What are some student teacher essentials??

dazey

I am looking for advice with regards to building up a starter pack for teaching. I will be teaching in a large secondary school. I have yet to find out what classes I will have and therefore which texts to buy. Basically all I have bought is white board markers!

I think my nerves would be lessened if I felt prepared in every other way

dazey

*essentials*

gaeilgebeo

dazey wrote: »

I am looking for advice with regards to building up a starter pack for teaching. I will be teaching in a large secondary school. I have yet to find out what classes I will have and therefore which texts to buy. Basically all I have bought is white board markers!

I think my nerves would be lessened if I felt prepared in every other way

Well firstly, congrats on getting the job!
Don't buy the books, ring the publishers and get them to send you a teacher copy. You will need the school roll number for this.
I recommend you get other samples of books from other companies. For example if your first years are using the Folens Irish text book, get copies of the mentor, gill and macmillan publications etc.... Great for extra resources and handouts.
Other than that you will be all set. I am a stationery queen, so have stocked up on loads of. . You can't have too many board markers.
Maybe have a folder for your first day, even an envelope one, you will probably get a lot of papers/handouts at the staff meeting.
Best of luck.

Toto Wolfcastle

gaeilgebeo wrote: »

Great advice! :rolleyes:

That was the OP correcting his/her own mistake. I'll fix the title.

gaeilgebeo

Bobblehead Panda wrote: »

That was the OP correcting his/her own mistake. I'll fix the title.

Apologies, thought it was the spelling police, will delete.

Toto Wolfcastle

gaeilgebeo wrote: »

Apologies, thought it was the spelling police, will delete.

I thought the same when I saw it first.

I second trying and get copies of other books besides the ones you will need. I have so many books from different publishers (and no where to put them!) and it's great to be able to use them for extra notes or questions for the students. It's great for languages especially. Even though the Irish course has changed the old books are still great for phrases.

It seems obvious but make sure you have a stapler and plenty of staples with you all the time. It's a pain when you need to staple something and you realise that you don't have it with you. There's no point in giving non-stapled handouts to the students as they'll lose them much faster.

Have a folder with dividers for each subject/year group so that you can keep all your handouts. If you're a student teacher you'll have this anyway.

Another obvious one: Pens! They go astray so easily so make sure you have a pencil case with plenty of pens in it. Nothing worse than needing to write a note and realising that you don't have a pen. If you think you have enough pens, buy more.

Make sure you have a cloth or a whiteboard wiper because you might find that the wiper is missing from the classroom that you are in.

Have something to record what homework you have given out because it's easy to forget. Also find out if the school has teacher roll books and if you will be getting one. If not you should buy one.

I sound like a terribly disorganised person from this post!

dazey

gaeilgebeo wrote: »

Well firstly, congrats on getting the job!
Don't buy the books, ring the publishers and get them to send you a teacher copy. You will need the school roll number for this.
I recommend you get other samples of books from other companies. For example if your first years are using the Folens Irish text book, get copies of the mentor, gill and macmillan publications etc.... Great for extra resources and handouts.
Other than that you will be all set. I am a stationery queen, so have stocked up on loads of. . You can't have too many board markers.
Maybe have a folder for your first day, even an envelope one, you will probably get a lot of papers/handouts at the staff meeting.
Best of luck.

I am actually a student teacher so don't have a job yet but thank you anyway! Any other things you use on a daly basis? I was looking at pocketed folders in easons but there seems to be so many. How do you organise lesson plans, student homework ...and everything else :eek:

rose23

Hi,

I just completed the PGDE and it definately is important to find a system that works well for you for all the paper work during Teaching Practice.

If you get this organised from the start it will save you alot of hassle/time. I went to NUIG and they told us what needed to be in our TP folders (syllabi, school calender, subject plans from co-operating teachers etc).

I bascially had:

-One large A4 ring folder divided into sections for each class I had. Here I filed my lessons and resources for each class. With regards to homework, on my lesson plan template I had a section for homework which I filled in daily.

-One small A4 ring binder with class lists, my weekly timetable, a sheet for each class where I noted any discipline problems/forgotton homework etc (I found this handy as I could see when problems were reoccuring with students or for parent teacher meetings I had everything noted/dated), a class list with a brief note for each student (for example: hearing impairment, dyslexia, gifted student etc), a list of class tutors and year heads (handy to have for discipline problems).

Hope this helps.. and best of luck to you this year!

RH149

Don't waste money on board markers - the school will provide those ( or maybe we're lucky in our place!). Red pens/ green pens......buy in bulk! You probably won't have too many corrections as a student teacher ( can't remember) but despite having a pencil case and desk drawer full of them in Sept. two weeks later I can't find a single one.

Tissues- you probably won't have your own class so it would be a pain carrying a box around with you but once I planted a box of cheap Lidl tissues on my desk the frequent requests for 'Can I go out and get a tissue ' stopped. Less disruption. Likewise have a few blank pages to hand to the students who come without copies. Giving out to them etc just interrupts the flow of your class.