#rqt

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.

That's right. 3 years of education from Cover Supervisor to NQT have passed and I passed with a bang. I've transformed my department, found a second family, introduced a whole school wellbeing scheme and hopefully have a handful of kids that have passed...

The last day was pretty chill, the Year 9s insisted I take loads of photos with them where we all look like a sweaty mess, I gave them too much sugar and the Sixth Form Team (which I'm now part of) went for drinks to end the year officially. Then I rushed home and manically packed for Copenhagen.

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...

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!

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...

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!).