The importance of having a mentor during your first year of teaching

In a lot of different fields such as sports, martial arts and business, people have mentors. Mentors are usually older people who have dealt a lot of years with the subject. In general, a mentor is characterized by one very important and very specific thing - experience!

When it comes to teaching, we also have mentors, and the role of these mentors is to help new teachers get their feet on the ground and have guidance from someone who has been there.

I was assigned a mentor during my first year of teaching and it was a very helpful experience. She observed my classes from time to time and was always available when I had any questions.

The role of the mentor, in modern schools, can be played not essentially by a veteran teacher, but by a more experienced teacher at the school as well, while anyone with some experience can be a useful source of advice and information. During your first year, pay attention to whatever a colleague teacher has to share with you!

I want to share with you 4 reasons for working with a mentor.

1. Methods

Every beginning teacher has foundational knowledge. So, once we graduate from college, we have conquered a decent level of expertise both on teaching and both on the specific subject we will teach. But what isn’t taught in the university are the many nuances we should follow when teaching.

Now, one would suggest that both the university and educational field labs give us a lot of teaching insights. And I agree with that. However, we don’t know the specific methods that are especially adapted to our character and to our class’s character. I hope that makes sense.

For example, you have a class weak in language, but excels in math. Well, consider this, would it be appropriate for this particular class that the teacher would explain both grammar and syntax by using mathematical expressions? Well, I wouldn’t exclude the possibility of it. The methodology such as previously described would come with years of experience and some very creative thinking.

So, a mentor, with his/her own experience is able to give the new teacher those types of resources and tips. The new teacher will be given tips and strategies just the first few months, while someone needed years of experience to evolve them.

...And this brings me to my second reason:

2.    Knowledge application

As we said, we all share the same knowledge when we start teaching. However, the second issue that arises here is how to apply this knowledge in the classroom.

For instance, we learn about children psychology, in terms of how children deal with anxiety when it comes to let’s say testing. Yet, the mentor will show you that while some children do in fact have anxiety over testing, there are some children who pretend that they are anxious just to get more lenient treatment.

This was a simple example. But there is a lot of information that is easier taught than applied and some 1 on 1 mentoring on this, is needed.

...and don’t forget that not all the necessary information about teaching is taught. A mentor is able to have his/her own external resources or to have made his own research and throughout it he has learned his own tactics that are probably not so widespread.

So, let's leads to my 3rd reason:

3. Adaptation

It is a fact that the first year of teaching is more difficult than the first school year for students. Teachers have under the responsibility for a class of 20 or more students and for the first time this is something that needs some real-world support.

Mentors usually, apart from psychological support, provide practical support for the new adaptation, which is a truly important period, and at the same time, a really challenging one.

For this part, teaching mentors usually give insights on the way to handle kids and their unexpected questions!

The mentoring program can play a significant role in shaping the values, beliefs, and teaching skills of a new teacher just beginning their career. It can have a huge influence on their behavior and the choices they can make later in their career.

4. Query resolution

Introducing my 4th point, query resolution is for sure one of the most important ways a mentor can help the new teacher.

The most common thing people do when they are exposed to something new is ask questions. Either to find out how things work or to simply understand what to do.

This applies to a great extent in teaching. Any teacher has his own perspective and any class of kids on this planet is different from every other, so there would never be a standard formula to treat all students. You always need to know how to deal particularly with each specific class.

So that comes down to the fact that you need to ask things.

The role of a mentor could be even just to answer questions. Some veteran teachers are sent just for observers during the class with a role of resolving queries.

The thing with the mentor is that the answers you will get are the most valid you could possibly ever get. In case you get mentoring from a veteran teacher with years of experience, he probably has experienced just about every single problem or issue you are now facing.

So, consider how powerful it would be, instead of trying to struggle in isolation with a situation you are having, a colleague always on your side is critical for advice.

…And here is where I want to make a final point referring to the equally beneficial side for mentors, as well.

