Where to find teaching resources

If you are a teacher then you will be all too familiar with lesson planning. This is a big part of a teachers work life as every lesson has to be planned in advance and a clear goal set which they aim for the pupils to achieve by the end of the lesson.

Children learn better with tasks that are exciting and keep them interested, so making your lesson fun will help the children take in the information easily.

It can be hard to think of ideas for teaching a specific subject or topic and that’s where the internet comes in. There is a wealth of lesson plans and aids to help teachers that are often available for free online. There is written instructions on how to set up and run the lesson and often you will even find worksheets that you can give out to the children to complete.

Be prepared for your interview as a teacher

When applying for a teaching role within a school if you are fortunate enough to be invited in for an interview then it makes sense to be as prepared as you can be for what you may be asked.

Here’s a couple of the most commonly asked interview questions and what they are looking for in your reply:-

What do you think an outstanding lesson should look like? – this is from the point of a lesson observation and what your interviewer wants to hear is things such as ‘high levels of engagement and high levels of progress from students as a result’ ‘ good quality of visual aids to help the lesson’ and ‘a great lesson plan with clear goals and objectives’.

Give an example of a successful behaviour management strategy that you have used in the past – here it may be worth adding a statement to your answer that say how you have managed behaviour issues in the past but also how you realise the importance of bringing this inline with the schools current sanctions policy (which you will have previously researched).

Education news – More pupils are reading for pleasure

A recent study has taken place of children at a primary school level with regard to their reading habits. The results were pretty positive showing an overall increase in the amount of students saying that they read at home in their spare time and only 10% of children saying that they didn’t enjoy reading at all.

The study showed that still more girls chose to read for pleasure that boys did however disappointingly over 50% of all of the children admitted that they preferred watch TV to reading a book.

A quarter of the children said that they did not believe that their parents cared if they chose not to read at home with the majority of these children being categorised as from a more disadvantaged background.

The study seemed to be pointing the figure at parents to help to further increase these statistics by helping to encourage their children to take time to read at home for fun.

Recruiting a new teacher – Things to look out for

When a school is looking to recruit a new teacher, particularly in a popular area, you may end up with hundreds of job applications to sift through with the aim of whittling the numbers down until you have a suitable number to offer an interview.

There are a few very simple filtering techniques that you could apply whilst looking through the application forms to ensure that you don’t waste time interviewing unsuitable candidates.

For example if the role that you are looking to fill involves an excellent use of spelling and grammar then applications with grammatical or spelling errors could be dismissed straight away.

Attention to detail is also key and following instruction, therefore if the application states black ink or block capitals and this isn’t followed then these too could be dismissed.

It may seem harsh but really conscientious people should be checking their application very carefully before submitting to ensure they give their best impression to a potential employer.

What is Steiner education?

The Steiner education system was developed by Austrian born Rudolph Steiner in 1919. The concept of this style of education is to cater to the needs of all children regardless of their ability, ethnicity, religion or class. The Steiner system aims to teach children holistically, nurturing them academically, spiritually, emotionally and physically.

There are schools in the UK who promote this style of education and believe that a more relaxed style of child-led education can create more rounded well balanced individuals. This environment that is less exam results focused and more about developing children throughout different phases of their childhood, is becoming increasingly popular amongst people that feel the current mainstream education methods are not working for their child.

However there are many that feel that this method of education is not suitable in real world terms where qualifications and structure are essential to everyday life and the majority of careers.

So what in theory sounds like modernised view on learning styles could in fact be detrimental to your child’s ongoing academic development.