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Following on from my first posts at the end of July, here are some more tips for ECTs starting in September:

11. Join Twitter

Twitter is an incredible resource for ideas, discussions and advice. Nearly every subject has an online Twitter community or associated hashtag. For example, for MFL look up #mfltwitterati or for English look up #TeamEnglish and there is a wealth of support available. You will hear about and come across people having famed ‘Twitter spats’ but ignore that. The vast majority of the “EduTwitter” community is incredibly positive and some of the best lesson ideas I’ve had during my NQT year have come from threads I have seen on Twitter.

Yesterday, I posted my first set of tips for NQTs starting in September. Today, I’d like to share a few more:

6. Make a PowerPoint template you can use for all your lessons

If, like many teachers, you will be making extensive use of PowerPoint for your lessons it will save you a huge amount of time if you have a template ready with slides for things like date, title, LO, homework etc. For the date, use the Insert Date function in PowerPoint and make sure you tick the option for it to update automatically – it gives you one less thing to think about. I also have a hidden slide at the end where I have template text boxes, template disappearing boxes to reveal gap-fill answers and icons for the key skills ready to copy and paste into slides. Over the summer, I’m planning to expand my templates ready to include the layout for my most common lesson activities to reduce my workload further next term.

Firstly, a very warm welcome to the best job in the world. You will no doubt have experienced through your training year just how rewarding teaching is, and how challenging it can be (with or without a pandemic!)

In this series of posts I shall share a few tips for NQTs starting in September: some which made my life easier, and some which would have made my life easier had I known about them this time last year! I hope they will be useful. I shall start off with five. These tips are quite detailed, and the next five will be too but I shall also make sure I add a quick-fire list of handy practical tips that are quicker to digest.