I’ve reached the glorious milestone that is half-term, reasonably unharmed, if not very tired. I had hoped to post slightly earlier but even if time was allowing, motivation was not.
The first term is always said to be the toughest for the NQT, so being half-way through that is reassuring. The changes from the PGCE are innumerable, some obvious, some less so.
- Being a form tutor – whilst most probably have had some responsibility/attachment to a form prior, the extra step of being responsible for your own form is both rewarding and another thing to think about. Now the first half-term is done, I think it’s time to look past the obvious in terms of form time activities. This is a fairly large area which I would need more space to do justice to.
- Workload – this is a catch-all that contains such delightful things as email, meetings, deadlines, reports, coursework and much more. To state the obvious, it’s much more than in PGCE year, and my previous tips for that year of organisation and staying on top of everything have never been more true.
- Being better – in the PGCE year your main focus was getting through lessons and observation unscathed, recently I’ve been spending a lot of time on how best to engage students but also how to help them learn more. I’m hoping to come up with a few strategies to try in some of my more difficult classes and report back here.
A frustratingly generic post yet again but sadly the specifics of the past 7 weeks seem to have escaped me. I’m striving to experiment more with my teaching and learning in the near future in order for there to be relevant content; a ramble better suited to a personal diary seems less than useful.
Being an ICT teacher, I have some interesting thoughts to include in that area, from VLEs to technologies which I will be working on over the coming weeks.
