United Teaching Blog

United Teaching Initial Teacher Training Meet Our Trainees-1

Useful advice from the Summer Institute

18/09/2018

We asked our trainees about the most useful thing they learnt at the Summer Institute, our 2-week course that all trainees take part in before the start of the academic year.

Jenna: I think it's the behaviour management - I think it's the thing that worries quite a lot of people - but the fact that there's a lot of things that you can do to control a class, that the things you do yourself impacts on the children, and that we can do things to help prevent behaviour going out of control.

Emma: To deliver instructions, and really breaking those down - again, it sounds very simple, bu it's something that I just wouldn't have thought of.

Andrew: The behaviour management, which we've done today, because I've worked in behaviour management for the past year and a half, so I was curious to see what they talked about and how they want us to do things compared to how I have been doing things, so I found that very interesting. Some of things I've been doing have been in line with what they said, and then some things gave me ideas on how I would change what I do - again, very small changes, but that will make a big impact over periods of time.

Cate: An interesting thing I've learnt so far about teaching is that one of the major skills that I will need throughout my career is to be reflective as a person, because mistakes will be made along the way - everyone makes them - but to be able to look at how those mistakes came about and how I can correct them in the future will be a really useful skill moving forward.

Parth: It's taught me how to use my presence, use my body language and tone of voice to good effect.

Ben: In building good habits into your teaching, and in instilling good habits into your students, that can shape who they are as individuals, which will go on to play a major part in their successes in the future.

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