Planning

How we expect students to plan whilst on placement

Planning is an essential part of student teacher learning whilst on placement and we expect our student teachers to develop this aspect of their practice throughout their course. Planning is not only an essential component of teaching, but also prominent in the Teachers’ Standards and core content framework. Helping with planning is a key way in which Mentors can support a student teacher: a lesson plan is a means of joint communication between Mentor and student as well as a scheme for teaching.

The Leeds Beckett University Approach to Student Teacher Planning

Planning is a skill which all student teachers need to acquire and the writing and sharing of lesson plans with Mentors is an important way of developing that skill, as well as providing a channel of effective communication between student, Mentor and Link Tutor. Lesson plans also provide good evidence of student progress and support students in reflecting and evaluating their teaching. We are also conscious of the need for students to learn to manage their workload during their course and to help with this, we have developed the following advice for how our students should plan.

General planning principles

• We expect Mentors to give regular detailed feedback on students' lesson planning and for students to be encouraged to reflect critically on their planning.
• Students on all phases of placement are expected to produce a detailed lesson plan for each lesson where they are formally observed (including for the observation during the Progress Review visit).
• Mentors should receive a copy of students’ planning in time for them to give meaningful feedback. We suggest that this period should be at least 48 hours of working days i.e., we do not (and students should not) expect Mentors to be working over weekends.
• Sometimes the norm in a school is that planning is based around schemes of work where, for example, planning has to fit to a weekly schedule. Where this happens, we expect students to work within the school framework, but we ask that Mentors understand that students need to learn to plan independently and make planning their own. Less experienced students will often find more detailed planning easier to work from at the start of their course and we encourage students to make use of the detailed Leeds Beckett planning formats where Mentors feel this is appropriate. For phase 1 placements, however, we expect students to use the Leeds Beckett Lesson Plan template for all their planning.
• If a student or Mentor is concerned about any aspect of planning, they should contact the university Link Tutor who will be able to advise.