Generic issues for new teachers - Practical training ideas

This unit offers some ideas for seminars or group activities for PGCE students or Inset training for NQTs:

Mock Lesson
A brief for running a mock lesson within a training session.
Citizenship - Using paired independent research to develop familiarisation with Citizenship and how it fits within Business Education.
Icebreakers - an activity aimed at those early days for groups of trainees or NQTs to get to know each other and also to use in their own first days as a teacher. Please be aware of the 'health warnings' and give particular thought to the target audience or participants.
Business Ethics
An activity to raise awareness of the impact of multi-culturalism in the teaching of business studies and financial literacy within the citizenship curriculum.

Enterprise Day
As part of the training for Business PGCE at University of Portsmouth School of Education and Continuing Studies, students are asked to plan, organise and run two one day workshops on Enterprise for able pupils from schools in the Portsmouth Partnership. 

A complete example of the plans and resources produced by one pair of trainees at one of these workshops where they developed a Music Enterprise Day can be downloaded from here. Not only is this material exemplar material to give guidance on the type of resources that can be produced at such a workshop, it could also be adapted by the enthusiastic trainee or NQT who may have the opportunity to run a similar activity in a school.

On a smaller scale, trainees could be set a task in pairs to produce lesson plans and accompanying resources. Groups which might form the focus of an assignment might include:

  • Gifted and talented pupils
  • Special Needs pupils
  • A revision group

Syllabus topics which lend themselves well to creating imaginative resources include:

  • Setting up and running a mini-company
  • Interviewing and appointing a member of staff
  • An induction programme
  • Specialisation
  • Team work
  • Supply and Demand