This evening I found my USB stick from my PGCE year. The array of resources on there, well… they were interesting to view. I can see such a progression from my initial lessons to the ones at the end of my course despite the ‘criticism’ I experienced at my second placement; there’s such a vast improvement plus so many ideas and activities I’d forgotten about.
If I’m honest I was just as creative then as I am now though, but there is such a huge difference in the quality of the resources and learning activities. My teaching style has definitely improved with time.
The one that I found particularly interesting was the one that got me my first teaching job with. I was asked to give an introduction lesson to a new topic on Italy. I remember deciding that the best approach since it’s a geography lesson would be to locate and map the human and physical features of the country.Â
I have to say though I’m particularly shocked by the resource. Now I’m not saying the quality of the teaching activities had been poor but I’m slightly embarrassed by the presentation.
I can clearly tell that at that stage I knew very little about SEN requirements and adaptations that could be made to PowerPoints  to suit particular SEN requirements like dyslexia. Now my resources look something like this…
More engaging and presentable I reckon.
Despite my resources they must have clearly seen something in me because if I remember rightly I was also eaten alive by the class of year 9’s (who I later went on to teach) and was still very shy, timid and introvert.
Taking a look at my resources has got me all thinking about the struggles and successes of my PGCE and NQT years. I could write a whole reflective post on my time as a PGCE student and NQT but I’ve got baseline assessments to get on with marking. I might update this at some point….. for now I just thought I’d share my recent findings.
