Pgde/ce elective decision

[RosieLig]

Hi

I'm just about to start my pgde in secondary maths. As it's a single subject I have the choice of an elective.

I would be interested to know what qualified experienced teachers would recommend as most likely to be of use to me .

The options are - behaviour in the classroom, EAL, philosophy and teaching outdoors.

I believe all are covered in the course anyway it would just be in more depth.

Thanks very much for any input!

It kind of depends where you see your career going.

Behaviour - probably useful for all trainees, but you do loads of work on it anyway

EAL - depends where you're planning to work. In my current area it would be totally pointless, but in my previous one if would have been handy

Philosophy - meh

Teaching outdoors - sounds fun!

Unless you are going to teaching in a school with a high percentage of EAL, behaviour is the most likely to be useful. However, on that note also read everything Tom Bennett of the TES has written www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6175180

I don't know what philosophy covers. Is it philosophy in the classroom or educational philosophy.

Teaching outdoors does sound fun, but unlikely to actually happen due to lack of space, poor weather, resources etc.

Maths is also a subject that is very different to other subjects to teach. Very little writing, discussion, giving opinions. Because of this, most general INSET is simply useless for maths teachers (indeed some schools do separate maths INSET instead of requiring maths teachers to sit through stuff irrelevant to them). So when you make your decision, think carefully about whether it's something you are going to find useful, or whether you'll be sat listening to a load of stuff about essay-writing or circle time wondering when you can get back to the stack of work you need to do.