Making life easier as a teacher

There are a few things that I routinely do at work that make my life inside the classroom just that bit easier. In this post I’ll outline a couple of these. Hopefully they’ll be useful for a new ITT or ECT!

Lesson templates

I know that there’s debate on Twitter about whether using PowerPoints are worth it for lessons, and there are definitely lessons I won’t have any formal resources like that for. Practical lessons (which I’ll talk more about in a future blog) and lessons where we’re practising application of knowledge (particularly with older students) mean I’ll not use them. I also sometimes like to ‘chalk and talk’ using a visualiser here and there.

However, I like to use PowerPoints for the majority of my lessons. I’m only in my fourth year teaching, and whilst I like to think I’m pretty good at my job, I won’t remember every key point that the students need off the top of my head. Having a (personal) PowerPoint template means that:

1. There are suggestions of methods / tasks I can use in the lessons to reduce my thinking time about how to plan a lesson from scratch — this is something our department is working on to improve the standard of our resources for non-specialists
2. There are embedded spaces for scaffolding (with ideas of how I could do this) and challenge questions, to reduce the ‘tweaking’ required for different classes
3. I can tweak the lesson to account for any issues straight away (or as soon as possible afterwards) so I don’t have to do a whole amount the next time I’m teaching it. It means that I’m slowly producing a huge bank of higher-quality resources I can rely on later.

Collaborative planning

On a similar vein, collaborative planning is also key. Clearly I can’t collaboratively plan on my own, and so this is where the rest of my department comes in. We’ve allocated topics at each key stage to ‘look after’, and we are in charge of ensuring that the resources there are high quality, and clear for anyone to use. This is where my templates help me too.

If a department doesn’t collaboratively plan lessons, they should (wherever possible). It means that everyone’s workload is reduced, and it means that all students are getting the same quality of lesson across the department. Clearly, this isn’t to say that lessons shouldn’t still be edited to match the class being taught; of course they should, and having options to choose from within the resource bank is ideal. But it’s a hell of a lot easier if there are solid resources to use already made!

I’d also say that I’ve found LOADS of high-quality resources from Twitter. Happy to recommend some if needed.

Last but not least, routines, routines, routines

I LOVE routines. To be honest, it’s part of the reason I became a teacher; the variability of my days is nice but I’m also a fan of the structure behind it. It also makes my life inside the classroom so much easier.

Routines with students

Having clear routines with students means that lessons are well-structured, and everyone knows what the expectation is from the off. Students know I’m going to count down slowly from 10 at the beginning of the lesson, and by the time I’ve finished, they need to be working on the task on the board. They know my expectations for homework, and because I’m rigid with it, very few students don’t meet this expectation (which saves me time with detentions / contacting home etc).

Routines in my work

I plan lessons the day before, and the reprographics team does the printing in advance of the lesson. In the mornings when I arrive, I can be planning the following day, catching up on emails, or whatever other admin needs doing. During the free I have each Tuesday, I fill in the lesson titles for the following week into my planner, and fill in my practical requisition for the lab technicians.

Teaching is still hard work, but making sure that I’m strict with not spending too much time on any given task, and being efficient with my free periods, means I don’t tend to work past 5pm very often (new roles & taking a lot on means I frequently work past 5pm, but this won’t last forever…). These strategies definitely help me to save time so I hope they can help someone else too.