pgde maynooth - 2 questions

johnmurphy2010

Hi,

Im going to be doing the pgde in maynooth this september. I have 2 interviews for schools so far but am a little anxious about what the pgde involves..

When your teaching in whatever school, is there another teacher in the room supervising you while you teach or is it a case that you may be being videod while teaching or that a teacher may just pop into the class now and again to see how your getting on(but wont stay in the class while you teach)?

Also, what does the 3 days a week in maynooth involve? I am going to be teaching mathematics. Are you given a revision course in maynooth or are you expected to know everything for the junior/leaving curriculum?

cheers

JM

Síle28

Hi! Just finishing up the Dip in Maynooth myself. You will have 4 visits from your internal supervisor during the year and are not told when these are so you have to be well prepared for every lesson. You will have one also unannounced visit from your tutor. If there are any issues or you are on the borderline of 2 grades, there may be a further visit. Your cooperating teacher may want to sit in and see how you're getting on every now and then, some do this especially at the start of the year but this shouldn't be an ongoing/every lesson thing or it's very difficult to establish yourself as the 'proper' teacher and gain the respect of the class like this. You also can't be supervised with another teacher in the room (unless you are officially team teaching but usually you must be alone in the room).
There isn't any revision of maths really, you are supposed to be an expert in your subject already. In your methodology classes (1 per subject per week) you may look at the syllabus or be given an assignment where you have to examine it and show how you would prepare a series of three lessons to teach a certain topic from it etc. It depends on your methodology teacher really, some are very good and pretend to teach a lesson with you as students to show how it can be done, others are not so organised.

You will also need to video 2 or 3 lessons during the year as you have to make a Diviate DVD of yourself teaching which you look at with your group (of 3 other students usually) and have to submit as part of the Teacher as a Critically Reflective Practitioner module. As far as I know NUIM is the only PGDE course doing this. It's not as scary as it sounds. You usually ask your cooperating teacher or any other teacher, possibly even a student, to do the filming for you.

Good Luck

johnmurphy2010

Síle28 wrote: »

It's not as scary as it sounds.

Haha. It sounds terrifying.

peanuthead

It does. And for the first while it is. But don't get yourself into a situation where you cant talk to anyone about it. Get to know people on the course because no-one, with the exception of people who have actually done this course will understand how you feel!!

Save as much cash over the summer, be prepared for a nightmare year. It's great, but so tough. I really feel you need to be mentally very prepared for it.

Síle28

Agreed, you definitely need to psyche yourself up for it in advance and rely on other people in the course and the year will be over before you even realise it