How to train your teacher

Lucy | UK. Previously a primary school teacher for 5-9 year olds, I now teach 3-5 year olds! This blog records my PGCE journey, teacher training advice and other education adventures. All views are my own.

[howtotrainyourteacher]

My teaching philosophy

I recently spoke with a PGCE student about how they have to write an essay demonstrating their “teaching philosophy” and how they incoporate their beliefs about teaching into every day practise.

It’s got me thinking about my own personal teaching philosophy and the things I really feel strongly about in teaching. So here’s a list of all the teaching things I’m particularly passionate about doing/having in my own classroom/teaching:

If I’m having fun, then the kids are learning - If I’m having a fun time teaching, then you can bet that the kids are enjoying the lesson too - enthusiasm is infectious! Everyone learns better when they’re having fun so I feel it’s important to plan and create lessons I enjoy teaching, so that kids can enjoy learning.

Children need to write every day - Children will read and use numbers in their everyday life without even noticing, which is all good practise that adds up! However, they may not write every day so I ensure that my all children in my class write something every day. Whether it’s a sentence, on a post it note, on a whiteboard or a full piece of writing, they will have written at least 1 sentence independently every day with me (which adds up over the course of a year!)

Praise the effort, not the attainment - The amount of effort a chld puts into their work is far more important than the outcome/attainment. If they’re praised for just the outcome, then that will be their sole focus, rather than trying and developing resilience to new challenges. I ensure that I praise the perseverance and effort children put into doing tasks, so it will encourage them to do so more in the future!

Be specific with praise - Following on from praising effort, I believe that being specific with your praise helps children more and teaches them exactly what is so good about what they are doing e.g. “You have put lots of effort into your colouring, well done” vs “I can see how much effort you have put into blending the green pencils so it is the same colour as the trees outside, well done!” Precise praise also feels more personal and helps to develop a stronger teacher/pupil working relationship.

Never be without a class mascot - I’ve written previously about the power of a class mascot (aka a small cuddly toy) but honestly having a toy that we can all look after brings the children and myself much closer together. It’s like a cheaper version of a class pet I suppose! Our current mascot Patrick the Puffin helps us with schoolwork, supports upset children, helps with behaviour management and is the star of many discussions with the children which really makes my day (and the job worthwhile!)

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anxiousmarshmallow replied to your post “Hi! Have you got any tips for the PGCE personal statement? At the...”

@howtotrainyourteacher thankyou so much for your incredibly useful reply!

No worries! Best of luck with writing that personal statement, I believe in you :)

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Hi! Have you got any tips for the PGCE personal statement? At the moment I'm studying for an English Language degree and am applying for the PGCE primary programme next week. I'm very excited but nervous about the interview too :(

Hello there! So pleased you are applying for a PGCE primary course and glad you are excited for it!

Here’s a post I previously wrote about general PGCE application tips. The personal statement part really should showcase the skills you have gained from your relevant experience (and why they would make you a good teacher), how your degree experiences will help your teaching/be an effective teacher and your statement should show your enthusiasm to learn, be a leader and have great team working and time management skills.

Draw from your previous experiences volunteering, getting involved in volunteering projects, working with children or working in the classroom as much as you can - most PGCE course value your past experience and what you have learnt from it more than anything else!

As for the interview side of things, most involve some sort of formal interview, presentation, additional tests, group work etc... but tbh as long as you answer your formal interview questions well, then you’ll be bound to get a place, as this part of the interview is weighted more highly than the rest.

Let me know how you get on! I hope this answer has helped you out a bit :)

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Maths schemes of work

I’ve used several maths schemes of work over the years and thought I’d make a summary post of them here, incase anyone was interested! Although planning your own maths lessons from scratch forms the basis of your maths planning/teaching during your teacher training, after you qualify there’s a wealth of supportive schemes to help with coverage and depth in maths teaching and learning.

Hamilton Trust

I’ve used both year 1-2 maths plans and year 2/3 maths planning from Hamilton Trust which provides lots of resources/worksheets for every lesson and does cover the entire curriculum over the course of the year. They are great for maths fluency and have some good activities to get children fluent in maths skills.

