Christmas is such a busy time, coupled with teaching and family life, it can become an overwhelming time! Here are some age-old adages that apply at this time of year to avoid stresses and panic!
1. Family comes first.
Of course, this is true at any time of the year, but Christmas is such a special, important time for family and you shouldn’t feel guilty about using your weekends to enjoy that time. Yes, there will still be data to input, books to mark, emails to send…but remember when people say that you don’t get that time back, you really don’t. Weekends are your time to relax, recuperate and revel in festivities so make sure you properly switch off from work to make the most of the Christmas period.
2. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
When it comes to Christmas, there is so much to fit in! You can suddenly find that everything has arrived at once and you’ve spread yourself far too thin to do everything and see everyone. Planning is absolutely key here so that you know what you need for when and where you need to be! Just ten minutes of leafing through your diary and planning ahead can save you lots of stress and keep you off the naughty list!
3. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Again, this applies all year round, but you can save time, energy and hassle by using resources that are ready and available to be downloaded instead of planning lessons from scratch. Need a lesson on poetry from the GCSE anthologies? We’ve got them for every single poem on every single syllabus and ones suitable for unseen too, all fully differentiated with a range of tasks, teaching ideas and a PowerPoint! What about a scheme of work on persuasive writing in a Christmas theme? Ready and waiting! Form time quizzes? Yep! A full unit of work on Poisonous poetry for KS3 to practise key skills? Got it! At Twinkl, we do all of the hard work to create high-quality, full differentiated resources – all you need to do is download, tweak if necessary and then enjoy some festive activities!
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