How is spelling taught in your school?

I have just been to an excellent course on phonics and spelling but it has left me with the question of how is spelling taught in other schools?
At my placement school they teach spelling in KS2 by giving children a set of 10 words a week with a test at the end of it to see how many they have learnt.
However at the course they said that this was an outdated style of teaching and it should now consist of children being taught basic rules of how to spell words and applying them. They should learn things like common prefixes and suffixes to help them out.
It is suggested this is done with five short 15 minute sessions every two weeks.
It seems a great way of doing it and from what I have seen, spelling is one of the areas which children struggle at my school.
I would be grateful if others commented how spelling is taught at their school and what works best for them.
Thanks in advance

Back to School

So the holidays are over and its back to school again tomorrow but finally I feel refreshed and ready.
It took me almost the whole holiday to get over my illness and I could literally feel my body say 'finally, let me have a rest!' but now I feel recuperated again.
It's a good job to because this half-term looks much harder than the last. Next week I am on a Year 6 field trip, then the two weeks after is my first teaching practice.
Add to that a scary amount of reading and I think my body is going to take another battering.
At least this time I can repay it with a massive Christmas dinner in eight weeks time!

How to 'switch back on'

The half-term has been great and really given me a time to relax but now that it is getting close to Monday I am finding it really hard to 'switch back on' to teaching.

I find that I am making any excuse to pospone work (even writing this post is putting off lesson planning) and I need to get back into the right frame of mind.

Of course I have still done a lot of work during the week but it has always been when I feel like it so it hasn't seemed like I have been working at all.

My intention was to work hard yesterday, which didn't happen, and to work for three hours today before the football started. Well it is now less than two hours until football begins so that has been dramatically cut as well.

I know when I am back in school it will be fine but I need to nail down so I do not enter for my first lesson unprepared.

Lets hope writing this all down will kickstart me back into working mode.

Half term!!!

It has finally arrived and so far I am really enjoying the break. I was able to completely relax during the weekend, forget about the course and recharge my batteries.
But now it is back to working and today I have set myself the challenge of completing the 2,500 words I need to write for Assignment two. It is a big ask but I am soldiering through it and hopefully it can be done so I can put it behind me and tackle the mountain of half-term reading I have to do.
Because of this and trying to fit the rest of the things I want to do during half-term into the very short week there will be limited blogs on this site until I return to school on Monday.
I will do my best to put a couple up this week but for me it is important to get as much rest as possible so my blogging time will be turned into relaxing time.
I'm sure everyone else on a PGCE will feel the same need to relax as I am feeling now so good luck to you and enjoy the so called 'break'

Parents evening

Just got back from my first taste of parents evening and must admit it wasn't as scary as I thought.
The class teacher obviously did most of the talking but I did manage to chip in with a few comments and all the parents seemed to be nice and supportive.
Think we are lucky at our school as the parents really want to help out and most asked what more they could do at home.
But I learnt a lot from the experience, in particular how important it is to plan what you say beforehand. My teacher had a general comment, literacy, maths and homework comments all prepared so it gave the evening a structure and looked very professional.

QTS tests all passed and out the way :)

It feels more of a relief than an achievement but I have now passed the QTS literacy, numeracy and ICT tests and am in a situation where I can say to others - don't worry about them!

I took the plunge and did all three in a row and would recommend for others to do that as it just gets them out of the way in one go.

I didn't find them as hard as the practice tests on the TDA, although that's not to say I got everything correct.

Luckily for me, maths and English are two of my strong points so I didn't find I had to revise much at all but I can see that revision could be key for those who find it harder.

Especially in maths, there is a lot of questions that cover a broad range of skills so definitely complete all the practice tests and take a look at where you have gone wrong. If you do this you should be fine as there was nothing in the actual test that isn't covered on the online practices.

The biggest let-down for me though was the quality of the literacy test. English, and especially punctuation, is something I know inside out and I got myself feeling constantly frustrated by the poor text, which on numerous occasions contradicted what I had been taught and been using in my previous roles.

If this is the same for you then just learn to practice the test. Things such as every word of a job title being capped up just looks wrong to me (caps are something to be used sparingly as they disrupt the flow)  but that was four of the marks on my paper. 

But good luck to those still waiting to take the test and don't worry about it - there is much more important things to worry about this year!

Struck down by illness again ...

I have not even reached half-term and yet already I am feeling ill for the second time, which in turn is making me feel really demorilised.
I already learnt from my previous illness that teaching is probably the worst profession for being ill as you just have to soldier on as if nothing is wrong, even though you are wasting away inside.
The only saving grace is that half-term is on the horizon. I have never counted down to a holiday like I am to this one and I am not even going away. Seriously I think I am more excited about this 'week off' than I have been about any of my adventures around the world. Roll on the weekend!