I would like to put it the way as one internet source has put it: "The benefits of mentoring aren’t limited to the apprentice. As college students, new teachers are exposed to the most recently developed methods in education. It’s an opportunity for veteran teachers to learn innovative practices and observe them being taught. The exposure to new ideas often breeds renewed enthusiasm in veteran teachers."

Teaching your students how to select “Just Right” books

Often times during my teaching career I would ask my students what do you have to do to become a good reader. And a lot of times I’d hear responses such as read hard books and big words. I’d end up telling them that what would be the point of reading nothing but hard books if you couldn’t make sense of what you were reading.

After all, the reason we read is to get information. But I’d also tell them that reading nothing, but easy books doesn’t help you either to grow as a reader. Though I will say that easy books are great for developing fluency in beginning readers.

When it came to teaching my 4^th and 5^th grade students how to select a just right book, I outlined some factors for them to consider. And to that point, I prepared an anchor chart of things to consider that I kept posted in a visible place in the class so they could always refer back to it if needed.

So, I told my students that to continue to grow as readers one needs to read “just right” books. And of course, when I told my students this, they would have a puzzled look on their faces. So, I further explained just what I meant.

In the first place a just right book has to be a book that you find interesting and perhaps has a captivating title.

Perhaps you are familiar with the author and enjoy reading their kind of books. For example: Kate Dicamillo  who wrote Because of Winn Dixie, The Tale of Despereaux, The Tiger Rising,and more. Barbara Park: The Juni B. Jones series.

A just right book is a book that you can read without too much difficulty and more importantly you understand what you are reading.

The print size is not too small or too big.

You understand the plot and can easily predict what may happen.

There are just a few words per page that you don’t know. I would have my students always perform this test when they were about to select a book from either the media center or my classroom library.

I would tell scan over the first few pages – usually about 5 pages or so and if there were 5 words on every page that they didn’t know, then that book would be too hard for them to enjoy and comprehend. But on the other hand, if the student scanned the first 5 pages and found no more than 5 words on any one page that they didn’t know, then that would be considered a just right book.

Conversely, if a student knows every single word on the first 5 pages [providing they can tell you what they’ve read] then the book would be considered too easy.

To be clear, it’s important to challenge children just a bit to keep them growing and learning new vocabulary.   But the key here is that the student must be able to understand what they are reading.

The approach I always took with my students was to explicitly teach how to choose a just right book by thinking out loud, and model just what that looks like. This is something that I practiced with them often until I felt that my students could demonstrate good judgement in selecting just right books.

I feel this point needs mentioning, if a child was really interested in a book that was way to difficult for them to read right now, I would tell the child that perhaps later on in the year that book might be appropriate for you. Another thing that one can do is get with the parent to see if they could read that book to their child.

Now I feel that this point bears repeating:

Let your students choose the books that they want to read in your classroom just as long as it’s appropriate.

That’s why it’s crucial that you have an excellent classroom / school library for students to have lots of choices for selecting books.

I will tell you that providing choice for your students will contribute to their growth as readers.

Reading competence is closely associated with the amount of time that children spend reading. That’s why I feel strongly that students should independently read books of their own choosing for a minimum of 30 minutes every day – Monday through Friday. 

 

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Setting up an Effective Reader’s Workshop

Teachers understand that teaching the curriculum and making sure your students perform well is not the only task that you have been assigned to deal with. It takes much more than just than issuing textbooks to develop your students and ensure their success for the future. Good teaching entails many things, but in my opinion, reading is one of the most basic skills every student must learn. Since there is no hard and fast rule to perfect one’s reading, it makes the process more challenging and fun.

Reading is one of those life skills that becomes essential for several important things in life besides schoolwork, when a student has a strong grasp on reading, he/she can speak better, write better, gain more knowledge and is generally able to understand the context of things way better. But why is it not considered as vital as it is? Now I know that in this day and age, schools are always busy rushing through the subject material; and there are children that never actually read a book besides their textbook, and if & when they do make it to college it presents a real challenge for the student.

This is where the readers workshop, comes into play. Let’s talk about the definition of the reader’s workshop.

So, a reader's workshop is a practice by which all age groups are afforded time to read -- now it does not have to be the same book especially when the concept is applied in a school setting, the students are allowed to choose the books they want to read, what pace they want to read it and they are open to discuss their problems and concept issues while reading after the workshop is done.