My main issues with using Hamilton plans though are that occassionally the content for mixed year planning doesn’t match up, so it feels like you are teaching 2 different lessons! (Especially with the cross key stage year 2/3 plans…) Also their plans aren’t that great for showing verbal reasoning or problem solving, key areas in the new curriculum especially in reagrds to greater depth in mathematics. Also although some sample plans are free, Hamilton Trust is a subscription service (albeit a reasonably priced one).

White Rose Maths Hub

White Rose have just updated their scheme for the 2017-18 year and they are now so much better than before! Lots of key information that covers all curriculum objectives complete with specifc questions that relate to fluency, verbal reasoning and problem solving for each key objective (which this time also includes the answers, yay).

White Rose provides enough to get you started, but it isn’t a full planning scheme with lessons. However, it is a great starting point and I often use their example fluency, verbal reasoning and problem solving questions to assess my class’s ability at the end of a block.

AET Maths

AET provide very detailed medium term plans and links to some great resources for maths from reception to GCSE level! Each topic is broken down into micro steps for children to learn and gives advice in how teachers could teach each topic. Best of all for me, this scheme has blocks of lesson objectives that match up when teaching a mixed age class, hooray!

Downsides of AET are that you have to sift through the wealth of information to find what you really need and there are few lesson by lesson type plans availible for free.

Twinkl Plan-it

I finally bought Twinkl with a Planit subscription included this year and I have not regretted it! Their plan-it lessons (especially for maths) are well crafted, follow the objectives and give you between 2 and 6 lesson plans and complete kit of resources for every learning objective in the primary national curriculum! Lots of the activities are really quite inventive, and my class have really enjoyed the ones I have given to them so far (the number hunting one we did last week went down an absolute treat!)

Only downsides of Planit really are the cost (£70 upfront for a years subscription), but it’s only the third week of term and twinkl have already saved me hours, so the scheme is worth its weight in gold really.

Other schemes

Other schemes I have used briefly or heard about are Rising Stars, Abacus, Singapore Maths and Big Maths. I’ve used Rising Stars maths assessments which were okay, but very narrowly focused and I’ve used Big Maths weekly “Beat That” tests which are good, but a little repetitive.

This year with my new bunch of year 2/3s, I’m using AET maths medium term plans, with some twinkl planit lessons for a bit of variety/fun and White Rose questions to help the kids get to greater depth. I’ll let you know if this mix works!

If anyone has used/knows about another useful maths scheme, then let me know and I’ll add it to this post :)

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rain-and-reading mentioned you on a post “Subject co-ordination and leadership in school”

@howtotrainyourteacher good luck!!

Thank you! I am going on an exciting STEM leaders course in October, so hopefully I will learn lots about how to lead science sujects there! :D

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Help please! I have a transition morning with a year 3 going into year 4 class. I have to take them back from assembly to my next classroom and have them for 2 hours! I'm worried about behaviour management as I won't know their names and what if they chat on the way to the classroom? Should I apply rewards and sanctions straight away? How strict should I be? Do I set the rules already or is that for September? Would I have a ta?

(cont)Oh, and by the way, i'm going to be an nqt and this transition morning is stressing me out. What "getting to know me" activities could the chn do?  

Oh my gosh apologies for the delayed reply of this message, it was swallowed up in my ask box and has only just appeared now :S I presume you have already had your transition day anon, and I hope it went well!

To answer your original questions, make sure you introduce yourself and then set out your expectations first, before you do any other transition activities. Even if this is just a reminder of the class/school rules, it will help ground you and the kids in their new roles and show the kids that this is still a school lesson, rather than ‘free play’.

Definitely apply rules and sanctions, as you would do in your normal teaching. But definitely be generous with your rewards, even if it’s just lots of praise to every child, it’ll help them feel more comfortable and start building a positive relationship with you too. (I have sent a child out before during transition activities, and they missed playing a game we were doing. Needless to say I had no more issues after that!)

