#primary pgce

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Hi Lucy! I'm about to go into my final term as a trainee teacher (can't believe how quickly it's gone!) do you have any tips on surviving the last term? I'm teaching 90% as well!! Also, I have a job as an NQT in September and was just wondering if there any staple resources/documents etc that I need to print/make to prepare myself for my own class? X

Hello there, sorry for the delay in posting, but I agree time flies when you are teaching - I’ve been behind on several blog posts due to classroom commitments! Many congratulations on getting a job for September and almost being donw with teacher training, quite some feats indeed!

As for some tips for surviving the last term, I’ll give you a brief rundown of essentials:

Look after yourself - make sure you are eating, drinking and sleeping regularly (sounds obvious but I was a norotious meal skipper during my last placement and it does you no good for the kids as well as yourself).

Have an end point and work backwards - plan where you would like to be lesson/topic-wise at the end of your placement, where would you like the children’s learning to be? What learning objectoves do you want to have taught well? Once you decide where you want the children to be at, plan to be there and then work backwards with all your final term planning. It really helps to keep you on track in the final few weeks.

Keep on top of marking - Even right to the last week of placement, you want to ensure everything is marked/assessed and up to date for when you leave the class/school - and it sucks having to mark on your final placement day!

Have a fantastic all-singing-and-dancing final observation - at some point in your final term, someone from your course provide (a mentor/leader/former teacher) will come and assess you for your QTS. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT OBSERVATION YOU WILL HAVE so it needs to be planned to the last detail, resourced wonderfully and engaging for all the children. Once you’ve had this nerve wracking observation, then you’re on your way to becoming a qualified teacher :)

Get all the information/assitance whilst you can - although you have secured a job for September, it is worth asking your collegues for job application advice, interview advice/lessons, medium term or topic plans and other sources of information to help get you up on your feet when you begin life as an NQT. All placement collegues ave been in your shoes before and will definitely give you tips, advice and share resources.

Enjoy spending time with your class - treasure the time spent with your class, placement classes always will have a special place in your memory and make sure you do some fun activities with them too before you leave!

If you follow all this, and keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll be absolutely fine :)

As for NQT start-up resources I will put them in a seperate post, and link it here, as there are a fair few things you need when starting/setting up your own classroom :) Take care, and enjoy your final teaching term!

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Teaching blog recs!

When I first started this blog, there were very few blogs/tumblrs out there that discussed the daily life or journey of teacher training. Now there are quite a few! Here’s a few PGCE journey tumblrs and some of my other favourite teaching blog recs:

Blogs of PGCE students

http://lessoninteaching.tumblr.com/

https://trainingtoteach.tumblr.com/

https://iamyouryoungteacher.tumblr.com/

https://pgceeek.wordpress.com/

http://psychtrainee.tumblr.com/

Other great teaching blogs

http://mscassidysclass.edublogs.org/ - This canadian blog is super cute!

https://mathsproblemsolving.wordpress.com/primary/ - This is my friend Leanne’s blog and although it’s more aimed at secondary maths, it’s got some great primary resources on too!

https://thisismyclassroom.wordpress.com/ - Some great articles on here

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Hi :) I've got an interview coming up with a year 3 class. The school's a talk for write school and I can do anything I want for english, what should I teach? Should I teach English like I normally do or incorporate something from talk for write? Thanks :) x

Hello Anon, congratulations on getting an interview!

I would teach how you would most feel comfortable/have been taught to teach during an interview. Interviews are daunting enough as it is without having to learn/teach a new scheme ontop of things! School’s won’t expect you to follow their exact scheme/methodology in interviews, but most would probably expect you to have heard or researched about it and are more likely to ask you questions about talk for write during the formal interview part of the day.

However I would definitely try and include elements from talk for write in your lesson input if you can, to show that you are able to adapt to the school’s way of teaching and show you have done your research. I would make your starter very oral, get the children discussing ideas with talk partners or in groups before feeding back to the class. Or even have plenty of whiteboards availible for children to write/draw their ideas down with a partner before beginning the main part of the lesson.

As for what to teach for year 3 English, you could have a class debate style lesson, introducing children to an issue, getting them discuss their opinions on it, debate their opinions in class and write up their views (though this may take a little while, it depends on how much time you have and whether you feel comfortable letting children take more of a lead on the lesson).

