Making The Most of Summer Holidays 2018
How have you made the most of your summer holidays this year? Me? I went gallivanting across Europe with a road trip and some relaxing breaks abroad! Travelling is a brilliant way to de-stress after hectic weeks and months of teaching at school. Whilst I absolutely love to teach, I love to travel just as much; exploring other cultures, cities and traditions makes me very happy. So, taking advantage of the free time during the school holidays is the perfect time to enjoy this (expensive) hobby. To indulge this summer holiday, I planned three trips which kicked off the week after the school holidays commenced in July. The first trip…
How To Plan Lessons for Visual Learners
Why Plan Lessons for Visual Learners? When I did my teacher training a couple of years ago, I was taught about Neil Fleming’s VARK (Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinesthetic) model. This sensory modalities learning model suggests that people acquire information differently and this should be taken into consideration when preparing lessons. So, when my mentor and other language teachers advised using visuals in my teaching materials, I understood that this would help visual learners to acquire what I was teaching them better. What is Visual Learning? Visual learning is a way of learning in which information is associated with images or graphics and according to research, 65% of people class…
The Ideal Teacher’s Teaching Reflections – Issue 2
Teaching Reflections from The Ideal Teacher’s Week – Week Beginning 23rd April 2018 In my current school, students don’t get a choice of the language that they take in Year 7 and they must continue with this same language (French, German or Spanish) all the way through to GCSE. This causes resentment towards the subject in some students, as well as a lack of motivation to work, since they haven’t had the choice in opting for this subject – a great challenge for any teacher! My mission, as The Ideal Teacher, is to be a teacher who engages all pupils in all lessons, gets them excited about language learning and…
The Ideal Teacher’s Reflective Teaching – Issue 1
Reflective Practice in Teaching This week was the first week back to school for The Ideal Teacher after the Easter holidays and although it went quickly, it was pretty intense! I came straight home on Monday at 5pm and went to sleep – not the ideal start to the week, but it shows how much and how quickly you can get out of the swing of your normal routine. Despite the shock to the system, I enjoyed my lessons and made some progress in my aim to becoming ‘The Ideal Teacher’ this week. If you’re interested in my journey of reflective practice in teaching, please read on! If reflective teaching…
Behaviour Management Strategies For New Teachers
Behaviour Management – Issues When I was doing my QTS training, one of the worries I often had was about classroom behaviour management strategies. I had loads of questions: ‘what if the students don’t listen?’ and ‘what if I can’t keep control of the classroom?’ This made me anxious every time I went into a lesson with a trickier class. Behaviour Management – Is There Really A Magic Answer? Even after reading all the literature I could find on behaviour management strategies by Bill Rogers, for example, and doing external behaviour management courses lead by training providers as part of my CPD, I couldn’t really find a magic answer to…
House Assembly Idea – Doing The Right Thing
Doing The Right Thing Assembly Idea – My First Ever! This week, my vertical form is up to take the house assembly and, apart from it being my first ever house assembly, it has been quite a stressful event! The theme for this term is ‘Taking Responsibility’ and seeing as it’s nearly Easter and thus, the end of term, the topic has been pretty well covered and we are running out of great assembly ideas based around this topic, hence the stress levels. A few weeks ago, I found a link to a YouTube video, which I thought could relate well to the assembly idea, cryptically entitled: A Video That Will…
