PGCE Secondary English: how best to prepare for the course
Many congratulations on gaining a place on our PGCE Secondary English course! We’re
looking forward to meeting you again in September, and would like to offer you some
guidance as to how you can best prepare yourself for the demanding yet hugely rewarding
year ahead. Please don’t be put off by what might seem a long list of suggestions below:
you will have discussed many of your specific needs at interview and you should have
received a short list of starting points for enhancement activities with your offer letter. Any
work that you can do now will be of real benefit to you once the course starts.
In general terms, you should keep yourself well-informed about current educational issues,
for example by reading the Times Educational Supplement and the Guardian’s Tuesday
Education section. Please consider joining The National Association for the Teaching of
English (NATE), which is the national body for English teachers. You will be given an
opportunity to join up early in the course, or you could write for details of student-teacher
membership to: 50 Broadfield Road, Broadfield Business Centre, Sheffield S8 0XJ.
Other suggested activities follow. Please prioritise these according to your own, specific
needs and preferences.

Read some children’s literature – an enjoyable pastime! You might start with any of the
following, which are used in schools:
Calling a Dead Man - Gillian Cross
Coraline - Neil Gaiman
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
The Edge - Alan Gibbons
Fat Boy Swim - Catherine Forde
The Fire Eaters - David Almond
Holes – Louis Sachar
Hoot - Carl Hiaasen
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
The Kite Rider - Geraldine McCaughrean
The Lastling - Philip Gross
Millions - Frank Cottrell Boyce
Mondays are Red - Nicola Morgan
Montmorency - Eleanor Updale
Point Blanc - Anthony Horowitz
Private Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo
Shadow of the Minotaur - Alan Gibbons
Stone Cold – Robert Swindells
Stormbreaker - Anthony Horowitz
Thursday’s Child - Sonya Hartnett
Tribes - Catherine MacPhail
Unique - Alison Allen-Gray
Witch Child - Celia Rees
Wolf Brother - Michelle Paver
(If you know any 11-16 age children, ask them about their favourite school readers, and
read those, too.)

Familiarise yourself with the National Curriculum for English at key stages 3 and 4, which
you can access at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculumin-england-english-programmes-of-study. This is the newly revised curriculum (for
implementation in September 2014); you might want to download it, although we will
provide you with a hard copy when you start the course.

Choose some reading from the National Curriculum list of authors for Key Stage 3 and 4,
including Shakespeare, pre-1914 poetry and fiction and contemporary literature,
including seminal world literature. Popular texts for Shakespeare study in school are
Macbeth, Much Ado about Nothing , The Tempest, Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, Julius Caesar, 1 Henry IV, Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice.

Visit a local secondary school – a must, if you haven’t already done so - and feel what it’s
like to sit in an English class again. Talk to English teachers, and find out about what the
demands – and pleasures - of the job are. Our course focuses on 11-16 age phase, but
you will take part in post-16 enhancement activities. You might, then, look at an AS or
A2 level exam syllabus for English Language and Literature, read some of the set texts
and access exam board websites such as www.wjec.co.uk and www.aqa.org.uk , which
are useful for syllabus materials and descriptions. After your visit(s), make brief
reflective notes on effective teaching and learning strategies at each key stage, and
record your own thoughts about how children can be engaged and motivated in English
lessons.

Begin to familiarise yourself with the Teachers’ Standards (2012).

When you arrive in September, one of your first tasks will be to work on an assignment
which addresses a weaker area of your subject knowledge. Begin this assignment now,
by auditing your subject knowledge. In order to do this as simply as possible, you will
need to buy a workbook: Johnson, A. (2003 2nd edition) English for Secondary Teachers:
An Audit and Self-Study Guide (Letts) ISBN 1 85805-353-6.

Once you know which areas to enhance, draw up, and begin working on, an action plan
to do so. There’s a simple template at the back of the book, which you can copy, and on
which you can record your action plan, action taken and progress. Please keep records
for review with your tutors in September.

