PGCE - Current Students Thread

Reassuring to see others feeling the same as me.

Had a bit of a better day today:

- Managed to get my finger ID at last! The guy still wouldn't pick up his phone so I thought screw it and just went over to his office and knocked. Thankfully he was in and did it for me

- My mentor seemed a bit friendlier and was in good spirits.

- managed to basically get my first lesson plan done and feel slightly better about the lesson now.

Only downside was during the year 8 class they had an exam; my mentor got them seated and doing the test and I did the time reminders and things. Went well but at the end one of the cheeky girls said to me 'Sir, are you going to be teaching us again?' So I said I would over the next few months and she rolled her eyes and sighed as in she didn't want me to.

Now I know we're not meant to take things personally but I have to admit, it hurt me a bit. However I think it may be because she's used to causing havoc with my mentor but from what she's seen of me so far she knows she won't be able to get away with the same attitude in my lessons.

Anyway, won't dwell on it.

Things looking up but still feel really shattered and a bit fed up with how cynical some of the teachers are and the attitude of some of the pupils - there's been a few moments where I've thought, what have I got myself into here? But I know there's going to be days like that.

Onwards and upwards!

Does anybody else have to do medium-term plans for their PGCE? I'm struggling with mine... how am I supposed to know what activities I'll be doing for a lesson in 6 weeks time

Do you have to put the actual activities on them?

Generally plans which are for more than weekly would only have what is being covered (learning objectives) and perhaps some possible ideas for activities and resources, but not set in stone. If course everyone plans differently and some find different things helpful, but I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time planning those future lessons in detail because what if what you want to cover changes?! Then you've wasted that time planning. Whereas if its just an overview of what you'll be covering you can annotate quickly to show that you've changed it and why.

Xxx



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Thanks for your reply, really helpful I definitely think I'm spending too long on it. It's just more paperwork that I have to complete I'd rather just not have the activities/resources section (which I think is more useful when doing individual lesson or weekly plans rather than half-termly plans). I think I'll just jot a few activities down and like you say just annotate it when I change it.

The headings for the planning grid are: key issues (which for History means enquiry questions for the lesson), concepts, content, resources, activities, teaching and learning methods, knowledge skills and understanding, and links with other subjects. Ughhh.

Lesson plans done for my first two proper lessons which are this week (year 7 Wednesday and year 8 Thursday).

Both plans took me 3 hours to do - I found the year 8 class much easier to plan for because they're a top set and doing comprehension using Touching The Void. I also feel I know the class a bit better than the year 7 one as I've seen them more over the last few weeks and took an informal lesson with them before half term. The worst bit is correlating your PowerPoint with your plan.

Year 7 are doing newspaper articles and are the very bottom set so like level 2 and 3 (very low because of the social area etc) but are well behaved and there's only 12 in the class. I'm going to get them to match words to do with newspaper sections (headlines captions etc) with the definition on the board as a starter then hand out headlines and pictures I've come up with and get them in pairs to come up with captions that are appropriate.

Year 8 I've got a comprehension starter on character in the book, then model a PEE sentence and get them to write a paragraph using PEE themselves and finally set them a homework task to find the meanings of key words used in the book (climbing jargon)

The year 8 class will be a lot more challenging I feel because they aren't the best behaved at times. I'm wondering whether to do a seating plan but then I know that will waste ten minutes of the lesson and I'm being observed by my mentor. I want to make sure everything gets done for them to learn.

I'm feeling nervous but if I can get through them and prove they learned something then I'll be chuffed.

Wish me luck!

Lesson plans done for my first two proper lessons which are this week (year 7 Wednesday and year 8 Thursday).

Both plans took me 3 hours to do - I found the year 8 class much easier to plan for because they're a top set and doing comprehension using Touching The Void. I also feel I know the class a bit better than the year 7 one as I've seen them more over the last few weeks and took an informal lesson with them before half term. The worst bit is correlating your PowerPoint with your plan.

Year 7 are doing newspaper articles and are the very bottom set so like level 2 and 3 (very low because of the social area etc) but are well behaved and there's only 12 in the class. I'm going to get them to match words to do with newspaper sections (headlines captions etc) with the definition on the board as a starter then hand out headlines and pictures I've come up with and get them in pairs to come up with captions that are appropriate.

Year 8 I've got a comprehension starter on character in the book, then model a PEE sentence and get them to write a paragraph using PEE themselves and finally set them a homework task to find the meanings of key words used in the book (climbing jargon)

The year 8 class will be a lot more challenging I feel because they aren't the best behaved at times. I'm wondering whether to do a seating plan but then I know that will waste ten minutes of the lesson and I'm being observed by my mentor. I want to make sure everything gets done for them to learn.