A good transition activity to do is create a list of rules/class charter agreeing what is and what is not acceptable behaviour to see when you are a member of this class. This can be accompanied by lots of drawings/poster making/acting out of the rules etc. This year, my year 2/3s wrote rules on fish shaped paper to feed to our Puffin class mascot!

As for transition activities, I’ve found the best format to be: an ice breaker game, main creative activity, whole class games. Doing a creative main activity along the lines of class portraits, class shields, all about me passports, superhero profiles, class charter making, making bunting for the class etc. can work really well. My whole class games are usually circle games so everyone can see each other, and so that I can start learning names more easily!

Twinkl also have some great transition activities for KS2 which you can find here, here and here.

Also, here’s a post I wrote about meeting my new class last year, it might help you in future!

Best of luck with your NQT year Anon, I hope all goes well for you :)

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ijfasco replied to your post “Subject co-ordination and leadership in school”

Good luck! First day at uni tomorrow...!

Thank you! Hope your first day has gone well, I’m sure you’ll have aced it :D

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Subject co-ordination and leadership in school

After you pass your NQT year, you’re eligable to be given command/control over one or more of the school subjects and become a subject coordinator. Essentially leading the school’s approach on the chosen subject, monitoring the assessment of it across school, enhancing teaching and learning and of course sorting out that subject’s resources for everyone...

As I work in a small school, I have 3 subjects to coordinate this year: Science (which I have been helping out with for the past year, but now its solely my domain!), Computing and I share Geography coordination with another teacher in school.

Science is a core subject so that is obviously going to be my main focus (and hopefully the focus of my performance managment meetings this year). I’ve joined lots of science newsletters, science coordinator facebook groups and have been researching science assessment to hopefully present a new science policy to the staff in a couple of weeks time.

Computing is going to be harder for me to coordinate, manily as our small school only has 8 working laptops in the whole school, and few other resources that add to the 2014 curriculum, making teaching computing very tricky. And as an added complexity, I don’t actually teach computing, my job share teaches computing for our class! :S

Either way it’s going to be an interesting year learning about how to coordinate subjects in school! Gonna have to get reading up on subject leadership I think...

[howtotrainyourteacher]

I’ve bene busy finishing off bits in my classroom and here is my finished reading area! I’ve got some great topic related books in the topic book box and I’ve even had a go at making cushions!

I’m really going to be pushing more reading in my class this year, and hopefully by having a dedicated area to reading in the classroom, it’ll help me and the children to practise our reading and analysing skills :)

If anyone has any top tips for squeezing more reading into the school day, I’d love to hear from you!

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Time saving display tips!

It’s that time of year where teachers are madly typing out lesson plans, having a major tidy up and are organising their classrooms for the new academic year.

I’ve spent probably close to 10 days in school, tidying, sorting, printing, laminating etc to fully prepare for my class! But I know that not everyone has that amount of time, some teachers rely solely on inset days to sort everything out! Here are some time saving tips I’ve learnt/stumbled across for getting your classroom ready in no time at all:

Use ready made display packs - For every possible topic in the UK curriculum, someone else has already done/made a display for it, so save some time and download and print them off from the internet. My top display sites are twinkl, instant displays and sparklebox.

Have your display equipment ready! - Make sure you have a good, working staple gun, staple remover, scissors, blue tac and ruler before putting up any displays! Ideally have a collegue help out too, to get the job done in half the time!

Use plain backing paper and blue tac - Put up backing paper and boarders that are plain colours (using a staple gun) and then blu tac everything you want to that board, rather than staple it on. This way, you can peel things on and off and change displays quickly, saving you time and ensuring that your backing paper lasts (I made mine last the whole year, by being super careful!)

Staples should stick out at an angle - For stapling backing paper, or work to a board/wall, make sure you hold your staple gun at a slight angle so that the staple will stick out of the wall slightly - much easier to remove when you need to!

Laminate everything whilst watching tv - Laminating labels, signs, displays etc ensures that they last much longer and are more durable. I like to laminate things at home whilst watching something on Netflix - it certainly makes the job more enjoyable!

