Hello, Tappsters!
For some, the summer break is going to be here very soon – keep an eye out for the question about your last teaching day!
There is a new prize draw currently running – and it too has a summer theme! FIVE teachers will receive £100 gift cards towards a day out!
Taking part is simple: For every 5 days in a row you answer questions, you will receive an entry code.
At the end of the month, we share the winning codes on our socials and email the winners, too .
Read more about the details of the comp and see the full terms and conditions here.
There is still a lot of term to get through – so here are some edu-findings that you might make your final weeks a little easier!
1. Teacher hacks
This week Mr P ICT snuck into the Teacher Tapp control room and put his questions into the app. One thing he wanted to know was your top teaching hack.
What followed was an outpouring of top drawer teaching advice. A staggering 2,400 of you replied, and shared your wisdom on almost every aspect of school life – from speeding up tidying classrooms, to solving the missing book dilemma and even ideas for making marking easier.
We have a more detailed list of the advice coming out soon 👀, but here are some stand-out suggestions:
Top tips for primary teachers
- “Use sponges soaked in PVA instead of glue sticks and the office will think you’re a wizard who can make the 3 glue sticks they gave you last all year.”
- “Magic rubbish! When the classroom is a tip, pretend to pick three things you want tidied. Don’t tell the kids what you picked. They go mad for it — classroom spotless!”
- “Sleeping axolotl music on YouTube. Children have to be quiet in order not to ‘wake’ him. My children love it! They have even named him ‘Axy’.”
Best advice for secondary teachers
- “At the start of the year, keep one book back for each class, and use it for modelling on the visualiser etc. This becomes worth it weight in gold when there are absent pupils or someone loses their book!”
- “Go to the back of the classroom during independent study. It’s much easier to see who is working and the kids don’t know you are looking at them, so it’s more reflective.”
- “Dress exam questions up with a story, have a character for the story, (mine is Betty) always up to something, the kids buy into it, and learn through stealth great for retrieval practice.”
What else did we find out?
💻 Suggestions relating to AI were pretty popular – 12% of responses made a reference to using AI to cut workload!
🧘♀️ Not all the hacks were practical – 14% were more to do with mindset and setting boundaries. Of the 2,625 Tappers who wrote in, 379 gave advice about saying “no” to extra work and maintaining a positive outlook.
2. TA or extra pay? 🧞
If you have been using Teacher Tapp for some time, then you are probably familiar with our Teacher Tapp genie 🧞.
Although many of our questions are super specific (yes, we do ask about behaviour that happens at exactly 11am 🙈) we also ask hypothetical questions…and that’s when our magic lamp comes in. A hypothetical question allows us to explore attitudes towards aspects of education that would otherwise be impossible to engage.
There is never going to be a time when a fixed-choice option like this occurs…but it’s very interesting to hear how everyone thinks they would react if it did…
With that in mind – we had some fun with the Mr P suggested question on teaching assistants, pay rises and PPA at home.
First of all, we asked senior leaders and headteachers which they would pick for their TEACHERS to have.
TAs were the top choice in primary (44%) but bottom of the list in secondary (12%).
Full day of PPA at home was the number one pick in secondary (50%) but only second in primary (30%).
The pay rise was the bottom option in primary (26%) and the second choice pick in secondary (38%).
But did the leaders pick the options the teachers wanted?
In secondary – yes, they did! The top three choices matched the secondary picks exactly. But in primary? Leaders picked the TA…but teachers were more likely to pick a full day of PPA at home.
Why might this difference happen? It’s likely that it is the logistics of having teachers out for PPA is a bigger headache for leaders to coordinate (maintaining staff: student ratios; meeting dates etc).
3. What CPD do you want vs need?
As the summer term comes to a close, you might have been asked to add up your CPD hours and check if you have met what you needed to do for 2024-25.
But if you have been free to pick the CPD you do, are you choosing CPD that addresses the areas that you perceive as your weaknesses?
Maybe not! Out of all of the teachers who identified ‘behaviour management’ as a weakness in their teaching, only 43% would choose to take CPD in behaviour management. 41% would choose subject knowledge or other pedagogical-related courses, 10% would pick relationship-focused courses, and 7% didn’t like any of the options on offer.
What else did we find out?
Good news! Confidence appears to be growing. When asked about perceived weaknesses, more of you are ticking less.
The biggest change was with assessment, just 10% of teachers identifying this as an area of weakness, compared to 16% in 2023. Curriculum planning has also enjoyed a drop in the number of teachers identifying it as an area of weakness – just 10% reported it as a weakness compared to 16% in 2023.
This might be due to stability in the National Curriculum and public assessments, or perhaps the changes that have been made to the Early Career Framework making an impact.
4. Happy Pride 🌈
June is Pride month, and schools all over the world will be running activities and holding events to mark the occaision.
Since 2018, Teacher Tapp has been tracking how confident teachers feel about supporting LGBT+ students in their classrooms – and the great news is that the number saying they DO feel confident remains high! 86% say they agree that they are confident supporting their LGBT+ students in their role ❤️💙💚💛.
Not only that – but kindness among LGBT+ students is also on the rise. 56% of secondary teachers have heard kind words expressed in support of LGBT+ pupils this year. This is UP from 51% last year.
Daily Reads
Last week you were really keen readers! But the most-read blog was about science mistakes in the laboratory.
Have you seen a great blog you think would make a great daily read? Let us know by emailing england@teachertapp.co.uk and we will check it out!
