ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the professional learning of beginning teachers and how they might be supported in the development of their planning abilities. It highlights the value of constructive feedback on teacher's planning, collaborative practice and systematic reflection. Over the course of teacher's initial teacher education period, they can expect to make progress in their planning skills and in their understanding of planning. Feedback on outline or draft lesson plans can be particularly helpful, especially in the early days when detailed lesson planning takes up a lot of teacher's time. Joint planning provides an opportunity for mentors to explain and demonstrate how they usually calculate timings and to pass on advice about managing the time in lessons. The experience of jointly planning a sequence of lessons, or short unit of work, with teacher's mentor brings additional benefits and learning gains for all concerned.
