Welcome to your Primary Education with Qualified Teacher Status course

Hello and welcome to your new course! We’re all really excited to work with you over the next three years on this exciting new stage of your journey to becoming a teacher. We hope you’re as excited as we are! 

All of the staff who teach on your course are qualified primary teachers and have taught for many years. In total, we have over 120 years’ experience as teachers, deputy headteachers and headteachers, although when we worked that out, it made us feel very old! We thought you’d like to learn out about the staff who will be working with you over the next three years, so we’ve put together some information for you about our experience.

Your staff team

We want to make sure you know some of our team before you arrive. Hopefully this will help you recognise us and ensure you know who you can contact if you need any additional help and guidance.

Dr Michael Burnitt

Senior Lecturer

I am the joint lead of this course and take great pride in working with my experienced colleagues and our partnership schools to create the next generation of exciting and innovative primary teachers who will help to shape their pupils’ futures.

Michael's profile

Cathy Rutherford

Senior Lecturer

I am a Joint Leader in the Primary Education Team and I’m passionate about children receiving a well-rounded education which develops a love of learning. I enjoy sharing my love of teaching maths with our students so that they can love it too!

Cathy's profile

Emma Clayson

Senior Lecturer

I am a senior lecturer within the primary education team. As a qualified teacher, I am passionate about education and in particular, inclusion and support our students to develop their skills in adaptive teaching.

Emma's profile

Sarah Gardiner

Senior Lecturer

Sarah spent the majority of her teaching career in primary schools in central London. Additional to her class teacher responsibilities she also had the role of subject leader for English and has specialised in this area of the curriculum for ove…

Sarah's profile

Sarah Misra

Senior Lecturer

Sarah is passionate about social justice and inclusion and ensuring that all children are offered a rich and varied curriculum at primary level. Her Masters in Special Educational Needs looked at improving access to support for parents.

Sarah's profile

Mark Barlow

Senior Lecturer

Mark’s most recent work enables him to share his significant experience in developing teachers of the future, focusing on professional development, safeguarding in schools, and simulated learning for trainee teachers.

Mark's profile

Course Delivery

The course is delivered face-to-face at our campus in Stoke. We generally work in groups of up to 30 students but sometimes we may teach your whole year group together. Your sessions in university will be about three hours long and will be interactive sessions where we’ll expect you to be working in groups to talk about relevant issues to further your understanding about teaching in primary schools.

As primary teachers, we like our sessions to be fun so we build in practical activities to help you learn what it is like for children in school to be learners. Have a look at our videos of some of the maths sessions our students have learned this year.

Between your lectures, we will give you some tasks to do. Sometimes, we might ask you to do some reading, sometimes it might be to do some reflection and other times it might be to do a bit of group work with others from your year group. These tasks are very important to help you to keep up with your learning and make the most of our sessions when we are together.

When you join us, you will be allocated an Academic Mentor. This person will be one of the Primary Education teaching team and will stay as your mentor for the three years you are with us. They will check how you’re getting on and will be there to support you if you need it. Your mentor will meet with you several times each year. These meetings might be face to face or, if you prefer, they can be held on Teams.

Click to watch a Maths session

Join Us on Social Media

Join our Social Media accounts for the Institute of Education so you can feel a part of the IOE family before you arrive.

You’ll see what we post, links to relevant news articles, developments within the sector, employability support and things going on in our courses.

Following this account will give you the opportunity to do some pre-reading and research before you join the course.

Join us on Instagram

Pre-Learning

Before you join us, we’d like you to do some preparation activities. We will use these in the first few weeks at university in your sessions with us. We will send you an email over the summer to let you know what the activities are, so please keep an eye on your emails over the next few weeks.

Semester One Activities

Your first week at university will be Welcome Week. This starts on Monday 26th September. During this week, we have planned some great activities for you which will help you to make new friends and get to know other people on your course. We know that students are sometimes nervous about making friends at university, but we will help you in your first few weeks, so please don’t be worried! One of the activities will be a treasure hunt around the university campus, which will help you to get to know your way around. We’ve taken pictures of our Welcome Week bears at different places around the campus and we’re going to ask you to try and recreate the pictures with your new friends. Here are the bears outside our Cadman building...