One other book which we would ask you to buy is: Evans, C. et al (2009) Teaching
English: Developing as a Reflective Teacher of English (Sage). It is full of appropriate
information, ideas, approaches and thought-provoking issues. It is also eminently
readable, and will be used in some seminars.
Other suggested pre-course reading – some recommended by this year’s trainees –
includes:
General:
Clarke, S., Dickinson, P. and Westbrook, J. (2004) The Complete Guide
to Becoming an English Teacher. Paul Chapman Publishing
Davison, J. and Dowson, J. (eds) (2009) Learning to Teach English in
the Secondary School, Routledge Falmer
Davison, J., and Moss, J. (2000) Issues in English Teaching. Routledge
Cowley, Sue (2007) Getting the Buggers to Behave Continuum (look
out for other titles by Sue Cowley)
Wright,T. (2008) How to be a Brilliant Trainee Teacher. London:
Routledge
Language:
Barton, G. (2010) Grammar survival: a teacher's toolkit. London:
Fulton
Crystal, D (2004) Rediscover Grammar. Longman
Literature:
Littlewood, I. (2006) The Literature Student’s Survival Kit: What Every
Reader Needs to Know Blackwell
Stredder, J. (2004) The North Face of Shakespeare: Activities for
teaching the plays Wincot Press
These books are generally available in good libraries, and you are not required to buy
them. You might also want to access some useful websites, such as www.teachit.co.uk
which contains an excellent Resources Library with a huge range of teaching resources
and materials uploaded by colleagues in schools.

You will need to be a confident and competent user of Information and Communications
Technology by the end of the course. We will help you to develop these skills, but it will
be helpful if you can become computer-literate in word-processing, desk-top publishing,
databases, spreadsheets, internet searching and audio / video recording before the
course starts.

Finally, if you know that you have a weakness in terms of grammar, spelling and/or
punctuation, please address it before the course starts. As an English teacher, you will
be expected to be an exemplary role-model, in these respects, to the pupils and
students whom you teach. Many workbooks and websites are available: please start
now!
I hope that you won’t see this as an exhaustive (or exhausting) list of tasks. The crucial
point, at this stage, is that you come to the course feeling confident in your own subject
knowledge, with a genuine passion for teaching English and an enthusiasm for the course. If
you have any queries between now and September, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
We look forward to welcoming you to the PGCE English Course!
Natalie Reynolds
PGCE Secondary English Course Leader
01695 650 766
reynoldn@edgehill.ac.uk
PGCE Secondary English: Primary Placement Reflections
This is to guide your record of reflections and learning from your placement in a Key Stage
1/2 school. You should use the questions below as a guide for your writing, but don’t see
them as restrictive or definitive – please add to them as you wish.
Please record your responses briefly in writing (no more than 3 x A4 sides, normally). Call
your document ‘Primary Placement Reflections’ –- and bring this record to the Primary
Placement Review session early in the course.
1. Which age groups did you observe?
2. Were the classes streamed/ setted/ mixed-ability/ mixed-age? Were groupings formed
and re-formed at different times of the day? How well did the chosen arrangements
work?
3. What classroom management strategies did you observe? Which seemed to ‘work’
best?
4. How did pupils seem to feel about education and school generally?
5. What did you find out about systematic synthetics phonics and how teachers feel about
its impact on overall teaching and learning?
6. What did you find out about the Year 1 Phonics Tests?
7. What did you find out about the Key Stage 2 SATs?
8. List all the ways in which the school tried to encourage reading. What ‘worked’?
9. What evidence did you get to support or refute the idea that boys enjoy reading less
than girls?
10. What evidence did you get to support or refute the idea that girls ‘do better’ than boys
in writing?
11. What were your reactions to literacy sessions observed? Do you think that the
approach to literacy helped pupils to learn?
12. Record any evidence that literacy and/ or numeracy skills are targeted across the
primary curriculum.
13. How was written work marked? How effective do you think this was in helping
individuals to make progress?
14. How much were pupils encouraged/ given opportunities to develop learning through
speaking and listening activities?
15. What do you see as the two main issues which pupils have to face when transferring
from primary to secondary schools? Note down any ways in which you saw the school
trying to address these issues, in advance of the transfer.
16. Note down anything you observed, which you think would be effective if copied in
secondary schools.
17. In what ways do you think this placement was relevant to you as you start your training
in secondary schools?
18. Finally, note down the relevant Teachers’ Standards which has/have been particularly
addressed by your completion of your primary placement.