If you had 8 months to get prepared to start your primary PGDE.......

[Peskywabbitsmum]

I've spent the last couple of months writing my personal statement & sorting out the rest of my UCAS application & I submitted it yesterday. I'm working 3 days a week with preschool children & volunteering one day a week in a primary school, so hopefully gaining lots of relevant experience, I'm working through Carol Vordermans primary maths programme to try to brush up my maths skills & I've been reading a lot of classic & modern children's literature.
So, now my application is in & the waiting game starts to see if I even get interviewed and I'm wondering if any of the primary teachers on here, could go back to the period before the madness of your PGDE & NQT years, what would you do to better prepare yourself?

[Lucienandjean]

I'd probably sleep a lot and spend a lot of time with my children!

Seriously though, the thing that seemed to make the difference between people who found it all very manageable, and those who struggled, was the amount of school experience they had. I'd been a TA for several years and you've just watched so many lessons that you've already started to form ideas of what is good or not. And you have unconsciously picked up lesson ideas. So I would say the volunteering in school is the important bit.

If you know there's an area you are weak on, it's worth doing a bit of research to improve subject knowledge. I did a primary PGCE and knew ICT was my weak spot, so did loads of work on bringing it up to scratch. It's still not my favourite thing, but I'm competent.

Good luck?

[Lucienandjean]

That should have been good luck! No question mark.