Alternatively, if you haven’t got much teaching time, then try teaching a grammar or poetry focused lesson - both these activities aren’t what people usually teach about in interviews (which will help you stand out) and they are quick to produce some good writing from. Make sure you have lots of grammar and poetry props to teach with, to really get the kids onboard with your lesson!

I previously wrote a post about teaching observation interviews which you might find handy here.

Hopefully this has given you some support and ideas, if you need any more ideas etc, please feel free to drop me an ask! Best of luck with the interview, let me know how it goes :)

[howtotrainyourteacher]

How I plan now I’m an RQT

So I’ve had a couple of years now to get to grips with lesson planning and work out what style of planning works best for me and benefits the children I’m teaching. Thankfully after completing my PGCE, doing ridiculously detailed plans for every lesson is not necessary!

Photographed above are the 3 ways I use planning to teach now and since lesson planning concerns are what makes up the majority of my ask box (keep sending in your lesson planning asks here btw), here’s a quick guide to day-to-day planning.

Utilise different sorts of planning - I write my own medium term plans, write daily lesson planning notes in my academic planner, and use maths and English plans from Hamilton Trust to teach my lessons. I find that this combination works best for myself and my class to teach the best lessons possible and in a way that suits my teaching.

Get an academic/teachers planner - This has been an absolute lifesaver for me and has greatly reduced my planning time. Mine is seperated into 5 sections/lessons and I use each box to roughly outline the main points of the lesson, any differentiation notes, groupings and learning objectives. All the planning for each lesson is condensed into as many or as few words as you need and it can easily sit on your desk/in your classroom for quickly referencing.

Use your planner to best suit your style of planning - I use the first column for lesson objectives, the second for differentiation and the final column for reflective notes after the lesson has finished which suits me and my style of teaching. I have collegues that prefer to write across all the columns or use a typical day page for a whole week instead. Whatever you use it for, the layout of a teacher’s planner is very flexible!

Don’t be afraid to use/edit planning - I scrawl all over the Hamilton English and maths plans to adjust to my class of children (the above photos is one of my more neater efforts!) If you borrow planning from collegues or schemes then always make it your own. The children it was written for will be different from your own class and adapting it to suit the pupils needs will definitely help in teaching the subject.

Medium term planning that covers all the objectives - (See my science plan above) Find all your objectives FIRST before even begining medium term planning. Use the national curriculum or your school’s long term plan to find all the objectives you need to cover and build your lessons around that as well as the number of lessons/weeks you have to cover a topic (tip: always plan one less lesson that you’ll think you’ll need, as trips, events and rescheduling always ensure you’ll rarely need all lessons!).

Although PGCE and other teacher training courses are often quite strict with the style/type of planning you need to do whilst on placements. However, hopefully this helps with refining your planning and making things quicker whether now or in NQT/RQT years to come!

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Tips for making marking quicker!

After writing a post about what I’d learnt as an NQT, I got some lovely responses about how to make marking quicker. I’ve decided to collate these, and some of my own tips, into this top tips for marking post!

Mark during the lesson - Marking children’s work as they do it in the lesson can hugely cut down on marking in the evenings. This works particularly well in maths as you can tick and write a short comment after working with a group or as you are going around checking children are on task. It hugely benefits the child too as they are getting instant feedback on their work.

Use your TA - If you are lucky enough to have a TA, let them do the odd bit of marking. I usually ask my TA to mark our spelling tests, time table teasers and comprehension exercises, which all have set answers and are easy enough to do whilst helping out in the classroom.

Peer marking - For me, this doesn’t work as well as I teach young children, but in KS2 it’s handy if children swap books and write a short comment at the bottom, giving 1 good point and 1 area to improve. I have done this in the past where children write these pointers on sticky notes and stick them on each other’s work, which works well as a feedback tool!

Use PPA time wisely - It’s easy to just do some light planning or catch up with things over a cuppa in PPA time, but if you use it wisely and power through marking some books, you can have less to do in the evenings (my new years resolution has been to mark all the days literacy books every PPA session and being more driven about it has saved me lots of time).

