First of all, apologies for the lack of posting this week. It has been one of the toughest weeks I've ever had as a teacher. Moving to a new school is always challenging; getting used to a new staff, a new school routine, a new building, a new route to school, usually a new class level, and new children and parents. But this week, I had some personal stuff going on too, and me, being a natural worrier, found myself quite anxious and uptight, and low and behold, woke up Wednesday morning feeling like death!! I never EVER count down the days to the weekend, but I could not wait for 2.40 on Friday! Straight to the chemist and stocked up (Thanks to the lovely girl in Lloyds Pharmacy on the Crumlin Road for giving me a hand) and slept for about 15 hours. Woke up this morning like a new woman :)
So hopefully you've an idea of how to go about your planning and preparation after the last post. Now you need to get your classroom management and classroom organisation sorted.
As regards classroom management, that's a very personal thing. Some teachers like different things, others don't like something else. One thing I will say is, whatever you choose as your method of classroom management: BE CONSISTENT! The children will respond better to your consistency and the routine will help all children understand it. I have been asked SO many times - what food can I bring for my breaks and lunch? Some people are serious repeat offenders, and bring the same thing every day. Others like to spice it up a bit and change their food daily. Either way, it's nice to have a selection of healthy, nutritious and most of all, easy lunches and snacks. So I'm going to have some suggestions here, and if there's any recipes, I will pop them into the Recipe Ideas section of the website :)
Continuing on from my first blog post, this post will focus on planning and preparation. The dip year is like a marathon, so you need to pace yourself and be prepared.
The dip inspectors have criteria they use when inspecting a teacher for probation. See here for more information: http://www.lec.ie/criteria-used-inspection-work.html Planning and preparation is what most people dread, whether doing the dip or not! (Trust me; it doesn’t just finish with your last inspection!!) And to be fair, the level of paperwork required for the dip is more than what is expected for regular, day-to-day teaching, but it has to be done. So I’ll tell you what I did for my dip, as I found it worked well for me! Just to start, I want to say - I am not an expert, nor do I claim to be! All information is either from personal experience or research, or a combination of the two.
So, with that out of the way, I’m here to discuss the ‘DREADED DIP’!! It’s like the title of a horror film! And like some films, it can be broken up into a few parts – I’m thinking Hunger Games! So this will be broken into a couple of posts. So here’s the first post of a few :) |
AuthorLorraine O'Connell is a 25 year old primary school teacher, interested in health and fitness. Archives
January 2016
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