Guillotines are your new best friend - Screw rounded corners and using tiny scissors to cut out little shapes - try and print/make resources that can be quickly cut to size on a guillotine and put up instantly.

Ask colleagues for old resources - It’s worth an ask, or a look into the cupboards of other classrooms to see if they have anything you could use/adapt for your own classroom. I’ve managed to find some great boxes for my room and have donated lots of maths resources to a collegue for her maths area - sharing can really help you fill the space in your room.

Make sure the children can use it - Make sure that if you’re putting up a more ‘information’ based display, that the children will understand what’s been shown and will therefore use it. Otherwise, it’s best just to leave the space and have it ready for excellent work to be put up!

Uniformity works best - Try and have all your displays have the same font, sizing, amount of work on them etc. Save a template of anything you make yourself for a display so that you have the correct proportions and styles on hand. Uniformity also is less distracting to look at and so may also help the kids too!

Take photos of all your displays - Start making a display book with photos of all your displays - it’s a good progress tool and if you take photos of other people’s good displays, then it can become a handy time saving reference book too!

[howtotrainyourteacher]

rain-and-reading replied to your photoset

“So it’s less than two weeks until term starts again, and I have been a...”

Your classroom looks fantastic! My school is closed due to refurbishments and will open next week after bank holiday! I don't think I have enough time to sort out my new classroom (starting at a new school). My target for next year would be to stress less and eat more healthy food. I'll be an RQT next year! Wish you all the best!

Thank you for your kind compliments about my classroom! Would love to see some pics of yours when you finish it :D If need be, a printer, a laminator, comfy sofa and netflix are also great classroom preparation tools when you’re locked out of your classroom :P You have great targets for next year too, I hope you achieve them :)

[howtotrainyourteacher]

ijfasco replied to your post “5 teaching targets for this academic year”

I start my PGDE in a few weeks. I'm petrified! x

Hi there friend :) It’s completely natural to feel nervous, teacher training is a HUGE commitment and it always seems like everyone else you meet on the course has a little bit more experience, or has done a little bit more preparation than you! But really, everyone is just as worried about messing up their first lessons in front of the children and is just as nervous about teaching as you, believe me! Here’s some advice and tips for surviving your first few weeks:

A PGCE is definitely a marathon, not a sprint - don’t work yourself until midnight in the first few weeks (I speak from experience here...) save some energy for later placements or important observations. Start off by concentrating on passing your first assignments rather than having everything perfect. You’re still learning, so it’s natural not to get everything right straight away :)

Discussing assignments, tutors and schools with your course mates definitely helps and my course mates have definitely helped me through a few problems during my PGCE (learning French was one such challenge a linguist course mate painstakingly helped me with!)

Exchanging your specialist knowledge with others on your course is really handy, everyone has a different background and making connections early on can help you with assignments down the road!

If you’re anything like me and your maths skills are a bit rusty, in preparation for maths seminars/lessons practising some mental maths/times tables definitely helps you feel more at ease during those times!

Don’t be daunted by the amount of paperwork/ dates/ assignments/ information you get handed to you in the first couple of weeks! It looks like an awful lot, but once you start tackling it a bit at a time and organising it, it’s a lot more manageable (I sometimes think they overload you with paperwork in the first week to prepare you for being a fully qualified teacher!)

Best of luck with the course, and feel free to drop me an ask if you need anything :)

[howtotrainyourteacher]

5 teaching targets for this academic year

So school starts in just a couple of weeks and I thought it would be a good idea to set myself some targets now I’m about to begin September as a teacher for the third year now (how time flies!)

After having a couple of years to work as a teacher and refine my teaching, it’s time I set myself some personal targets aside from my personal development ones that the senir leadership team set me each year!

Improve on SATs scores for borderline pupils - My last lot of year 2s got a good haul of SATs results, but some of my borderline/ ‘nearly there’ children got just under 100, when they should’ve got scores of just over 100 (there’s the whole issue of unnecessary grade boundary changes for 7 year olds but that’s another post entirely). Anyway this year I’m determined to get every child who should pass 100, a score of over 100 in their SATs, by doing more interventions and starting identifying booster groups earlier.

