First of all – if you took part in Teacher Tapp this week, well done for being a record breaker! We got our highest ever daily user number of 4,919 on Thursday. We are now very excited about the drive for 5,000. Help us get there by recommending us to colleagues and taking part in the #teachertapptime competitions (more below). Remember, visualisers, cinema tickets, and book vouchers are on the line!
1. Changing (class) rooms!
Not having your own classroom is a pain. But it does have one key advantage… you don’t have to go into school so much over the summer to sort it out!!!
That said, not having a classroom makes it harder for you to keep a ‘lucky item’ at school. Just 20% of those of you without your own classroom say you have one, compared to 25% of those who have their own classroom.
Why would teachers spend time over the summer sorting out their display boards?
One of the things that teachers do when in over the holidays is creating ‘display boards’. But what’s the point? It rather depends on whether you are a primary or secondary teacher.
Nearly all primary teachers think carefully about the purpose of the display boards in helping students learn and then to show off students’ work. Secondary teachers are more mixed about their role with information about the school a more common aspect of secondary life.
Primary teachers are also much more likely to have children contribute to their display boards, perhaps because the classroom is as much their ‘home’ for the year as it is for the teacher.
At secondary, the maths teachers are the most curmudgeonly about students contributing to displays! (27% of maths teachers also strongly agree that they prefer to keep their classroom walls plain or just use boards for essential information.)
2. Board Markers
Last week saw the return of the most important question of the year – are you #teambullet or #teamchisel.
While our chief analyst, Becky, is away on holidays, we don’t yet have the full breakdowns but here are the intermittent results and… bullet took the title again!
People were not happy.
[tweet https://twitter.com/re_mrsands/status/1162020656814407682]
[tweet https://twitter.com/therealktpage/status/1162025012620079104]
[tweet https://twitter.com/CaldiesChem/status/1162029295587356674]
But, this year people were even were more taken with a different result – Which colour board marker is the absolute worst?
Yellow was the stand-out awful marker:
But the fact that anyone disagree caused an outcry!a
[tweet https://twitter.com/faccinim/status/1162009787564998656]
[tweet https://twitter.com/isaacmoore7/status/1161912794326937601]
All of which led us to a different question… just how different is a brown marker to a black one?
Teacher Tapp follower Mr Rattle suggested the following question and, of course, we complied!
[tweet https://twitter.com/mrrattle/status/1161672879932628992]
Which led to this outrageous finding!
[tweet https://twitter.com/miss_mcinerney/status/1163096677126942720]
Mind you, it does seem some of you thought better of it afterwards 😄
[tweet https://twitter.com/MrMountstevens/status/1163173829272920064]
Naturally we still need to dig into these results to find out other important questions such as: which sort of teachers most likes yellow? And, is there a north-south pen divide? Make sure to check back for more…
3. #TeacherTappTime
Over the summer we are running a whole series of competitions – including our August Summer Raffle in which you can win £300 of books for your school.
One of the things we asked teachers to do is share where you are at 3.30pm on Instagram and Facebook with the hashtag #teachertapptime. What this has unexpectedly done is give us a different window into teacher’s lives which supplements the questions!
Here’s what we’ve learned so far:
Teachers try to do things that don’t cost money
Although 23% of teachers are in relationships with other teachers, most of you are on your own for at least some of the holidays and many people have pointed out that it’s hard to find ways to spend time that doesn’t suck up cash. This may be one reason why so many of you have sent pictures of you watching television or doing work!
That said, some of you at least managed to combine reading with being in beautiful places!
A clever way to spend time is going to see reality TV shows. We realise now that this is why so many talent shows hold their audition stages in the summer!
Teachers love a bit of poolside action
Like everyone, teachers particularly love getting shots of themselves by the pool or the sea!
Of course, it’s not all glam… there’s quite a lot of chores and travelling too!
And then there’s all the other random things you are getting up to as well – here is a selection!
What the photographs are revealing is that the summer lives of teachers are BUSY!
We will be asking some questions this week about what you’ve been up to so we can add some numbers with the images. But, in the meantime, don’t forget to share your posts on our Instagram and Teacher Tapp Facebook page!
Right, that’s it for analysis this week given it’s summer!
