Photo by Katerina Holmes on Pexels.com As a young teacher beginning my career just after the turn of the millennium, my first classroom was fitted with the ultimate in modern technology – a roller board incorporating both a blackboard and a whiteboard! I also shared an OHP (OverHead Projector) with my colleague in the room … Continue reading Setting the albatross free: Teaching without PowerPoint
Photo by Yevgeniya Fedorova on Pexels.com I am not a hill walker. I love visiting the Lake District, but I would much rather a nice walk on the flat around a lake (perhaps with a quick stop at a tea shop) than battle up a hill which quickly turns into a mountain. Why? Because I … Continue reading Feeling despondent? Why beginning teachers need to keep on climbing
This blog has been developed from a twitter thread (27/2/2022) relating to supporting children and young people to understand the situation in Ukraine. Photo by Santiago Sauceda Gonzu00e1lez on Pexels.com The teaching of sensitive and controversial issues in school is always contentious. Teachers are tasked with navigating the finely balanced rights of the child to … Continue reading Teaching children about sensitive and controversial current affairs: Talking to children in schools about the situation in Ukraine
Photo by Sanndy Anghan on Pexels.com I feel convinced of the need to keep good, committed teachers in the profession, and am therefore pragmatic about the fact that teachers sometimes find themselves falling ‘out of love’ with their current situation even if they still feel committed to the overall endeavour of education. For the vast … Continue reading Making a move: How can I switch from primary to secondary history teaching?
Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com “How are you finding online teaching now?” I asked one of our alumni ECTs at the end of February last year - they had contacted me at the start of January feeling anxious about how to make the move into remote learning during the lockdown (you can read about … Continue reading Remote Opportunities: becoming a teacher during Omicron
Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.com The start of the lesson hooked pupils into the learning beautifully and Tom, the beginning teacher, valiantly moves the class onto the first independent task. Within minutes the lesson, which promised so much, has been overtaken by a ripple of off task behaviour. By 5 minutes in only the 3 most compliant pupils have achieved anything even vaguely resembling a response to part … Continue reading Targetting Tom’s Transitions: Moving smoothly between phases within a lesson
Within the pages of every teenage girls’ magazine you'll find a flow chart quiz which, if taken, will allow you to work out what your ideal pet/ band/ TV Soap character/ boyfriend would be. As a younger teenage girl who had laid her hands on a contraband 'Just 17', I would avidly pour over the … Continue reading Finding your way with Questioning: A practical approach for getting better at questioning
You can read a recent research paper I've co-authored via this hyperlink: Crooks, V., London, L. and Snelson, H. (2021) ’Singing from the same hymn-sheet’: Exploring school-based mentors’ perceptions of the role of HEI subject tutors in ITE partnerships’, TEAN journal, 13(1), pp.3-16. Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com
Photo by Vojtech Okenka on Pexels.com I love baking and all things cake. So, having recently written about what mentors might learn from Strictly, I now turn my attention to what beginning/ early career teachers and their mentors might learn from Bake Off and the nature of the three baking challenges included in each episode. … Continue reading Showstopper Lessons: What Beginning Teachers and their Mentors can learn from GBBO.
Photo by Marko Zirdum on Pexels.com Watching Strictly Come Dancing this past weekend I was struck by the way the judges gave feedback to the contestants in week 1 of the competition. Unsurprisingly my mind turned to the beginning teachers just starting out on their own journey from novice to competent over the course of … Continue reading Strictly Come Teaching: Giving feedback to novices
Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com Periodically social media is liberally sprinkled with negativity about ‘teacher training'. This isn't the kind of negativity about teaching that prompted the 'Those who can, teach’ campaign in 2000, rather this is negativity about the training itself. For those considering embarking on teacher training who stumble across these posts, … Continue reading Education NOT Training: The uncomfortable truth about effective initial teacher education
Photo by Ekrulila on Pexels.com If the pandemic period has convinced me of anything it is that developing professionals with agency is vital for society. The ability to imagine an alternative to what is already known and practised, and to find a way of enacting that imagining, has been part of our daily experience over … Continue reading Turning on the head of a pin: Why developing agency in beginning teachers matters
Not that long ago, to my shame, I found that 15 minutes had passed as I scoured the web for the ‘perfect’ picture of an iceberg to illustrate a point about bilingualism in the classroom. Why did I do this? Did I imagine that my adult audience would struggle with the concept of an iceberg? … Continue reading Perfectionism and the honourable art of being good enough
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com During her first placement Tina proved to be a good teacher in the making. She has sound ideas about what she wants to achieve in the classroom, is organised and a great team player. She was quick out of the blocks at the start of the course and really … Continue reading Teflon Tina: How to support a beginning teacher struggling to act on advice
Photo by Max Fischer on Pexels.com As we stand on the precipice of returning to full classroom teaching after the most recent lockdown I’ve begun wondering how our beginning and early career teachers might be feeling. It seems I’m not alone in this thought. Indeed, shortly after having conversation with one of my own PGCE … Continue reading I don’t like Mondays: Advice for beginning teachers on making a positive return to post-lockdown teaching
