Primary School Teacher

Primary School Teacher – Video Transcript

Primary school teacher

I’m Tim Gadd, I’m 33 years old, I’m a year six primary school teacher and numeracy manager. I did enjoy science when I was at school. Possibly one of the things I enjoyed the most, partly the reason why I took both biology and chemistry and then psychology at A-level.

I felt that those kinds of qualifications, and having that kind of understanding, would be extremely useful in life itself and within whatever career I decided I wanted to pursue.

Using science knowledge

We teach just about everything. The subjects which get the real big push are your core subjects which are maths, English, ICT and science. Subject knowledge is huge.If your subject knowledge is good it always helps you to teach whatever subject you’re teaching. So, having some background in science has obviously helped me to teach the science lessons but it’s also allowed me, on occasion, to go beyond what the children specifically need to know to try and make something a bit more fun, a bit more enjoyable for them.

Average science lesson?

What we will try and do is always make science lessons as enjoyable as possible –usuallyas practical as possible so that all of the fundamental ideas and processes and methods which they need to understand in science, they can pick that up through science lessons being delivered practically.

Everyday science

It’s really important, whatever we teach them in science,it’s always really important to try and link it back to something that they know, something that they do, to help it make sense. For example, if we’re doing work on forces, and we’re talking about friction, it may be simply talking about the soles of their shoes and why the shoes are made from certain materials. It can be even more closely linked to them in school and why we might do PE in bare feet and not in socks. So, the idea of them having some friction and some grip as opposed to them slipping in their socks.

The reward of teaching

You need to have energy, you need to be flexible, you need to be motivated, you need to want to help and improve the children that you’re teaching. I really couldn’t think of a different job that could give me the same kind of challenge and reward and satisfaction that teaching would. The majority of your week is spent in the classroom with a class full of children. And I can’t think of any other profession that allows you to have that same length of interaction.