After Welcome Week, you’ll start learning about Primary Education and teaching. We’ll teach you about the National Curriculum and Early Years curriculum and how each of the subjects can be taught in a very creative, exciting way in the primary phase. In the first semester, the modules you will learn are:

Professional Studies 1 – Reflection and Professional Problem Solving

In this module, you’ll learn about what it means to be a good teacher. We will ask you to reflect about yourself and your values and you will learn how your own core values will shape your practice as a teacher.

The Primary Core Curriculum – Knowledge and Principles

In this module, you will learn about how to teach English, mathematics and science in schools to make sure that children are interested and excited to learn.

Safeguarding and Child Protection

Keeping children safe is one of the most important things that we do as teachers. This module will teach you about what happens in school to make sure children are safe and how teachers work with other agencies to do this.

In the first few weeks, you will also learn about how to write assignments at university level, which may be different to how you’ve written before, but again, don’t worry, we’ll be here to help you.

Free downloadable software

There is a variety of software which can be downloaded from the University’s website and can also be accessed via the button below. This software is free for all of our students, as we understand to reach your full potential and succeed in your degree you need the tools to help you. The software available is;

  • Microsoft Office 365
  • Microsoft Teams
  • SPSS and AMOS
  • Maple
  • NVivo
  • Sophos Antivirus
  • Asure Dev Tools for Teaching
  • VMWare
  • Free Training

Free Software

Join a society

Getting involved in a student group can enhance your time at University. It’s a great way to make new friends and connections, learn from other students and develop new skills whist having some fun at the same time. Whether you want to join a group as a member, get involved in running a group as part of a committee or help run an event or organise your own – your Students’ Union is here to help make it happen! Please check out our website for more information on all of our groups, volunteering and other opportunities, or get in touch with our Engagement Team if you have more questions.

All Student Groups: https://www.staffsunion.com/getinvolved/clubsandsocieties/ (filter to see all academic groups).

Current Academic Societies:

Accounting & Finance: https://www.staffsunion.com/activities/society/25507/

Biology: https://www.staffsunion.com/activities/society/biosoc/

Education: https://www.staffsunion.com/activities/society/staffsedsoc/

Engineering: https://www.staffsunion.com/activities/society/theies/

FACS: https://www.staffsunion.com/activities/society/facs/

Fashion: https://www.staffsunion.com/activities/society/fashionsociety/

Humanities: https://www.staffsunion.com/activities/society/humanities/

Law: https://www.staffsunion.com/activities/society/lawsociety/

Bonus Group - Debating: https://www.staffsunion.com/activities/society/21294/

How to set up a new group: https://staffordshire.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0CG5LLyaUvS8eVv

Group Committee Resource & Support Area: https://www.staffsunion.com/managementhub/

Developing You (personal development resources): https://www.staffsunion.com/developingyou/

Academic skills

Whether you're joining us from school or college, or you're returning to education after some time away, everyone can benefit from the Academic Study Skills resources provided by the University library.

The Academic Skills team is here to support you throughout your academic journey and to help you gain the skills you need to reach your full potential. They can assist with academic reading and writing skills, give advice on how best to plan assignments, and help improve your time management.

The library's Academic Skills Guides offer the key information to make studying easier and give a comprehensive guide to the learning resources and services we offer.

Staffs CampusConnect

Staffs CampusConnect is our student-led community app for new students. Connect with other people from your course, hometown or country, and even those with similar interests.

To register, please ensure you use your Applicant ID (Student Number) that you received in your offer letter, and the email address you used in your application to us.

Register for CampusConnect

Welcome website

Our welcome website will provide you the link to your new student life. It's all about how you find your place at university, including everything from how to meet friends, feel confident in doing your academic work, being a member of your Student Union and getting involved in Union Societies, Academic Societies, Sports, Volunteering or representing your peers in your School.

Part of this Welcome Week - we have an exciting program of University and course level activities planned for you for your first week in September. We are also building an extended program for you to join a series of events throughout the first half of the autumn term. Further details will be shared with you via the Welcome website and Students' Union pages over the coming weeks.

Welcome website

Campus map

Use our campus map to familiarise yourself with our campus before you arrive.

Campus map (PDF)

Check your email

Please make sure you check your personal email account regularly over the next few weeks. We will be sending you lots of information about Welcome Week.

We hope you are excited to join us in September. We know that you may be a little nervous about some things and that’s perfectly natural. However, please try not to worry; we will all be here to help you settle in and make new friends.

If you have anything that you’d like to ask before the course starts, please email Cathy, one of our senior lecturers, at catherine.rutherford@staffs.ac.uk .

We look forward to seeing you in September!!

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