Hello everyone,
A suggestion on my Múinteoir Valerie Facebook page was to create a final checklist of what needs to be done in advance of TP3. So here it is! Just a side-note, this is only what I did, and I didn’t work during Hibernia, so if you are working this checklist might be a bit unobtainable. Also, this is only what worked for me, everyone prepares differently. So you have one week left until TP begins.. what do you need to do?
1. Have your SESE, religion, SPHE, and oral language lessons planned and typed out for the first two weeks. I was averaging on seven or eight lesson plans a day in the run up to TP. It will make it much, much easier once it begins to have some lessons out of the way. At least then you only have the cores to plan each night.
2. Have your resources prepared. If it’s SESE, have your power-points ready. No-one wants to be trawling the internet the night before, searching for information. Once you start all the assessments and weekly evaluations, you won’t have the time for researching the night before, honestly!
3. Complete the Reflective Learning Journal.
4. Gather your art supplies. The modular plan should inform the lessons you’ll be doing over the five weeks , so you will know what you need.
5. Go shopping! Stock up on your TP folder essentials, art supplies, prizes, stickers, and anything else you need for your themes!
6. Research phonic games if you have infants. I always used the Jolly Phonics programme but I used to be on tenterhooks, I would not want to be inspected in it! Have a game up your sleeve just in case. One I had was a Postman game. I had a box which I made into a postbox. I laminated and cut out lots of pictures from google images. If we did B one day and ‘ai’ the next day, I would have these pictures ready. I would ask the child who is ‘on’ to collect either ‘ai’ or ‘b’ words. They would have to pick the correct pictures and out them in the postbox. It was so simple but fun. I made that game up but there’s hundreds available on-line.
7. I would recommend setting up the Class Dojo as a behaviour management system. Just sign up and input the children’s names and you’ll be ready to go Monday morning.
8. Write out a list of ‘filler’ games you can play in between lessons. I believe they call them ‘transitions’. E.g. alphabetical adjectives, word tennis, thumbs up/down and so on. Just have a list of maybe ten on your desk and you can play a different one each day.
9. Do any printing, laminating and cutting of resources now! It is so time consuming, and it’s the last thing you want to be doing when you have seven or eight lesson plans to write!
10. I would recommend having a resource box as well as a resource folder to show the inspector, for example, it may contain puppets, story books, research books, fact books, flashcards, measuring equipment for maths and so on. Show them everything you use!
11. Have all resources ready for all lessons before you begin each lesson. I would not recommend finishing off resources at lunch time, because the inspector could very well arrive at 10 and ask to see the lesson ypu have scheduled for two! This happened to me so be prepared. Have a pile of the resources you will need for each subject for the day on the desk. Have all your on-line resources open and minimised on the computer. Again, you don’t want to be doing this five minutes before the lesson if the inspector walks in!
Best of luck to you all, advanced TP is so draining at the beginning but you get used to it.
Valerie
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