for Supervisory Conferences to assist in reflective development - the ability to think explicitly about and reflect upon teaching. The Supervisory Conference will be used to: q develop skills in critical thinking and evaluation; q monitor progress and assist with action planning; q discuss and complete the Record of Evidence of Achievement, as appropriate; q review previous Action Plan and check that all targets have been met; q set new Action Plan; q review the Individual Training Plan; q complete Progress Reports at the appropriate time. These are in-depth discussions involving the trainee and the Mentor. The trainee will submit to the Mentor, at least 24 hours in advance, written evidence in the form of one or more annotated agendas together with the lesson plans to which the agendas relate, and their evaluation. The Mentor will discuss the selected annotated/evaluated agendas and engage in critical thinking. The conference aims to move beyond listening while the Mentor advises on how the lesson could have been improved, by getting the trainee to articulate and reflect upon their own teaching and to realise the steps which need to be taken to progress. The Mentor will also want to discuss the Teaching File and Individual Development Portfolio which should be fully up to date. A useful framework for the conference is: WHAT?
SO WHAT?
NOW WHAT?
Relevant Paperwork - University of Exeter | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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