PGCE - Current Students Thread

For an lesson interview:

- is it advised to always have 10 mins of your lesson for the plenary? My mentor says different, arguing that the government are not in favour of 10 minutes chunk of plenary at the end of the lesson. Instead, they want more mini plenaries into lesson. I don't mind getting rid of the 10 mins of plenary that I usually do, but for an interview lesson is it advised?

Also, is the success criteria told to the children straight after the learning objective or just before the chn do the independent activities?

Thanks

Omg it scares the **** outta me that we are expected to be cool with a 22+ hr timetable in six months. I honestly don't feel any more confident in front of a class than the day I started in September.

I mean, I'm applying for jobs ans everything but I realistically don't think I can do any of them.

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So my second placement has people my father is related to, I say that because they're supposed to be my 'cousins' children but we haven't spoke in years and families aren't on speaking terms. HOWEVER, some of the girls came to my office today and said - 'we know her she's related to us' *waves* and the guy was like 'miss are these your friends', me 'no, not my friends'.

How do I handle this situation? I know they will come back sometime, perhaps even tell others - I had no clue they were here at this school, annoying.

I still feel like a bit of a 3rd wheel and its been 4 days at this new placement, they haven't managed to get me set up on a laptop and the one given to me was a 'brick' in my mentor's words..

I have another question - I don't know if i should be strict, like stand up behind your chairs strict or just friendly/strict i hope that makes sense, cos i overheard a boy saying 'she could smile jeez'
when mentor said id be taking next lesson.. i put the cow face on so they don't think they can push my buttons sort of thing.. confused

is anyone here thinking of doing their nqt abroad? suggestions for agencies who are good with this? still in 2 minds but just an option.

How long is the interview lesson? I don't think I've ever devoted 10 minutes to a plenary - 5-6 is normally how much time I dedicate to a plenary.

If you have the full lesson - 50 mins/1 hour, I'd recommend doing mini plenaries/AFL throughout your lesson and then wrapping it up with a 5 min plenary.

For both of my interview lessons (and I now have an NQT position for July), I made my lessons cyclical with the starter and the plenary. This depends on your subject area though, of course. I only had 30 minutes in both of those lessons so I used a song as a starter and then revisited the song at the end asking what pupils thought about it based on what they had learned in the lesson.

My interview lesson is 30 minutes long and its a maths lesson! So did you have mini plenaries throughout the lesson?

Just curious, how long have most of you spent on the introductions of your lesson?

I feel like I spend a very very long time talking to the children. It's not pure monologue, but they're still not doing independent work for at least a good 20-25 minutes.

Just curious, how long have most of you spent on the introductions of your lesson?

I feel like I spend a very very long time talking to the children. It's not pure monologue, but they're still not doing independent work for at least a good 20-25 minutes.

Just curious, how long have most of you spent on the introductions of your lesson?

I feel like I spend a very very long time talking to the children. It's not pure monologue, but they're still not doing independent work for at least a good 20-25 minutes.

Are you primary or secondary? Either way I think a good rule of thumb is not to talk at them (without them doing anything) for more minutes than their age plus one minute.

I'm primary and I spend about 10 to 15 minutes on an introduction. That usually includes an activity though, so not much 'talking at' the children. In maths we do a 5-10 min starter before that as well but that's very active.

Ah you have your timings down much better than I do!
That's much closer to what my class teacher has.

Primary. According to that rule I should spend at most about 10 minutes talking with them, but even doing things like talk partners, getting children to write down their answers on mini-whiteboards on the carpet will just consume 3-4 minutes already of the introduction. If you throw in a mini-activity on the carpet, then it suddenly becomes significantly longer?



Ah you have your timings down much better than I do!
That's much closer to what my class teacher has.

Two lessons tomorrow and I've not planned either of them. I've just had no motivation tomorrow.

I think I'm just going to go to bed now, get up at 6 and plan before I leave for school at half 7.

Eep good luck. My placement expects everything in atleast 48 hours before hand so the most i do at the weekend lesson planning wise is perhaps some for thursday and friday and some last minute adjustments to the early week ones to work on certain aspects (differentiation etc)

My first placement was like that but second placement don't really want anything in advance! which is lucky but also bad because I know what I'm like!

Yeah my first placement was really chilled so id always end up working on resources for hours the night before, in some ways this has really helped me be organised and has made things far less stressful planning wise, now all the stress is in actually just teaching the lesson well and doing our assignments!

My new timetable for second placement works out so that Monday and Tuesday are super stressful and the rest of the week is pleasant. It is good I guess, but means Sunday nights are the worst because I just end up dreading the next couple of days :/

Really can't wait for June. I am literally crossing off the days in my placement handbook . It feels like there's still a lot to do yet though. The end definitely isn't in sight just yet.

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Ahh same! Well, my week A monday's are a full day and then the rest of the week is quite chilled - tuesday are just observation days so it's a bit of a rest :')

Only 19 school days for me till Easter break!

Kinda dreading when my timetable goes up to the full five days after easter!

And it's only 4 months today until my NQT job starts... D: