Kids talk

P6 and 7 pupils Alex and Aimee talk to Julia Belgutay about what makes a good teacher
25th February 2011, 12:00am

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Kids talk

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/kids-talk-123

Aimee: Good teachers have to be not too soft, but not too strict, because if you are too soft, sometimes the class can muck about with you. But if you are too strict, we will get scared of you or dislike you. I think Mr X is a good teacher because he is not too strict, he is not always on at you, but he is not too soft, so he does tell you off when you do something wrong.

Alex: And they need to teach quite well. They can’t say 3 times 4 is 13.

Aimee: Also, they kind of have to explain stuff, help you. Because if they don’t help you, then you are not learning anything.

Alex: They should look responsible. Science is not my favourite subject. If they made ways in science to do a lot of gravity experiments that might be better.

Aimee: The best way to make it interesting is to make it kind of like an activity but you are still learning stuff. Last year was my favourite when we did creative writing, because we got this big picture on the wall and we had to look at it and visualise the picture and create a scene and a character, create a story. We would have this big roll of paper and we would write random ideas all over it and then we put them all together and made a big story. I think that was a really good way of doing it.

Alex: It would be good if they would give us homework, where you can experience something at home. Like if you only ate half your meals three times a day, would you grow? Sometimes, I think a good teacher needs to do the craziest stuff for you to do great things.

Aimee: If you just put a textbook in front of someone, I mean, they will do it, but it is not going to be fun, it would be really boring. But see, if you make it interesting, like when we go on trips, we learn a lot, but at the same time we are enjoying it.

Aimee: We have this older teacher in the school and she is really strict and she makes you read your textbook all day and it gets quite boring. But some older teachers are actually quite fun, they don’t have to be young to be good teachers.

Alex: Sometimes, I think it depends on if the teachers have children. Because they usually get very stressed out when they have children.

Aimee: What I really like is when teachers put on music and stuff, because it kind of helps us to get on with the work. Sometimes, you can get really distracted when it is really silent.

Alex: It calms us down.

Aimee: You notice it when a teacher is stressed. Last year, we had this teacher, he would be really nice and happy sometimes, but sometimes, when he was tired, he could be really stressed and get you into trouble.

Alex: There used to be this teacher, she used to scare me a little bit, because when she did have children she was really stressed out and then she would shout at us. I was actually about to cry.

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