Training to Teach in Primary Schools

A practical guide to School-based training and placements

Jane Medwell, Author

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781473913080, 9781473913073
• eBook ISBN: 9781473917583
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

Full of practical help and guidance, this is a must have for primary trainees on school experience, whether they are in a school-based or university-based teacher training programme.  It begins by helping trainees to plan their own journey through training and beyond.  Taking control of their own training in this way supports student teachers to approach the course with confidence, and secure their first teaching job.  The book provides guidance on: 

• adapting to working in school
• observing, planning and evaluating in school
• teaching on placement
• assessing, monitoring and reporting on children?s progress
• self-evaluation and how to pre-empt and resolve issues
• securing the first teaching job and succeeding in the NQT year

For student teachers, the experience of school-based training is exciting but also challenging - this book supports them throughout and prepares them for the journey ahead. 

Student feedback on this book:

"Having been on a variety of teaching placements myself, I know just how daunting and overwhelming experiences in school can be at times – even with a supportive mentor by your side! Hence, I felt that this book can smooth out and rectify those worries one may face during a school placement, and offers the reader a realistic insight into school experiences.  In my opinion, the most useful chapter by far is the 'Moving On' chapter near the end of the book. This explains how to conclude a school placement, what to expect from an interview, and even how to set out a CV for a teaching position. This was not something I expected to find in this book however it was very much welcomed and is, in fact, a very important, valuable part of the book. This is the type of book you can buy on your very first day of teacher training and use well into your days as a newly qualified teacher." - Jasmin, Primary Teacher Trainee (University of Northampton)

1

Managing your school based training

Learning outcomes

This chapter aims to take a long view of your school based training so that you can plan to achieve your goals. By the end of this chapter you should:

• understand the importance of the Teachers’ Standards and how to use them to inform your training plan;

• know what activities and review points your training plan may involve;

• know why a training plan is so important;

• understand your central role in managing your training plan.

‘A goal without a plan is just a wish’

(Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–1944))

The start of your school based training is a good time to consider the path you are about to take, whether you are embarking on a school based programme of Initial Teacher Training (ITT), or at the start of a single placement as part of a longer course. Your long term goals for your ITT are clear:

• to demonstrate that you have achieved the Teachers’ Standards across the key stages you are training to teach, so that you will be recommended for Qualified Teacher Status (QTS);

• to get a teaching job so that you can complete your induction period and gain full QTS;

• to set out on your Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) path with clear plans for your future.

However, the goals alone do not tell you how you are going to achieve them. To understand the steps that will enable you to realise your goals, you need a training plan. This will go through your ITT with you, as you collect evidence of your achievements as a basis for planning your steps towards success.

Your training plan

The broad outline of your training plan is usually a course programme provided by a school, an alliance of schools or a higher education institution (HEI). The course will include these elements.

• The chance to observe good teachers at work in both of the age phases you are training to teach;

• Experience of teaching with a teacher or as part of a teaching team;

• Teaching experience in at least two schools;

• A gradual build-up of your teaching, planning and assessment responsibilities;

• A period where you take responsibility for up to 80 per cent of the class teaching;

• Training sessions about key subject knowledge and pedagogic issues;

• Chances to audit and improve your subject, curriculum and professional knowledge.

All of these elements of your training are important, but every trainee tackles them in a different way and it is important that you use them to make the best possible progress. To do this, you must begin your planning with a realistic evaluation of what you can already do.

Understanding your own starting point

It is up to you to ensure that you can take advantage of the experiences which are most useful to you, and ask for specific experiences you need. To identify your training needs you should think carefully about your own knowledge and skills in the following areas:

• Knowledge of the Primary curriculum and the age phases before and after the two age phases for which you are training;

• Knowledge of the subjects you will teach and how the content can be structured;

• Knowledge about how children develop and learn;

• Interpersonal, presentation and communication skills;

• Knowledge of school systems and practices.

Most courses will help you to evaluate your current knowledge and skills as part of the recruitment process. Others will leave it until the start of your school experience. Reviewing your existing knowledge and skills, and deciding on your starting point for improvement, is a very personal activity and will depend on your previous experience. For example, if you have been working as a TA in a school, you may be familiar with school systems and practices in one school, but still have a long way to go in knowing about a range of schools, or how such systems and practices are developed. If you are studying an undergraduate degree in education you may have done modules about many aspects of the curriculum and feel confident about knowledge of the curriculum, but not how that curriculum is divided up in the school you are training in.

Whatever your previous experience, the success of your school based training is dependent on identification of your strengths and training needs. As a trainee teacher you must be able to discuss your strengths, achievements, learning targets and reflections, with reference to the Teachers’ Standards, with your school based mentor. Based on this discussion, you can identify your development targets and the actions you can take to achieve them. This is not a skill which will apply only to your Initial Teacher Training. As you go through your career, you will want to make the best of your annual performance review, which involves discussing your strengths, achievements, weaknesses and targets as a teacher.

MINI CASE

starting points

Martin

Martin has just finished his degree and is training in a SCITT partnership. He is in a Y2 base class and has distance learning materials from a university.