It is a tricky job writing a reference for a beginning teacher who may then be compared with more experienced colleagues, but where to begin in the middle of a Pandemic when their initial teacher education year has been so disrupted and unusual? I first wrote a blog about writing references for trainee teachers in … Continue reading Writing job references for beginning teachers: Recommending Rahul, the Pandemic Edit
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com The pandemic has demonstrated the strength and versatility of cooperation and collaboration in our ITE partnership. This has been shown through the support and flexibility of our school partners joining with us to train beginning teachers, and through the ways in which the University PGCE has worked to develop … Continue reading An Ode to our History ITE Mentors: A journey into training to be a teacher virtually, Part 3
This week on the University of Nottingham ITE programmes our beginning teachers have been looking at how we can teach effective lessons in a remote learning context. As part of this work they were tasked with exploring a range of different online learning tools which could be used in their teaching. Erin Brady, one of … Continue reading Bamboozled by remote learning apps? Making sense of different online learning tools
Helping early career teachers and training teachers to move their lessons into a virtual space Photo by Yan on Pexels.com This week I was contacted by a former tutee who is an early career teacher. They asked if I could talk with them about the challenges they are facing moving to a live online classroom. … Continue reading Finding your feet with remote (and online) teaching
by Victoria Crooks and Sally Burnham Photo by Julia M Cameron on Pexels.com This year has been full of technological and pedagogical challenges, not least the speed with which teachers have had to transition to providing remote learning for their pupils. When schools closed in March 2020 it was all so new to us – … Continue reading From classroom to computer: Equipping training teachers to teach online
Photo by Vlad Cheu021ban on Pexels.com “Why aren’t they just able to cope? They need to be more resilient.” UK National lockdown in March 2020 threw all of us into a land of unknowns. In education, carefully crafted spiralling curricula was suddenly disrupted and at every level new ways had to be found to fulfil … Continue reading Lessons in resilience for early career teachers
Back in March I wrote this blog for the UoN Primary Team's excellent Blog considering six ideas for developing primary history, along with some practical strategies. I now reproduce it here in case it is helpful to a wider audience. “Mum you’ll never guess what happened today!” These words we’re delivered by my 7-year-old with … Continue reading From caveman to concepts: Making history count in the primary classroom
I remember the moment I was first asked to be a NQT mentor. The news was delivered as a fait accompli, and my heart sank. It wasn't that I didn't want to do it, I did, but I had just gained my first middle leader promotion and was in the middle of a MA. I … Continue reading Why bother mentoring a beginning teacher? What’s in it for me?
Around this time last year I wrote about how beginning teachers could make the most of their final weeks as PGCE students in the classroom. This year, they do not have classrooms, they only have the virtual PGCE programme to prepare them for NQT in the absence of critical practical experience. I asserted previously that … Continue reading Supporting your new NQT colleague to THRIVE amidst a global pandemic
Photo by Ingo Joseph on Pexels.com Before I begin this blog it is important to establish that I am utterly convinced of the importance of partnership in Initial Teacher Education. Training teachers ‘outside’ the classroom environment in a purely theoretical realm is just not possible; theoretical knowledge cannot be easily interpreted by teachers into effective … Continue reading Embracing the space: A journey into training to be a teacher virtually
Photo by Ivan Bertolazzi on Pexels.com It is at around this point in the ITT year when many training teachers begin to get into their stride. They are no longer complete novices; they have built a familiarity with their placement setting and its rules and procedures, they are understanding how to fit into the departmental … Continue reading Moving beyond delivery: The thorny issue of competency
Photo by energepic.com on Pexels.com Wanda had started to struggle. It was small things at first, a partially completed lesson plan with the promise that the full version would follow and a set of books she’d taken home for marking accidently left in her kitchen on the day they were due to be returned. Finally, … Continue reading Worrying about Wanda: Supporting your mentee’s well-being and workload
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Edward was a quiet, some might say timid, chap. When he started his teacher training it was hard to imagine him standing in front of a hardened year 8 class, let alone 'managing' them during a wet and windy Friday period 5. Edward was great when working with pupils one … Continue reading Creation not Emulation: Developing teacher persona
Photo by Nikolay Draganov on Pexels.com "Come on then, what makes someone a good PGCE student?", I was asked by a friend during the summer break. The faces of those successful beginning teachers I've supported over the past few years flashed through my mind. How do you answer that question? All of those people successful, … Continue reading Optimistic, Observant and Open: What makes a successful PGCE/ ITE student?
As we pop into school in the next two weeks for results days, it's worth giving a thought to how we can support new colleagues (whether NQTs or more experienced teachers) joining our departments and schools in the new academic year. How can effective mentoring and induction support them and benefit your department?
Becoming a History Teacher 