8  Planning and Support

8.1 Support Available to an Undergraduate

The full range of support available to you will be different depending on your particular circumstances. The purpose of the form below is to provide a place where you can keep you a personal record of who is available to help you when needed.

Sources of help for Undergraduates

Table 8.1: Sources of help for undergraduates.

Organisation	Contact Name(s)	Address	Telephone No.	E-mail
School	Teacher Head of Dept Head Teacher Link Teacher
University	Course Tutor Head of Dept School’s Liaison Undergraduate
Others

8.1.1 Action Planning Session

8.1.1.1 Session Planning

Before the start of the course, you will need to meet with your assigned teacher to discuss in detail what your role will be in the classroom, what subjects will be covered during the term and what your mutual aims and objectives will be for the term. You should feed the outcomes of this discussion back into your Tutoring Action Plan, or in a separately drawn up list of targets for the term. You will also need to make sure that you have all the relevant information about the school and placement. Some of the factors you need to consider are listed below and on the following page.

Before each lesson you should also aim to create a plan of what you will be doing and what you expect to achieve in that session. Always discuss this with the teacher in advance of the lesson.

Table 8.2: Contact details and school day information.

Contact Details:	School day
Head Teacher’s name	Start time
Link teacher’s name	Lunch
Class teacher’s name	End
School address	Break times
Telephone number	Dates of holidays
Main school email	Placement Day and Time
Other useful email address (e.g. teachers)

8.1.1.2 Basic Action Planing

Travel - Map of School? Parking? Method/ Route of travel to school?

Identification of role

Have you talked to the teacher about how they see you working with the class?

If so, what are the major targets and success criteria?

What steps will have to be made to ensure they are achieved?

Who or what is needed to help you get over any barriers to these targets?

Other key issues

• Time commitment
• Support of a manager?
• Equipment
• Notification to parents of off-site trips
• Knowledge of what exists already in school in terms of schemes, awards, resources.
• Funding or sponsorship.

Giving Instructions

• Preparation
• Clear aims and objections
• Concise and easy to follow
• Consider learning preferences: E.g. visual/auditory/kinaesthetic/sequential/holistic
• Use visual/written examples to aid your presentation
• Check understanding – how?
• Ask for questions
• Be prepared to repeat instructions
• Check understanding

Planning Your Tutoring

• How do I want to be introduced to the learners?
• What do I/the teacher want them to call me?
• What does the teacher expect of me?
• How am I going to learn their names?
• How am I going to encourage them to talk to me and ask questions?
• How am I going to encourage them to listen to me?
• How can I help them/other staff to understand my role in their classroom?
• Where am I going to sit/stand?
• What strategies will I use to help people understand me?
• How will I know when they have understood?
• When am I doing the next visit, and what will I be doing?

8.1.1.3 Session Planning - Activity Plan Example

• Date: 5 November 2002

• Class/Group: 5b (whole class)

• Activity: (description and lesson learning context/prior learning)

  ‘Being a Student’ talk and poster as a self initiated project.

  Exercise will build on informal chats in the classroom throughout my placement with the poster as an end focus point to remind the pupils of student life after I have gone.

• What do the pupils/learners know already?

  Some pupils have asked me questions about university life, but not all have had a chance, so there is little or no awareness of university apart from knowing it’s a place that I come from.

• What do you want the pupils/learners to do?

  To listen to my brief talk, ask a few questions/say their ideas and then make posters in groups, showing what they think being a student is like.

• What do you want them to have learnt? (Key concepts and ideas)

  What a university is. An idea of what it is like to be a student. That anyone can go to university.

• Communication with teaching/other staff:

  Arrange with teacher to run the activity on my last visit and go through the content with her, to make sure it is appropriate for the class and seek advice.

• How are you going to do the activity?

  Introduction: (5 mins) Give prepared short talk on being a student and what university is, stressing that all sorts of people go, keeping it simple as the children are 8 years old and for many, this is the 1st impression they will have. I will use pictures to make it more captivating.

  Main Activity: (20 mins) After some Q&A’s and prompting of ideas the class have of me, they will work in their usual groups and make a poster of what it’s like to be a student. I will get them to imagine themselves at my age and what they think they would like to do/be as a student. I will give each table some photos that I took as a ‘day in the life’ snapshot of me as a student to help them create a picture/written poster.

  I will move between groups and chat further about their ideas.

  Summary: (5 mins) When the class have finished their posters, we will all look at them and get each group to say their favourite thing about the poster/what they have learnt abount being a student. I’ll give them all a ‘prize’ and thank them for welcoming me in.

• Resources:

  Pictures of university/halls bedroom/union. Photographs of various aspects of my life as a student. Arrange access to poster materials.

• Outcome/End Product:

  Posters to display in school. Pupils have learnt at least one thing about being a student/university.

• Review of Activity:

  I should have been more prepared for a variety of questions. Got feedback from teacher, who praised the level I had chosen. Pupils enjoyed the posters and decided to display them in the school entrance.

Activity plan example.