What I've learnt in six months of teacher training

We caught up with trainee Maths teacher Christobel to find out how she's getting on six months into her United Teaching training programme:

When you reflect on your teaching ‘journey’ since September, how do you feel?

I feel more confident in my subject knowledge and also in my ability to teach. The advantage I've noticed to this confidence is that I am now naturally seeking more creative ways to teach different topics, and I am exploring more in my practice... I just need to learn how to get over the guilt when I try something and it doesn't work.

• Building positive relationships is key
• Questioning and 'Assessment for learning' are the cornerstones to effective teaching 
• If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough

Lesson structure, and simplifying my content so that pupils can learn exactly what they need to know, and then I can work on discovery and dialogic-type teaching.

The progress of my pupils - that they are able to learn and remember something I taught them - that's when I discovered that I could teach.