University of Derby – Teacher Education (FE and Skills)
Subject Specific Mentor Newsletter
October 2013
Dear Mentors
Thank you once again for agreeing to be a subject specific mentor to one of our trainees on the
Professional Certificate in Education (FE and Skills) programme. Your contribution to supporting
trainees and helping them develop as teachers is a crucial part of our programme.
To aid communications and to keep you up to date with news and developments from the
University, the Teacher Education team (FE and Skills) will be sending out regular updates via email.
Items to update you about this month include:
 The team at UoD;
 New to mentoring;
 Mentor Network/CPD events;
 Observations of teaching practice;
 Reporting concerns and absences;
 Ofsted;
 Your say.
The FE and Skills team at the University of Derby
The FE and Skills team at the University of Derby have many years’ experience of working in the FE
and Skills sector. We all act as ITT observation mentors/placement supervisors and will be coming
out to conduct observations of trainees’ teaching practice in placement. Our names and contact
details are below should you need to contact any of us.
Kelly Briddon
Helen Boulton
Sue Hobbs
Hayley Wood
Assistant Subject Head, Teacher
Education
Programme Leader,
Professional Graduate
Certificate in Education (FE and
Skills)
Senior Lecturer, Professional
Graduate Certificate in
Education (FE and Skills)
Senior Lecturer, Professional
Graduate Certificate in
Education (FE and Skills)
k.briddon@derby.ac.uk
01332 592057
h.boulton@derby.ac.uk
01332 592233
s.hobbs@derby.ac.uk
01332 592163
h.wood@derby.ac.uk
01332 591528
New to mentoring?
For some of you this may be the first time that you have mentored a trainee teacher or the first time
you have mentored for the University of Derby. As a new mentor we are more than happy to come
out and have a chat with you about the programme and the role of the mentor. If you would like to
arrange this, then please contact Hayley Wood via h.wood@derby.ac.uk and we can arrange a
suitable time to come and see you in your place of work.
Mentor Network events
As part of our commitment to support you as a mentor we will be running a network event in
November 2013. The purpose of the event is for you to meet other mentors and receive help and
guidance in completing observation paperwork. This is particularly useful for those colleagues who
have not previously mentored trainees or who are new to our programme here at the University of
Derby.
Details of the event will be sent out shortly.
Observations
Over the course of the programme, trainees need to be observed teaching eight times. Four of
these occasions should be by the Subject Specific Mentor and the other four by the ITT
mentor/placement supervisor from the University of Derby. One of the first observations should be
a joint observation between the two mentors. The role the Subject Specialist Mentor plays in
helping trainees develop their subject knowledge and subject specific pedagogy is a vital part of the
entire programme.
Before an observation, the trainee should provide you with a lesson justification, lesson plan,
scheme of work and any resources they are using during the session. After the session brief verbal
feedback should be provided and a time arranged to discuss the feedback in depth based upon the
trainee’s self-assessment of the session and your grading of the session. Once this has taken place,
trainees need to complete a lesson evaluation.
The completion by the trainees of the self-assessment document is paramount to the process and
helps them to reflect upon the experience and be proactive in charting their own professional
development.
Once you have completed your feedback form please forward to your trainee’s ITT mentor at the
University via email.
Full guidance about the observation process can be found in our Observation guidance document
which has been emailed to you.
Reporting concerns and absences
If you have any concerns or worries about the progress, attendance and punctuality of your trainees
we would strongly urge you to contact us. We appreciate that you work extremely hard to support
trainees and we want to ensure that we support you appropriately in your endeavours. It is also
vital that trainees meet all the requirements of the programme including completing teaching hours
to successfully achieve the qualification at the end of the year.
Please also contact us with any good news stories of trainees who are doing particularly well on
placement so that we can jointly celebrate success.
Ofsted
We would just like to make you aware that we may be inspected by Ofsted this academic year. We
are inspected as part of the Initial Teacher Education inspections and therefore it is not your
institution that is being inspected, but the trainees will be. As you know, this could happen on any
Thursday morning once the call is received. If this does happen we will contact you via email to let
you know that the inspection will be occurring on the following Monday. If your trainee is selected
to be observed, Kelly Briddon will contact you personally and talk through what may happen. If a
trainee is selected, it is likely that the Inspector will want to speak with yourself in regard to your
role as a Subject Mentor and also the support you have received from the University of Derby. We
will keep you informed.
Your say……
Do you have any good ideas to share about supporting trainees? Or any ideas of how we can
support you to be an even better mentor?
If you do, then contact Hayley Wood via H.Wood@derby.ac.uk. Hayley is keen to develop
communication between mentors and to develop a mentor network based upon your suggestions.
And finally…..
Without your help and support our trainees would not make the superb progress that they do during
the course of the year. Thank you once again for taking on this important role!
The FE and Skills Team