I've graduated (again)!

I'm a graduate again! On Thursday night, I attended my graduation ceremony for the PGCE course. This officially makes me a qualified teacher... I'm not sure what I've been doing since I got my results in December but clearly teaching wasn't it! I'm just kidding. It's really great to finally have my certificate. Teachers here in South Africa have to be registered with the SACE in order to be considered fully licenced. It's quite a long process, so I'm glad to be able to get that underway. My family from Cape Town were able to come and visit for the graduation, it was amazing to get to show them my little town for a while.

It's been the Easter holidays here, so the Grahamstown schools have been having a break. I've enjoyed the time, catching up with friends, comparing notes with fellow teachers and keeping up to date on my reading. One blog that I stumbled upon is Free Technology for Teachers - this blog, run by Richard Byrne, has frequent posts highlighting the huge amount of resources that teachers can use to enhance their lessons, streamline their administration and just generally make life easier and more interesting.

Clip Chart 2.0

Today, I've come to show off my newest clip chart. It withstood 5 weeks of use at Queenspark School, my host school, without even a scratch on it, and it'll be coming along to my first teaching post (where-ever that ends up being!). As before, the design comes from New Management's ebook, get it here. I decided to mix the colours up a little bit, putting red at the bottom. I find that having a glittery, special colour at the top makes it something to aim for. I also changed some of the wording, "Good Day" became "Showing Pride", "Great Job" became "Excellent Effort", "Think About It" became "Make Better Choices". I'm still not completely happy with the wording on the bottom two, but they work as intended- first, the teacher gets to choose what happens to the misbehaving student, then the parents are contacted.  The chart is made out of coloured card, that has the labels glued on and then each piece covered with plastic contact. Holes were punched in each rectangle and then they were tied together with twine, with the knots hidden neatly at the back.

This clip chart couldn't have come into being without my dear friend, the Femme DM, who helped design and build it. Here is one of my Outstanding students, standing next to the clip chart. He was the first one to reach Outstanding and everyone was very pleased for him, including his fellow classmates.

The Clip Chart went down well in the classroom, the students responded positively to it and my host teacher said that it made a real difference with them. I have been keeping a daily behaviour chart to monitor their behaviour.

• The chart is just a simple spreadsheet, but feel free to grab it here: Click to download Clip Chart Daily Behaviour Record (Hosted on Google Drive) 

• If you'd like my labels, they are here (.pdf): Click to download Clip Chart Labels (Hosted on Google Drive)

I'll be turning my report of the effectiveness of the Clip Chart system into my research project for my PGCE. Hopefully my peers and evaluators will also see that the Clip Chart is a amazing classroom management resource.

Great giveaway at First Grade O.W.L.s!

There is an amazing giveaway happening at First Grade O.W.L.s right now, have a link: Click here to check out the giveaway.

What you could win:

• 4 Writing Work Stations The Complete Set by Deedee Wills
• 4 Everything OWL Classroom Bundle by Nicole Bunt

On the same blog post, there is also a great freebie for Whole Brain Teaching. I was discussing the concept in one of my previous posts- here. When you have your classroom rules, it's essential to have them posted in the classroom.The ones that are up at First Grade O.W.L.s are just adorable, look!

I can't wait to get my own classroom and have it decorated beautifully, much like the colourful polka dots on display there.

Freebies and giveaways are just some of the valuable things you can gain from joining the online world of networking with other teachers. I have already learned so much from my fellow educators around the world, and perhaps I should do a post at a later date talking about how the blogosphere works in a teaching-sharing context.

Resources: "PGCE Survival Guide" and "Move Me On"

I've just come across two fantastic 'crowd-sourced' books, both of which are available for free download.

#pgcetips - The PGCE Survival Guide, the Essential guide to your teacher training
#movemeon - Tips, ideas and suggestions for all teachers from the Twitter community

This, from the creator of the PGCE Survival Guide, really hit home for me:

Why was the book written?

Tim decided to try to put together the PGCE Survival Guide as he remembered the anxiety waiting for his PGCE to start and how much he wished he could find lots of first hand experience and tips from people who had ‘been there and done that' and how useful these tips could have been throughout his PGCE year. This book is his attempt at answering this wish for trainee teachers and also to give something back to the education community!

 I am exactly in that position now, scouring the internet and looking for advice from teachers on how to do this PGCE thing. Whenever I stumble across someone else in my situation, it's rather comforting but also not exactly helpful! Finding people who have blogged about the PGCE process, and then this goldmine of a Survival Guide, gives me hope. I've shared it with the handful of people in the Rhodes PGCE Facebook group, hopefully others will find it useful.

Move Me On came before PGCE Survival Guide, but since the Guide is far more relevant to me at the moment, I'm going to begin with that.

Thank goodness for the digital age.