Life After Teacher Training

 Hi there my lovely readers, Today I wanted to provide a little reflection about elements of teaching that I have recently tried after flicking through a new book that was provided by my school. There are many sections of 'Teaching Walkthrus' (Sherrington and Caviglioli) that hold value, the first that has peaked my interest as part of being our departments literacy advocate is the section 'Plan for Reading'. This double spread talks through 5 ideas of how you can ensure you embed more reading time into your curriculum without any subject specific context allowing teachers of any subject to adapt them accordingly and therefore it can promote literacy in all lessons in a meaningful and positive manner. As a school, we have adopted an 'affix of the week' approach in morning guidance. This helps our learners to break down any words they do not understand into its parts, to try and make sense of it independently, such as the suffix 'ology' meaning study of. ...

8 weeks in... It has been a while and schools are now fully open after the 1st  UK lockdown of 2020, having experienced the rush of starting at my new school fully, I can say I absolutely love my job! However, in current times, there are some major drawbacks.  As we have now begun a 2nd national lockdown, households aren't to mix with other households (unless in a support bubble) and yet some secondary teachers are mixing with approx 200 students per day in classes of 30+ in enclosed spaces with no more than some hand sanitiser and a mask for PPE, I do wonder how 4 weeks of in-school education (that could transfer online in most circumstances) is more important than peoples lives. Yes, it is easier to inspire learners within the classroom, yes learners mental health is vitally important, but so are the lives of them, their families and their teachers. A rota approach would be more effective in reducing case numbers of Covid, whilst still maintaining some in school contact. Wit...