Mentoring NQTs

Effective mentoring can have a powerful impact on newly qualified teachers – not just in supporting their developing practice and building their confidence but in securing their commitment to the department and wider school and indeed to the profession! While you need to induct NQTs into all aspects of their professional role, it is important to plan for their progression so that they are not overwhelmed at the start and feel that they can continue to seek help when they need it.  Joint planning of new enquiries or schemes of work, for example, rather than individual work on different sections is a powerful form of induction that can save time in building expertise and shared understandings.  The Survive and Thrive guides, directed to the early career teachers themselves, may help you in thinking through the key challenges that beginners face and support you in structuring an appropriate outline programme for your work with them as well as responding to specific concerns. Read more

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  • Move Me On 158: Modelling tasks

    Article

    This issue's problem: Arthur Wellesley is struggling to model tasks effectively for students. Arthur has made a positive start to his training, but remains rather nervous in the classroom. He recognises the importance of well-planned lessons and his outline plans generally have a clear, logical structure. His mentor thinks that he...

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  • Move Me On 155: Historical Intepretation vs. Opinion

    Article

    This issue's problem: Helena Swannick tends to treat differences between historical interpretations simply as matters of opinion. Helena Swannick is a career changer who has decided to come into teaching after many years' working in human resources and some time at home caring for two young children. Her degree was a...

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  • A question of attribution: working with ghetto photographs

    Article

    Holocaust imagery is very familiar, clichéd even. How can we get pupils thinking about it in novel ways and seeing differently? Phillips reports work completed with his PGCE students, proposes a scaffold of questions with which to deconstruct images and applies it to  archive images and to Hollywood representations. Images...

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  • So, what exactly does an AST do?

    Article

    Professional development lies at the heart of any thriving, forward-thinking profession. In teaching, however, despite the government’s recent drive to ‘modernise’ the profession, it can still be a bit hit and miss. What are the opportunities for ambitious and successful teachers of history to widen their horizons and engage in...

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  • Cunning Plan 102: measuring and understanding progress

    Article

    Steven Barnes provides an innovative method for measuring and understanding progress.

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  • Do smile before Christmas: the NQT Year

    Article

    Lucy Russell challenges the ancient wisdom passed down to new teachers. Addressing issues of relationships with pupils, the demands of historical learning and the new teacher's personality and integrity, she advises taking a thoroughly positive, and ambitious, view of the NQT year. NQTs should aim to move historical learning forwards....

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