Teaching students to read can be a daunting task, like other cognitive abilities, reading takes time to develop, many factors like their mother language, the context, grade level, exposure to books in the past and overall environment where the children are allowed to read, they all play an equal role in the development of reading abilities.

Yes, environment, we as adults who have been reading for a while become so used to the exercise that we often neglect that it sometimes needs to be taught. When you want to develop your child’s or student’s ability to read better, faster, and clearly while understanding what they are reading there are a few things that you need to put in place.

If you imagine your classroom for a minute as an educator you more or less know your students, how well they perform in studies their ability to comprehend complex sentences, how to they read, their reading fluency -- can they read small text with ease, do they prefer paper or electronic devices.

You might know the interests of your students as well. Reading is multi-dimensional – let me explain --one day you might be reading poetry the next you might want to learn about how the universe works, these things go hand in hand when you have a variety of sources to read and based on your students’ interests. You can also change these styles for example, if you want to build good habits and want your students to read books that promote a desired behavior, well, no one reads a book just because you simply told them to, we humans from a very young age live with a pattern based on inspiration, we act upon things, like hobbies, life choices, career choices, everything is based on inspiration, and if you cannot draw inspiration from a certain event or a task, it is most likely that you wouldn’t act upon it.           

To inspire students to read it is necessary for teachers to show them the fun side of reading, just telling them the benefits alone wouldn’t go very far, and I believe you all would agree to that.

Having small book talks however can go a long way, if a student is reading book A and the other one is reading Book B, their cross communication about what they are reading will inspire each other to explore the other’s interests.

Earlier we spoke about several factors that either go in to building a reader’s workshop or how it benefits individual students. A reader’s workshop can be developed anytime of the year, it does not take long and you as an educator do not have to do much work but monitor your class.

Before discussing the components of a reader’s workshop just know that it is not some sort of competition nor are we worried about grading assignments. The whole purpose is to improve student reading skills.

And that’s it!

The first component of a reader’s workshop is the Mini Lesson.

So, what is a mini lesson? The mini lesson is the section whereby a teacher teaches a particular reading skill for that day’s readers workshop session. Now the mini lesson lasts only for about 10-15 minutes.

[I always wanted to make sure I stayed withing that time because I wanted my students to take advantage of independent reading to the maximum extent possible.]

Then, I would normally follow the mini-lesson up with a quick 5-minute read-a loud / shared reading experience. I would either provide students with a copy of the text I will be reading from or had it projected on the screen.

Next up would represent the bulk of the readers workshop and that is to say students would have a book of their choosing in which they would read during that time. My ultimate goal was to have my students reading independently for a minimum of 30 minutes daily Monday through Friday. Now to me, this was very, very critical that I stayed with this schedule. Keep in mind that you will want to increase the reading time gradually as to build up your students' stamina.

It was during the independent reading session that I would then “pull” my guided reading groups to work on specific reading strategies and conduct informal reading conferences.

After the independent reading session was over, I gave my students a few minutes to respond to their reading.

And finally, was sharing time, during this time children shared out and discussed with their peer’s what book they were reading and/or discussing reading strategies with each other. I know that some teachers might feel that this step is not all that important. But I tell you I think it is very important to give your students time to share their reading with peers. So, this is one part you don’t want to overlook.

When launching your reader’s workshop, it is important be patient, take your time to work on it, slowly introduce it to your students and take things slow one day at a time.

Depending on your class it can take anywhere from a week or two to gradually form a routine. But first you will need to prepare them with explicit instruction as to the conduct of the workshop. You will need to model for your students what a reader’s workshop looks like.

I ask that you be flexible, gradually introduce them to books of various genres, for example.

Once you have explicitly instructed your students how the readers workshop will be conducted and what it should look like – [especially, when you are teaching your guided reading groups], start with a 10-minute independent reading session and build up gradually until you have your students reading 30 solid minutes.

Make sure that you are modeling reading as well when not teaching your guiding reading groups or conducting informal reading conferences.

