Tutor Mentoring
Reflecting on the first few weeks
The first few weeks of sixth form can be a bit of a culture shock for some students. Some will fly and thrive quickly with the increased independence and focus, but others can flounder a little.
With this in mind, I think it is important to intervene early to ensure that the students are able to fully enjoy and thrive in the 6th form. To help with this my school has a Meet the Tutor parents evening for year 12 where we are able to speak to parents about how the students are settling in and find out if there issues apparent at home that are not seen in school and vis versa.
To help with this conversation I wanted my tutees to have a voice as well so I created this A3 sheet for them to complete in tutor time to reflect on their experience and be the conversation starter.
I make it clear to them that I will be sharing this with their parents at the meeting, to ensure it is completed fully.
Ongoing mentoring
As a form tutor, part of the role is to keep tabs on how our tutees are doing through out the school year and hopefully not just wait till reports, an email or parents evening to find out there is a problem. However, I have found that with 24 students in my tutor group, it can be difficult to have a regular and meaningful conversation with each person, what will assemblies, notices, absences and all those other tasks we have to do in that first 20 minutes of the day. Also students don’t tend to want to discuss personal issues or academic ones in a classroom with 20+ other students meaning that when you ask all you get is a “Fine” when asking how things are.
With that in mind I wanted to find a way for my tutor group to reflect on their own learning and progress more regularly and for me to keep an eye out for issues and spot them early before they become big issues or problems.
Therefore I have created a mentoring booklet that I am going to get me tutees to complete each week which asks them to reflect on their achievements for the week, the struggles they have faced and what they did about them and then reflect on their learning in each subject. I can then have a look through the booklets and speak to students that I feel may need support.
The booklets also ask the students to think about their goals and set targets both long terms (after 6th form), Medium term (between the report cycles) and short term (weekly)
I also want the students to reflect on the reports that they will get and to do this I am going to get them to draw up their own report which can then be compared to teacher report. This then acts as the basis for the next set of medium term goals.
The ones I have created are aimed at 6th form as that is the form group I have but they could be adapted for year 7 – 11. I have attached a link to the editable versions so that they can be adapted for your own schools