01-03-2019
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Starting your NQT year in September? Feeling a little overwhelmed? Emma Ashmore, from our Instagram community, shares all the things she wishes she had been told before her NQT year.
Stepping into the unknown can be daunting. Throw in 30 wide-eyed small humans and the result can be terrifying! So, here is everything that I wish I had known before starting my NQT year!
New beginnings
Even if you are not sure which age/stage you will be teaching come August, it’s best to have a bank of resources ready for the first week of term that are designed to help you better understand the children sitting in front of you. There are SO many great worksheets, displays and games online for this but something simple such as a circle time each day of week one can really help gain a deeper understanding of what you and they hope to achieve in the coming year.
Wait, they never taught me how to use backing paper in teacher training?
Whilst it’s great to have a classroom full of beautiful stationery, creative wall displays and colourful bunting, you need to make sure the environment suits both you and the children in your class. For example, I will be shying away from very bright colours this year as I have two pupils with dyslexia who cannot cope in a highly colour-stimulated environment. Also, do not over-laminate! A mentor of mine once told me that a display should be 80% the children’s contributions and 20% of yours.
Organisation, Organisation, Organisation
Planning, assessment, marking, parent’s meetings – everything – will run so much smoother if you keep on top of the workload at the time. An important aspect of organisation is deciding how you wish to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Personally, I don’t do any work outside of school beyond scrolling through my teacher IG account and just accept that teaching is a profession with a never-ending to-do list and I am not in fact superhuman. Some more top tips for an easier life would be:
“Miss, I’m finished”
This is definitely a sentence most teachers dread hearing and will usually occur 5 minutes into what was planned to be a 40-minute task. My solution to this is creating a challenge area and providing children with their own challenge jotter to record their tasks in. Here are some of the learning tasks I use on a daily basis to further challenge my class:
Did we just become best friends?
Although you may be a new face in the building, every teacher has been an NQT at some point and will understand the challenges, tears, laughter and frustrations better than anyone else. If you can find someone who makes you laugh when you feel like locking yourself in the art cupboard, that will share ideas, resources, cups of tea (and if you’re extremely lucky, their wall stapler) with you then you’re onto a winner.
Time flies when you’re having fun (no really, you will have fun)
I can honestly say that this upcoming year will be the quickest yet most rewarding year of your life. The feelings of nerves, anxiety and excitement that you feel before starting your NQT are totally normal! Relax, enjoy the year and remember that there really is no such thing as a silly question!
Operoo is a school operations and productivity platform. We help thousands of schools and trusts to eliminate slow, expensive and repetitive tasks. Operoo helps schools streamline and digitise processes, drastically reducing the associated costs: From student pre-admissions, permission forms, payments, and school trips; to medical information and emergency contacts, incident reporting, staff agreements, and more in over 100 languages.
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There’s nothing special about the energy we sell. In fact, it’s exactly the same energy as all our competitors provide. But there is something special about the way we do it. Where others complicate the process, we simplify it. Where others confuse customers with hidden terms, we’re an open book. And where others do all they can to make as much money from their customers as possible, we do all we can to make as little. Everything we do, we do it differently. Our customers are a privilege. One we’ll never take advantage of.
Securus provide market-leading monitoring solutions to safeguard students on ALL devices both online and offline. We also offer a full monitoring service, where we carry out the monitoring on behalf of the school, freeing up valuable staff resources. From the smallest school to large MAT groups, Securus offers safeguarding protection for all!
Vivify partners with schools across the country to hire out their facilities outside of school hours to enable them to generate much needed revenue that can be invested back into their facilities, teachers, and student experience. Opening up school facilities for communities to get together can improve mental and physical wellbeing, boost confidence, tackle loneliness and help people feel more positive about life.
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Robotical makes Marty the Robot - a walking, dancing coding robot that makes programming fun and engaging for learners as young as 5. Our robots come with a full Learning Platform that has complete teaching resources, to make lesson planning a breeze.