Mentoring Students

Five out of the ten weeks of the course is spent on the training and actual mentoring process.

Week 1: Train Future Mentors to navigate the Online Mentoring Guide web site and understand how the rubric works. The first day of this training is done in the library classroom, which contains 25 computers.

Week 2: Test Future Mentors on the Math Forum, Solve the Problem of the Week that they will be mentoring, and View sample solutions submitted.

Weeks 3-4: Mentor Students .

• Most Pre-Service teachers mentor 8-10 solutions over the 2-week span.
• The first day of the actual mentoring is again spent in the library classroom.
• Each mentoring reply is then reviewed by my approving assistant or by me. We make sure that the mentoring reply addresses the issues with the solution and is written properly.

Week 5: Write Essay about their mentoring experience. The answer the following questions:

• Did you find this experience useful? What were the most beneficial parts of it? Describe in detail; provide relevant examples.
• Did you find the experience difficult or frustrating? Describe in detail; provide relevant examples.
• Did you find the training useful? (This is the on-line mentoring session you had, where you worked on the 7 congruent rectangles problem) Is there anything you would like to change about it?
• Overall, do you have any suggestions or recommendations that would make this an even more beneficial experience?
• Discuss one of your threads in great detail. How did the student approach the problem? What were your comments? Did you get a revision? (It may help if you actually include the student's actual solution in your essay.)