Establishing a Classroom Library

As you can imagine a classroom library is a cozy place that welcomes you to sit down and read in silence or browse through a rich collection of books. you wouldn’t be completely wrong, but it is not the case either. In fact, there are some classrooms I have been too that kept books in a closet, and sadly the access to those books depended on the teacher aid. Having a library in your class serves many purposes.

Let me first start by saying that there is no one right way to establish your classroom library or organize your library – it’s up to you! But you must start with just how you are going to organize it and how children will access the books and how many to include. Now I know a lot of future teachers while in college start collecting books for their classroom libraries long before they finish their teacher preparation programs. But I found that it was not always clear how many books they need or what kinds of books they should be seeking.

In addition to being selective about the general quality of texts, finding books that are culturally relevant to the lives of students is an important factor in building a library that is reassuring and motivating for beginning readers. Including texts with characters similar in age to students in the classroom who share experiences they have had can be critical for generating interest and fostering self-to-text connections. Cultural and linguistic familiarity may be an especially important factor for literacy acquisition for English language learners. Unfortunately, teachers may have difficulty finding books that reflect the experiences of children in their classroom if they are not aware of resources available for that purpose. In addition, teachers may need guidance in identifying high quality multicultural children’s literature that avoids racism and stereotypes, particularly if they are not from the same cultural or socioeconomic background as the students they teach.

You may be wondering how many books do you need? Well, me personally, I’d suggest anywhere between a half a dozen to a dozen books per child would be a good start. When I taught 4^th & 5^th graders my goal was 1,000 books – and in time I exceeded that goal.

Yet again, having many books and having quality to read that will genuinely affect the traits of your students is still very important. It does not mean that you have to read all of those books yourself to be able to know the message they deliver but you do get the idea from the purposed sections that fit the caliber of your students. It completely depends on the level of class that you teach.

In my experience and what has served me well is keeping books that are just a little bit hard to read for the level of my students, let me explain more about this. 

I am sure some of you might be thinking why someone would deliberately give a book to their student that they know is hard for them to read for their level. Yes, it is okay to speculate that I must have been an eccentric teacher, but the reason I did practice that is to provide them with a challenge, not all of those books were above their level and any student who just cannot make it work or needs more practice can always trade their books for a different one, but they have to tell the reason to their teacher. Having a bit hard to read books when applied correctly [and that’s the key] can provide a challenge and an opportunity to collaborate, discuss and debate with their teacher as well as peers. When they do not understand a certain topic, it is more likely that they will ask their teacher, a fellow or their parents to be able to continue reading. Being a step ahead in the reading game makes their pronunciation stronger among many other benefactors.

So, let’s talk about the benefits of having a library in your classroom for your students. We will talk about the functions that it serves and when you implement it in your classroom what you can expect.

Starting off with…

1. Supporting Literacy Instruction

One of the very common reasons why you would consider a classroom library is to support the reading and writing abilities of your students.

If you have just started your teaching career, or you have been in the profession for a long time, teachers struggle with the ability of their students to read, you can try as many workshops as possible, give them reading tasks or add a graded assignment to read, it won’t give the desired results since all of your students will be reading the same paragraph or text. To this end, having a classroom library with books and other media materials to support student learning in all of the daily curriculum subjects, from science, health, mathematics, history, economics, geography, music, art, drama, dance, languages, grammar, spelling, literature, computers, and other topics give them the freedom to choose from a wide range of topics and what intrigues them the most. Therefore, they have more interest towards making the effort of reading.

It is important for teachers to have an adequate collection from different genres to not only accommodate their interests but to help them find new areas that might change the way they think about books and reading. You don’t want to shy away from reading fiction, it may be far from the practical world, but it does get them going on to develop the habit of reading.

2. It Helps your students Learn About Books

Having an effective library in your classroom does more than just adding to their reading skills. It provides a place for teachers to teach their students about books in general. Here we consider a scenario, as a teacher you recommend a book to your student, you tell them to read the book and you follow up later only to find your student either forgot your recommendation or they were unable to find it. This is where your classroom library makes a big difference. Because your students will be able to have easy access to a variety of books.

It is also an effective way of teaching your students, how they can take care of books, instead of giving them a hard time because they accidentally tore a page or messed up the binding, you can have a small book repair area in your class and teach them how they can keep their books even at home intact for future use. It gives you and your students more room to find the right book for them to read, how they can locate books and when they bring them back how they should leave them in the rack so if someone else tries to find them it is there.

3. Providing a Central Location for Classroom Resources

Your classroom library can be used as an organized place for the classroom resources, before I proceed with this point, I want to highlight how important it is to teach your students that the classroom resources are for them and not just school property, they should be taking care of everything in the class as if it were their own. That includes putting the book back in its rightful place. 

Having an additional space for organizing science equipment, audio players, DVDs, computers, games, magazines, and other materials that support learning. In this respect, the classroom library mirrors the organization of media centers at the individual and district levels.

4. It Provides Opportunities for Independent Reading and Curricular Extensions

It is important to consider your classroom library as a resource and location for independent reading, personal exploration, project research, and individual assessment. It makes it easier to have a good reading program in place so students can find time in their busy schedule during school and spend some time exploring new books to read independently

Select books to read that meet their personal, recreational reading interests. The class library should also provide quick print and digital material. Further, an in-class library offers a setting for students to quietly read aloud and discuss a book with a peer or the teacher. This provides an ideal opportunity for you to conduct an informal assessment of each student's reading, which will help you to plan individualized instruction.

5. It serves as a Place for Students to Talk About and Interact with Books

The effective classroom library also functions as a gathering spot where students and teachers can express their lives as readers. Think of it as a place that makes books exciting, that sells reading. It should be a place where students cannot wait to get to. It is a continuous process and in this age of technology where kids grow up with ipads and computers, it makes it likely that developing minds will deviate from reading books to something more visually appealing. But it doesn’t have to be. A classroom library if utilized properly can create a joy for reading and for children sharing their thoughts.  

Now, let's discuss how to build up your classroom library on a budget. It is inevitable that more we read, better at reading we become. It Is also true that the earlier we start reading, the better it makes us. As we have discussed having a variety of books at arm’s length makes it easier for students to get in to reading, as opposed to searching for a book online or going to a physical store to pick it up.

I want to talk about 5 ways how to gets books on a budget…

Number 1:                Request Parents and Students to donate

I cannot say this enough, asking for gently used books is a great way and least expensive way to build your classroom library. You can send a letter at the beginning of a school year to parents of your students and request them to look for any books they might have laid around the house that their children loved to read or might be interested in reading and send them to school.

Number 2:                Donations from other teachers

A small classroom library can hold really quite a few books. You can ask fellow educators to see if they have any books that might not be suited for the class they teach anymore and donate them. You will be surprised how much you will end up getting.

Changing grade levels, teachers are especially a good resource when it comes to getting books. Teachers who will be teaching another grade level will be happy to find ‘their old books’ a loving space.

Number 3:                Allocate school funds

Not many schools allow funding to teachers and usually it is a long process to get the change approved; however, if your school has that model, use the school funds to get books for your class, you can opt for used or old books option that way you will be getting more while spending less. Most used bookstores offer bundles, and you can hand pick the right books without being concerned about spending too much. Don’t over stock though only get the ones you think are the best suited and once your students develop the habit of reading you can always add more.

Number 4:                Ask Your Friends and Family

As a teacher when you speak of the importance of something for students or pitch an idea people pay attention to it, you can start a drive among your friends and family, create a WhatsApp group or start a Facebook page to encourage people in your circle to donate books for the school. You may not be able to handpick them, and it is possible that a good portion of what you receive won’t fit your needs, and that’s possible, but you can always give them away to someone else in need, you might find a teacher in your school who would be happy to take extra books.

Number 5:                The Reading Resource Project

Now this is interesting here…

This program is sponsored by the Literacy Empowerment Foundation and provides books for pre-k to 2nd grade at just the cost of $0.88 shipping per book. Again, if you have a fund allocation from your school you can grab a bunch of books while spending less.