You’ve secured your very first teaching job (congratulations!) and you’re now tasked with making sure you’re ready for welcoming your class in September. As you will have worked out by now, teaching isn’t one of those jobs where you can just rock up on the first day and crack on - it takes a lot of preparation, planning and setting up before you’re ready to actually start teaching.
So what exactly do you need to do in August to make yourself September-ready? We’ve prepared a handy ECT checklist of all the jobs you’ll need to do to make sure the start of term goes off without a hitch.
First thing’s first: make sure you know who your ECT mentor/induction tutor is and set up a time to get together with them. You’ll need to ensure you know what support you will be receiving, when and from whom. This free Mentor Meeting Record is a great way to keep track of development, both before the term starts and throughout the school year.
You’ll also need to introduce yourself to other teachers in your year group or phase, and establish if there are any particular expectations around how your year group or phase team work together (for example, by sharing planning). Making friends with office staff, kitchen staff, cleaners and caretakers is always a good idea too - they’re always good to have on your side if you need an emergency school dinner or a last-minute notice sent out to parents.
You may also want to find out things like when you receive your pay checks to help you plan ahead, as well as understanding your salary and expected take-home pay after deductions.
Next, find out what your class timetable looks like. When are breaks during the day? Do you have a break duty? Do you know when assemblies are? Which days will you need PE clothes and shoes? What days are staff meetings? What about mentor meetings?
You’ll also need to confirm how much time you have off-timetable and when this is. As a first-year ECT, you must not teach for more than 90% of the time of other main pay scale teachers (95% for second-year ECTs). You are also entitled to 10% PPA (planning, preparation and assessment) time.
Take some time to become familiar with school policies too, such as the behaviour, homework, curriculum, safeguarding and uniform policies. Most schools have these readily available on their school website and it’s well worth taking the time to become familiar with these during August before the craziness of September kicks in. Some schools have non-negotiables for things like fonts to use in your teaching resources or having English and Maths working walls on display in your classroom, and it’s good to be aware of these before you get started.
Most schools will open at various times during August to give staff time to prepare for the new school year. Find out when these times are and make sure to become familiar with the physical layout of the school as soon as possible. You don’t want your first few days to have the added stress of not remembering how to get to the photocopier or the staff toilets!
It’s also worth checking what time the school opens in the morning and what time it closes at the end of the day. As an ECT, you will need to be in school with plenty of time to spare in the morning to prepare for your day, and will most likely have to stay for a while after the children have left to ensure all your marking, planning and preparation is completed.
Now comes the fun part! Setting up your classroom can be really exciting and it’s often when the reality that you’re now a teacher really sets in.
Start by thinking about the physical layout of your classroom. How will you set out your tables? How can you make sure that all children can see the board? Where will the book corner go? What other learning zones might you want to set up (such as a Science table or a writing area)? Do you need a carpet area for children to sit down during teaching inputs? Where will your desk be? Where will you store books, pens, whiteboards, glue sticks, art supplies? Will children have their own whiteboards and pens or will they be distributed as and when needed?
You will also need to think about how you will label all the exercise books, reading diaries, homework folders and anything else the children might need. Depending on the age of your class, you may want to use pre-prepared sticky labels or get the children to write their own names on them themselves.
You’ll also need to find out what the expectations are around classroom displays. Are there things that have to be included on the walls? What key vocabulary or concepts need to be displayed? Depending on the answers to these questions, you may want to set up your displays in August before the children arrive.
Finally, consider how you will organise your class monitors. What jobs and roles can be given to children to make your life easier and to help foster a sense of responsibility and community in your classroom? You may want to allocate a specific role to a specific child for a term, or pick names at random and allocate tasks on a weekly basis to vary things up.
You don’t need to wait until term starts to begin getting to know the children in your new class. Look through your class list and ensure that you know the correct pronunciation for each child’s name. You should be provided with assessment information from the previous academic year for your children so that you can start to gauge their strengths and weaknesses. It’s also great to spend some time with their previous teacher if possible to ask questions about the pupils who will be in your care. What makes them tick? What are they interested in, both as a class and individually?
You will also need to know if any children in your class have SEND (whether diagnosed or not) and, if so, what support is in place for them.
Of course, there’s nothing like getting to know them in person but having some basic information about them before you are introduced in person will put you on the front foot.
All that preparation and we haven’t even got around to actually teaching yet! Start by establishing what the expectations around planning are at your school. Different schools have different approaches and it’s important to know how planning is dealt with. Are you responsible for planning all subjects for your class or do subject leads take some of that responsibility? Do you plan independently or with your year group or phase team? How far in advance are you expected to plan? Does your school have a planning proforma that needs to be used? Are teachers expected to hand planning in to the senior leadership team and, if so, how frequently? What resources are bought in or available to you? Are these specific schemes you are expected to teach? You’ll need to get an answer to these questions before you actually start planning your lessons.
Once you have the ground rules covered, you can make a start on preparing for the first few days and weeks of the term. You’ll probably want to start with some All About Me activities before you launch into the standard timetable; you and your class both need time to get to know each other and form a solid relationship.
Once you have established your curriculum for the term with your mentor and teaching colleagues, think carefully about which lessons you want to create yourself and which you can use prepared planning for. There is no need to reinvent the wheel; the internet is full of high-quality lesson planning that has already been done so that you can save time. It can be far better to take existing lessons and adapt them for your class than to drain your time and energy by creating everything from scratch.
On that note, try not to be too ambitious with your lessons either. Make it a general rule of thumb that if it takes longer for you to prepare it than it does to teach it then it probably isn’t the best use of your time.
August can be a very busy month for ECTs but it’s important to take some time to rest and charge yourself up before the term starts. September will not only bring with it a hectic work timetable but also a class full of children with inevitable autumn germs, so taking the time to make sure you’re as rested and healthy as possible before term starts will pay off in the long run.
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