Hello everyone! Sorry, it’s been such a long time since I wrote. It’s been a busy and hectic term. I start my 8-week teaching block on 27th January 2020 so I thought now would be a good time to reflect on my previous strategies and make any amendments before I don’t have time during block placement. I wrote a similar post after my second-year placement so you can read that here, or if you’re just starting your first placement it may be useful to read my First Year Primary Education Placement Review.
Use a to-do list more effectively:
Last year I used a weekly to-do list to write down everything I needed to do weekly and daily. However, I found that it would have been more useful to add in ‘lunchtime jobs’ and ‘weekly goals’. Hopefully, this should make it easier to organise my to-dos so that I know what I need to do before each lesson and after school. You can download my tod- list here.
Planning:
Planning is something that I spend hours doing so on this placement I want to use the school’s planning to 1) get me prepared for my NQT year when I will have to use the school’s planning 2) hopefully reduce my workload so I don’t spend hours making 5-page lesson plans for one lesson 3) make it more consistent with the school so TAs understand it and it can be reused by other teaching staff.
I’ve also redesigned my lesson plan so that it is landscape which should make my workload easier. If you want to have a look at a plank copy of my lesson plan you can access it here. Last year I found that doing the majority of my planning on the weekend was extremely useful as when I get back from placement on an evening I’m knackered and don’t want to do much work, so planning on a weekend meant that I got the bulk of it done, however, it did mean that I wasn’t doing much else on a weekend which wasn’t particularly healthy.
Behaviour Management:
Behaviour management has always been something I’ve been worried about but it wasn’t until this year that I’ve needed to firm up my behaviour management plan. The class I’m in is quite chatty and even my class teacher admits that I need to be on-it with behaviour management. Therefore, I’m going to spend some time to create my own behaviour management plan and keep it in my planning folder. I also used to put it on every lesson plan but I’ve removed that box which makes the plan less lengthy. I found watching For Teachers an extremely useful YouTube channel and there’s lots more videos that I want to watch which seem like they’ll be really useful.
Work off my USB stick:
Risky? Probably. But this made my life so much easier last year. It meant that all my plans and slideshows were up-to-date and I didn’t need to keep moving things over from my computer. I was emailing all of my lesson plans and slideshows to my class teacher before the lesson so if I did lose my USB stick I did have a backup. However, this year I think I’ll try and automatically sync my files to Google Drive just as an extra backup.
Create a class grid:
Over the Christmas break, I want to create a class grid that identifies which children have EAL and children’s personalities which will help me to identify which children need additional support and how I can provide this during lessons.
Meal prep:
One of the things I want to get much better this placement is meal prepping and my food organisation. Last year I resorted to buying a meal deal every day which was expensive so this year I want to meal plan on Sunday so that I can just put my lunch in my bag on the morning. Luckily, my boyfriend is able to have dinner ready for when I’m back after placement but if not, I’d have to utilise the slow cooker and be very organised with making food. If you want some meal ideas check out my Meal Ideas For Students post.
Other Activites:
Last year I started swimming twice a week during placement which I really enjoyed and is something that I want to continue this year. Even if I can’t manage to go twice a week I want to do some sort of exercise after placement to keep myself fit.
Thank you so much for reading, I hope you found it useful. If you have any of your own placement goals or questions please leave them in the comments below. Good luck on your placement, I hope it goes well!
Izzy's Adventures 