How to be a Brilliant Trainee Teacher

This cheerful and accessible book is packed with direct and straightforward advice drawn from the author’s extensive and successful personal experience as teacher-trainer, teacher and examiner. It sets out clear and practical guidelines to support your training and enhance your teaching, moving you directly towards a real understanding of how and why pupils learn and of how you can enhance your own progress.

It also offers reassurance and support with the difficulties which you might encounter through your training as a teacher. Why won’t Year 8 actually do anything? Why do we have to read all this theory? I know my pace and timing need improvement, but what do I actually do about it? Why haven’t I moved forward at all in the last four weeks?

It does this by:

• outlining strategies for organization
• exploring issues of personal development
• demystifying areas often seen as difficult or complex
• providing achievable and practical solutions
• directly addressing anxieties.

Although a practical book, at its heart lie essential principles about good teaching and learning. It is anecdotal and readable, and may be dipped into for innovative lesson ideas or read from cover-to-cover as a short, enjoyable course which discovers exciting teaching principles in successful, practical experience.

The book is ideal for secondary trainee teachers, but the underlying principles about what makes a brilliant trainee teacher are applicable to primary trainees too.

'I just wanted to say how refreshing it is to read such good sense written in jargon-free English. The book encapsulates and articulates exactly what being a trainee is all about. Please accept my congratulations and compliments – it is the best book on teacher training I have read.' – Phil Horsfall, University of York, UK

'This book is an impressive collection of myth busting and inspirational tips about how to get to grips with the challenge of life as a trainee.' – Learning and Teaching Update