Scheme of Work

Toto Wolfcastle

I'm nearly finished the PGDE (Irish and English) and looking forward to finding a teaching job for next September. I'm quite confident as a teacher but my one problem is that I don't know where to start as regards making out a scheme of work for each year. It was never touched on in the PGDE course and I'm really unsure of what I should do.

Is it simply a matter of looking at the syllabus and teacher's guide for each subject and allocating a certain amount of time to each topic, or is there more to it than that? (I'm presuming there is!)

Help would be appreciated! Thanks.

spurious

janeybabe wrote: »

Is it simply a matter of looking at the syllabus and teacher's guide for each subject and allocating a certain amount of time to each topic, or is there more to it than that? (I'm presuming there is!)

Help would be appreciated! Thanks.

It's more or less that and something you can't really do properly until you know the level of ability in the class you will have. What might take one class with one group could take two weeks of classes with another.

Any schemes of work I have done have always been aspirational. I would hope to get (say) the Vikings finished by such and such a time, but maybe the kids have a retreat or a school trip or there is a Bank Holiday and I miss some classes with them and the Vikings go on interminably.

It's a good idea to briefly put in homework or assessment you would like to do at the end of each topic. Again, it's a tall order for someone straight out of college - ask one of your colleagues can you see an old one of theirs. There is huge variation in the detail teachers put in.

Toto Wolfcastle

That's great, thanks a million! It just seems like such a daunting task!

I reckon it's all a matter of getting everything that needs to be covered down on paper and then seeing where I stand. Then I can leave the actual day to day planning until I know where I stand as regards a job.

And they say teachers have an 'easy' life!

rainbowtrout

In my school we had and have planning meetings for all the different subject areas at least once a year where the teachers of a particular subject (mine being science) put together a scheme that all teachers would work off from first to third year for JC Science. Now like spurious said plans can get derailed for various different reasons, but it's there nonetheless. It was done as a result of a whole school evaluation. The advantage is we are all more or less teaching the same subject matter in the same order over the three years. So a teacher taking over a class knows roughly what a class should have covered the previous year or a new teacher coming in can get a copy and see what they have to do, and also if a student moves classes for whatever reason they should have no major problems in picking up where they left off and there should be no gaps in their study. We haven't had too many issues like the ones i've outlined above so I can't say for sure if we are all at the same point in the course but the scheme is there for those purposes.

Anyway my point being, there may already be a common scheme in place in a school you start working in for the different subjects, it would be worth asking when you start, or at least talk to the teachers in your subject area to find out if there is a general plan as to the way things are done in a particular subject.

No need to worry about it until you start teaching and see what kind of classes and subjects you get, i generally have the same plan every year for teaching LC Ag Science but the standard from class to class varies wildly every year and I have to adjust accordingly.
You could also put lots of effort into doing a scheme for LC English and find out in September that you don't have any senior classes. I think overall while some preparation for yourself would probably help, it's better to wait until you have a job and see your timetable!

Toto Wolfcastle

That's good to know. I think the reason I started worrying about it is that we had an info session in college on interview techniques and we were told to expect questions on our scheme of work.

But as long as I know the curriculum and have a general idea of where things should be I should be ok.

I don't envy those having to get everything together for the whole school evaluation. My TP school are doing this at the moment and everyone is finding it tough getting everything together.

Thanks again for the advice.

TheDriver

Schemes of work need to be in line with the rest of the department and would be influenced by the head of department until your experience builds up. New to the job, its tough to have accurate schemes of work and best way is to simply follow an experienced teachers scheme and develop your initiation into the profession. Best of luck!!
Interviews can ask anything and wouldn't fret at all! With regards a WSE, one could claim most of those things should be somewhere anyways and merely compiled and teachers who have to spend nights and days getting ready are severly behind.