Three weeks in....

It's been a while since my last post. My summer was filled with sunshine, a few (not enough) 5Ks and absolutely loads of apples!!  I also found time to research my classes for this academic year (8/1, 8/5, 9/3 and 10/6 plus a lesson a week with 7/7 to make my hours up to 20 (year 9 only on 4 hours a week)).   I was a little disappointed not to get any A level classes but the challenge of teaching middle and low ability students, many of whom, I had been told by colleagues, had low ATLs and were prone to misbehave in lessons, was something I was definitely up for - behaviour management had not been my forte during my PGCE!!

Three weeks in and I'm having a ball! It's baby steps at the moment but I'm becoming increasingly skilled at adapting on the fly and self assessing on WWW each lesson. My most feared class (13 year 10 set 6) are not as bad as expected though still hard work! Keeping them on task is physically as well as mentally draining...But I like them, even the ones I was told I probably wouldn't, so that's a bonus. I really want them to do well and not because it will reflect well on me, but because it will reflect well on them, if that makes sense?

My holiday reading on lean lesson planning, AfL and these two brilliant books:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0025433407
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0192860860

have saved me hours and I've focused my planning and saved me the hours I previously mostly wasted making perfect notebook and ppt resources for each lesson. Sometimes a board pen and a bunch of questions is all that's needed!

School's out for summer!

Yesterday was the last day of my School Direct ITT course and the end of my second week as an NQT.  Highs this week have been:
1) accompanying year 7 on a day trip to Cholmondeley Castle in Cheshire for a "Bushcraft Experience" where it turned out that whilst the pupils were kept busy by the experts, the accompanying teachers and pastoral staff got to enjoy the tranquility of a day in beautiful woodland with free food and refreshments. What a welcome break in the middle of a very hot and sticky week in school!
2) Some of my year 9s saying that they hoped to have me as their teacher next year :-)

Unfortunately there were lows too, in the form of a group of year 10s, too many of whom preferred talking amongst themselves to listening to me or their peers in my lessons on the Sine and Cosine Rules. I find behaviour management both physically and mentally exhausting, especially during P5. (Timetabling maths for year 10 in P5 three times a week is just silly!)

This weekend will be spent doing solely domestic stuff but on Monday I should get my timetable for next year so I may spend some of next week looking at student data and producing seat plans for September! Off to Dublin for the weekend next Friday evening though so will be very much in holiday mode towards the end of the week x

Highlights of my first week as an NQT

Teaching the Chain, Product and Quotient Rule to Y12 and watching them collaborate and teach each other, only needing me for the really tricky stuff!

Teaching surds to Y9 and throwing in some lovely surd manipulation problems (c/o Don Steward) that required the use of algebra and Pythagoras' theorem :-)

Finally, engaging some of my year 7s (gradient and intercept of a straight line) and year 10s (sine and cosine rules). Still not quite got the climate for learning exactly as I'd like it - hopefully having my own sets from the start of the school year will help with that!

I also updated my email signature today, from Trainee Teacher of Maths to Teacher of Maths :-)

food for thought for teachers new and old

I am the decisive element in the classroom.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.

I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis

will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or dehumanised

(From Haim Ginott's book 'Teacher and Child')

reality bites

Well, my PGCE course officially ended yesterday.

It was all a little bit underwhelming if I'm being honest...Not like when I got the results of my finals (a lifetime ago, back in 1988!) and I had my graduation and a long summer holiday ahead of me! Instead, I'm back in my final placement (and NQT) school for the next two weeks, teaching Y7 (straight line graphs), Y9 (surds), Y10 (sine and cosine rule) and Y12 (exponentials and natural logs) and hopefully meeting the Y9s who will be my tutor group from September...

Welcome to mynqtyear blog

Welcome to my first blog as an NQT...Indeed my first blog full stop.

I'm going to use this blog to share my experiences of being an NQT.

This time last year I was 27 years into a career as a Civil Servant and was desperate to find out whether my application for voluntary redundancy had been accepted, so that I could scratch the itch which my desire to teach maths in secondary schools had become. Today I presented my e-portfolio to my subject tutor and was confirmed as having passed my PGCE so I'm now a rookie teacher!!

Watch this space to find out more about my NQT year.

That's all for today - I have some celebrating to do!

x