More emphasis on guided reading and follow up - I love guided reading, but it definitely took a bit of a backseat last year, and I could have definitely done more follow up activities, especially with my year 3s. This year, I’m going to commit to do guided reading 4 times a week and make sure all my year 3s are being fully stretched with reading and comprehension.

Lots more writing support - I’ve got some very weak writers joining my class, and some incredibly high flying writers too. I’m going to have to support each group so they can both make progress; it’ll be a juggling act for sure! Going to make lots of writing resources, train children to use them and set some writing interventions asap though and go from there.

Sort out a better homework system - At the moment, the one I have in the classroom could do with a bit fo tweaking. And not to mention the huge amounts of complaints I’ve had from parents about how they “don’t have time” to sit and do tasks with their children (which ironically was the whole point with setting more ‘project based’ homework...) Anyway, I’m tempted to streamline it a bit, to best help the kids and to get all the parents off my back...

Eat more fruit! - I encourage the kids to have their fruit/snack at breaktime and then I don’t eat anything/anything near as healthy! I could do with getting some more vitamins into my system.

Feeling fairly positive that I’ll manage at least a few of these...

[howtotrainyourteacher]

So it’s less than two weeks until term starts again, and I have been a busy bee getting my classroom sorted for the new year! Here’s a few pics of my work so far (I’ve been in school the best part of 6 days work in total).

This year I’ve really made the classroom my own and chucked out loads of unused resources (a job that took 2 days), moved furniture round, got rid of furniture and generally made the classroom a lot more open and organised - see the excessive labelling above (I’ve done over 200 book labels and over 50 drawer labels, whelp).

Our first topic of the year is Super Scotland, which I am really looking forward too. The only other displays I’ve finished so far are my British Values display (we’re due to be OfSTEDed) and my answer, prove explain sentence starters board. Now to finish my long term planning and start on all those pesky medium term plans!

[howtotrainyourteacher]

School is over!

It’s finally the end of the academic year, wooo! Sorry for being a bit MIA on the blog recently, end of term trips, performances and reports have taken up all my time in the past 6-7 weeks.

Thankfully, I’ve had a really good year this academic year. I’m 2/3 through my RQT year and I’ve settled fully into my school and class. Even teaching year 2 & 3 cross key stage has become something much more natural and easier for me, yay! I’ve said goodbye to 14 year 3′s and will welcome 9 new year 2′s to the class in September :) Looking forward to it already!

However, now I’m off for the summer and doing only some very light planning, I have plenty of time for this blog so feel free to send in any questions or suggestions for any reference posts and I’ll see what I can do :)

If you made it through your PGCE or NQT year then congratulations on a job well done, you did it! :D

[howtotrainyourteacher]

One staple feature of my classroom is my spectacular science display board, I feel it’s important to showcase science as much as children’s writing or maths work, so make sure at least one display in the room is dedicated to science work. Also the children love looking back at the fun science work we have done over the weeks!

My science display board is updated fairly regularly and always includes photographs of the children doing science experiments, results from science investigations and photocopies of the children’s science knowledge work.

I blu-tac everything onto this rather fetching starry backing paper, which enables me to change things easily as the term progresses. My “Spectacular Science” display title comes from Twinkl.

[howtotrainyourteacher]

In an effort to really boost my class’s writing (and fill in as many end of KS1 writing tick boxes as possible), I’ve taken a very kinesthetic approach to our latest topic of “Adventure Stories”.

We have been doing a lot of drawing pictures to help us with our descriptive writing, and using our paired discussion to create excellent drawings and then write about these using a range of features (expanded noun phrases, conjunctions, words with suffixes etc…)

My year 2′s and 3′s have LOVED being able to visualise and draw their ideas, rather than hold them in their heads as well as write about them in proper sentences. It’s definitely got some really nice writing out of the children, especially those who struggle to think of what to write about as they all have  good and colourful starting point!