The things I am going to teach don’t worry me and my initial online audits of English and maths were both very successful. My degree is science based and I know I can research unknown areas of the curriculum. I feel confident about the university training materials and I have a day each week to study them. But my training school has turned out to be very different from the school I volunteered in during my university years. I feel like an imposter and I am worried about acting like a teacher. I need to know the school systems but, more than that, why things work like they do and there seem to be hundreds of things I need to know. I aim to start learning school systems for behaviour management, which is my biggest concern. If I can learn to promote good learning behaviour in Y2, they will see me as a teacher and I can plan useful lessons. My mentor had discussed a starting target of learning the school behaviour management policy, so have read it, observed in three classes and I am using it in my lessons.

Ivana

Ivana has a degree and a masters degree. She has worked as a learning assistant in Year 6 for the last two years.

I am training in the school I have worked in for the last two years and I think this has given me a head start in knowing the school, the children, the parents and teachers. I feel confident in school and know the policies. But the first month of training has been much more different than I expected. I have done audits of my knowledge of the main subjects and I find that there is a lot to work on. I didn’t realise just how much I would need to know to plan lessons for Year 5 and, as I was brought up abroad, I think I need to work on some areas people brought up here take for granted. I also did not realise how difficult it is to identify what you want the children to learn. As a TA, I worked from objectives and I hadn’t considered where they came from. My first goal is to be able to identify the right objectives, but I know that means I need to know the national curriculum, the school schemes of work, the children in the class and their targets. It is daunting.

Understanding your longer term goal: the Teachers’ Standards

The Teachers’ Standards set out the key areas that you should be able to demonstrate in your own practice, and you will be assessed against them, so it is important to understand them. The Teachers’ Standards are presented in three parts: The Preamble summarises the values and behaviour that teachers must demonstrate throughout their careers; Part One comprises the Standards for Teaching; Part Two comprises the Standards for Personal and Professional Conduct. You will need to demonstrate the values, behaviour and practices for all three.

The standards in Part One are presented as separate headings, each accompanied by a number of bulleted subheadings, which amplify the scope of each heading. These subheadings exist to be used to track progress against the standard, to identify areas where additional development might need to be observed, or to identify areas where a trainee (or teacher) is already demonstrating excellent practice relevant to that standard.

For example, take the standards concerning management of pupil learning behaviour (Part One, Standard 7), which says teachers must:

7. Manage behaviour effectively to ensure a good and safe learning environment

• have clear rules and routines for behaviour in classrooms, and take responsibility for promoting good and courteous behaviour both in classrooms and around the school, in accordance with the school’s behaviour policy

• have high expectations of behaviour, and establish a framework for discipline with a range of strategies, using praise, sanctions and rewards consistently and fairly

• manage classes effectively, using approaches which are appropriate to pupils’ needs in order to involve and motivate them

• maintain good relationships with pupils, exercise appropriate authority, and act decisively when necessary.

This is a succinct but detailed statement of behaviour management and each of these bullet points will demand sustained teaching and a good deal of evidence. These standards, or even the bullet points, are long-term targets which are too big to be addressed on a single occasion or by a single action. However, they can be broken down into targets and actions which guide you through your training.

MINI CASE

Martin’s first priority was behaviour management.

I started out thinking I needed to ‘crack’ behaviour management. After a week or so, I decided to focus my efforts a bit and try to do this in the next two weeks. I looked at the standard in the TS which said ‘have clear rules and routines for behaviour in classrooms, and take responsibility for promoting good and courteous behaviour both in classrooms and around the school, in accordance with the school’s behaviour policy’. So at my mentor meeting I suggested some targets to work towards it:

• Read the school behaviour policy (on the website);

• To find out what acceptable behaviour in all areas of the school is (and unacceptable);

• To use the same rewards and sanctions as my class teacher in my maths lesson next week.

It sounded relatively simple. That week I spent most of my time observing and asking questions. I read the school behaviour policy, observed two teachers during maths to see how they used the rewards and sanctions in the policy; lurked in corridors and the playground to make sure I knew what ‘good’ behaviour was in the class, the playground and the corridors and listened in on lots of little interactions between teachers and their children, which were frustratingly good natured. When I got to my maths lesson I used the same rules, rewards and sanctions as my class teacher, but my class were still very different when I was teaching them. I just did not have the same confidence as my class teacher, so I asked her about it. She was great and we spent the next four weeks working to make sure that I took the lead in lessons and scanned around the classroom to prevent minor disturbances, rather than reacting to them. The little things like being properly prepared, acting confident, knowing when not to intervene and recognising when an activity was coming to an end, took a long time to understand. Remembering to be ‘on task’ outside class and see the whole school as my responsibility felt really strange at first. It really took practice, but now I don’t even think about it. Bu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Advertisement
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• Introduction
• 1 Managing your School Based Training
• 2 Preparing for school based teacher training
• 3 Starting in school
• 4 Learning to observe, plan and evaluate in school based training
• 5 Learning to teach in school based training
• 6 Learning to assess, monitor and report on children’s progress
• 7 Individualised training: target-setting, observation and assessment in your school based training
• 8 The challenges of school based training
• 9 Moving on
• Glossary
• Index