I'm feeling nervous but if I can get through them and prove they learned something then I'll be chuffed.

Wish me luck!

Good luck! I'm sure it will be absolutely fine

I've got my first lesson tomorrow. Year 8 set 4, on Bloody Mary. Hopefully will go well! There are only 12 of them and I know them pretty well anyway.

I only have two lessons left to plan for next week but my word am I coming unstuck when trying to think of what to do. It's for year 9 and 10 who I find really difficult to teach. Not that they're badly behaved or anything. I just can't seem to plan effectively for them!

Have you tried a structured debate? I've hardly ever seen them used in classrooms, yet can't think of a better way to get students engaged and learning! Maybe it's just me.

Thanks for the tip but I'm doing MFL and I'm not sure if they could handle a debate in French! They're only year 10 after all. Might be good to try with year 12 though...

I'm in my third week of teaching at my first placement, week 1 was maths lessons every day, week 2 was literacy every day. And now it's maths and literacy every day so 3hr of teaching each day.
Today I've had to take a day off due to a sickness bug, I was tempted to power throigh but I know it would only make it worse.
First observation tomorrow - I'm really struggling to get decent amounts of work out of them. Year 5 are not my best age range.
Can anyone give me tips on how to make the British empire exciting for a year 5 class?!

I would suggest:

-Get them to work out vocabulary themselves as much as possible - match-up activities like card sorts, sheets or powerpoints where they have to match things up, or TaskMagic if you have it are good for this.

-Things where they have to all respond quickly, eg: to translate a phrase using the correct tense. Mini-whiteboards are really good for this, if you have access to them. Basically anything to stop them being lazy and making sure they're getting plenty of practice of key structures by drilling them repeatedly.

-Lots of discussion of how to improve things, getting ideas from the class and adding to them to write a good sentence together.
eg: Je joue au foot --> Can we add some extra detail? Time phrase? When? Who with? --> D'habitude je joue au foot avec mes copains apres le college. --> WHY? We need connectives... --> D'habitude je joue au foot avec mes amis apres le college, parce que c'est amusant et bon pour la sante. --> Other people's opinions? --> Cependant, ma mere pense que c'est une perte de temps et elle prefere la natation. --> Make a contrast/ use another tense --> Aujourd'hui, je n'ai pas joué au foot puisque j'étais fatigué.
Obviously what you can include depends on where they're at with tenses, etc., but there's always something you can do to extend things and it helps them see how to improve their own writing.

-Reading tasks where the initial task is a GCSE style question (eg: true or false/who does the statement apply to/short answers in English) and the extension task focuses on them finding good vocab/phrases in the text so they can use them in future.

-Currently I'm doing a lot of work on tenses because my Y10s have specifically asked for it. So I've been doing things like match the time phrase to the correct tense, or find and correct the mistakes in a particular tense...

Hope this gives you some ideas! Let me know if you need any help and I'll do my best, if I'm not drowning under my NQT workload too much!

First observed lesson done went fairly well on the whole - the teacher that observed me said my main positives were that my lesson was appropriate for a bottom set year 7, the starter linked to the rest of the lesson, my pupil inclusion was good with good plenary questions as well. She said I had a calming persona that rubbed off on the pupils.

Areas for improvement - modelling and clear instructions. Absolutely agree - definitely need to be clearer about what I want them to do and give good examples beforehand. More praise for attempting an answer and not to answer for pupils at times.

Behaviour was fine.

I then did a starter for year 8 straight after which I felt went superbly and the mentor agreed - I was authoritative (surprised even myself. Raised my voice only once and I did it in such a way that I could see shock from some of the pupils) didn't talk over them and explained my expectations when someone is talking, that everyone must be quiet and listen.

Really enjoyed it and feel more confident for tomorrow's full lesson with that class now. The starter was meant to be for tomorrow but my mentor and I agreed that because I'm giving them new seats and books I wouldn't have time so I'd rather get that done tomorrow so they can learn better through the coming months and I've already delivered the starter now, just today instead of tomorrow.

Feeling positive now but know there's a lot I still need to work on.

Had an awful year 7 lesson today. The whole thing was pretty much pointless until the last 10 minutes because I spent the majority of the lesson dealing with really annoying low-level misbehaviour. I think I used non-verbal communication really well though - crossing my arms and standing at the front of the room definitely had a much higher impact than me beginning to raise my voice. Didn't want to raise my voice so opted for the death stare (again)

I think next lesson I'm going to take some time to make a proper seating plan in an attempt to learn some names and move the more disruptive pupils. Problem at the moment is that most of the loud and disruptive ones are at the back together, and all the quiet ones are at the front. Which will definitely need changing!

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