Authors

The problem: I am a mature NQT but I feel like giving up because of the appalling behaviour of one of my Year 8 (S1) RE classes. The children call out, walk around and pull out their neighbours’ computer leads. I follow procedure to the letter, but detentions are rarely attended and there is no follow-up. The children get away with this behaviour and I have no support. The head of Year 8 is ineffectual and my mentor is off sick. I have no problems with other classes but I dread teaching this one

The problem: I am changing the seating layout of my classroom on account of a number of problems. My Year 4 class is nice, but some of the children are extremely chatty and it affects their whole group. One girl in particular is a problem wherever she sits, influencing others to be silly, writing inappropriate notes to boys and talking constantly. I have five chatterboxes like this. I wanted to sit them in rows (this worked last year), but I can’t any more as my classroom is tiny. I am thinking of putting them in a horseshoe shape

The problem: I was at the London Festival of Education in November and realised that I am too negative in my lessons – sanctioning but never rewarding. My assessor has given me a target of putting in place a rewards system that I can explain to the pupils. I am stuck on the question of how to introduce a system. I have a green smiley face on my board but I need to work out when to put names on there and how many ticks they need for a merit. And I need to be able to explain this to my classes