Get children to work in groups - group work is an important skill to develop in school and it works well with lots of subjects (English and science in particular). By allowing the children to collaborate on a piece of work, it helps them to discuss it and further their own learning, as well as leaving you with fewer pieces of work to mark (though more photocopying work to do, but then again that’s gotta be easier).

Take photographs - Although children writing up their own work is important, sometimes a photo is a better use of time. Especially in science, maths, literacy and geography taking photos of children or groups of children workin together can show more accurately what the children have learnt and it’s easier to stick in photos in books than ask children to write up everything. I usually get the children to write a sentence under each photo explaining what they were doing and/or what they learnt - much quicker to mark (so long as you’ve got a working school camera).

Sometimes a short comment can mean more - Every school has a different marking policy, but it is hard to ‘deep mark’ every piece of work a child does every day. Sometimes the best feedback for children can be a simple comment of e.g. “great effort with adding multiples of 10 today” at the bottom of their work, telling the child exactly what they did that was productive to their learning in the lesson.

If anyone has any other top marking tips, or other ways to speed up the process, then send me an ask and I’ll update this post :) Happy marking!

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Maths Mastery Area

One of my classroom success stories this year has been my maths mastery area of the classroom! It’s a place where children can go to when they’ve finished their set maths work and complete extension tasks (for coverted house points of course!)

I’ve set up whiteboards and squared paper for children’s jottings, and cubes and number squares to help them scafold their learning. The aim of the area is really to further their thinking (independently) and to provide some evidencefor that elusive “greater depth” on the key stage 1/2 assessment by setting tasks that require verbal reasoning as well as mathmatical number sense.

There are also some group games (times tables, time, fractions etc) that children can play together to consolidate their learning if a whole group of children complete the lesson work at once. It certainly helps if children find a lesson straightforward or timetable changes mean there’s no time for a formal lesson and challenge cards can be bought out and worked on.

My kids like the choice of challenge cards, which I try and change every 2-3 weeks (and if I’m really organised, whenever we change topic!) and many of my high flyers try to complete the whole basket of cards!

Some of my challenge cards are from twinkl here.

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Heyy you okay? Hope your half term have gone fab! Just to ask - how do u keep evidence of all the things you do as in your to do list & the jobs you do including meetings? Do you reflect after each days of teaching? as a student teacher, I constantly reflected. I feel like I don't do that anymore. And when I do, it's too negative!

Hello there Anon, sorry for the delay in reply, my half term was very enjoyable thank you! Hope you had a fabulous half term too :)

You raise a couple of very good questions! As for to do lists I am a huge fan of post-it notes (see below photo) I can write to do lists on them when I think of things to do and transfer them from my desk, to my academic planner, to home - they’re great for remembering things to do between school and home.

As for reflecting, I try and scribble down either some points about what to do or what definitely needs covering/recapping next lesson in my academic planner after each lesson (I breifly talked about it in this post). I also am fortunate to be in a school where one of my collegues is also at a similar point in her teaching career to me (she completes her NQT at the end of the year, whilst I’m about 6 months ahead in my career) We often get together to bounce ideas off each and talking about our own and each other’s teaching which has really helped in helping me reflect on my teaching. Also someone else will always be able to point out more positives than you - as you mentioned before, it’s only too easy to reflect on all the negatives!

As for longer term reflecting it’s something I tend to do more in half terms and holidays by going back over all my planning or flicking through the children’s books and noting down what went well and what didn’t go so well, to improve for next time.

[howtotrainyourteacher]

Playdough Geography!

I’ve taught this lesson a few times now and it gets better each time! To help the children learn all about the continents and oceans of the world, I teach the children some simple continent and ocean songs (easily found on youtube) and we look at google maps, labelling the continents and oceans using post-it notes on the IWB.

Then after putting the kids into groups, I give them a few pots of playdough to help them re-create the continents and oceans themselves! Of course the hcildren have atlases to help them and they have a sheet of A3 paper to give them some scale and allow them to label everything correctly.

The children LOVE using playdough. It’s a very tactile way of forming each continent and ideally having enough playdough so that each continent is a different colour would also help the children remember them. My year 2/3 class loved doing this the other week, so much so that when we came to learning about the countries and captials of the UK, we used playdough to help us learn those as well!

Would highly reccomend using playdough for geography lessons if you teach KS1, it’s a winner with the kids and they don’t even realise they’re learning :D