Learning to Teach

This book recognises that teacher training is changing, following government announcements to move the responsibility for teacher training more into schools through further development of routes to teaching such as Teach First and Schools Direct. This means that a trainee teacher may soon be learning under the auspices of a school rather than a college or university.

This in turn may mean that support mechanisms are not universally strong and that trainees need to 'hit the ground running' in their role. Therefore the idea behind the book is to give enough information and ideas for trainee teachers to approach the practical business of teaching with confidence. The starting points for the book are: *What do you, as a trainee teacher or new classroom practitioner, really need to know? *Now that you've made the decision to teach and you've chosen the route (SCITT, HEI, Teach First, School Direct), what are the nuts and bolts of teaching? *What are the day-to-day essentials that will help you rise to the challenge of your teaching role and become an outstanding teacher? Hence this book aims to offer a comprehensive overview of teaching and, as one of its USPs, picks up on the all important aspects of teaching that some other books can leave out i.e. how to teach.

Whereas other books tend to focus on a range of albeit vital and underpinning professional issues they can also tend to neglect the all-important fundamentals of 'what to do in the classroom'. Coupled with an approach that is less formal and more conversational than its more 'academic' competitors it is designed to give trainees or new practitioners an overview of pedagogy and how it can be put into practice. For anyone training to be a teacher it offers a greater understanding of how teaching in schools is planned, developed and delivered. It is intended to be full of ideas and written in such a way as to be exciting and full of vitality rather than dry and academic and, whilst further reading may be suggested, this is much more of a practical guide to teaching.