Support for early career and student teachers

Discover free curriculum-linked resources, teaching tips and inspiration to use in your classroom, or explore our professional development courses and find support in your area. From practical skills to subject knowledge, from lesson planning to behaviour management – we’re here for you.

Getting started

Everything you need to succeed in your first year of teaching
From setting up your classroom to planning lessons via emergency snacks, this is how to prepare
Classroom questions: advice for new teachers
Experts answer questions about planning, pandemics and practicals from trainee, newly qualified and early career teachers
The 10 things you need to know as a trainee teacher
How to nail the most important things from the off

Support in your area

Regional support

Our Regions team support all teachers of chemistry and science across the UK and Ireland. Find out more about our work to help teachers provide their students with an excellent chemistry education

Practical support and skills development

Practical videos

Practical videos | 14–16 years

Videos of core practical experiments for flipped learning, remote teaching or revision

Practical videos | 16–18 years

Videos of key practical techniques and apparatus for revision, flipped learning or remote teaching

Teaching science skills

Discover teaching strategies and classroom activities to help your learners develop essential scientific skills, from literacy to constructing hypotheses and risk assessment.

Tips and ideas for effective practicals

Managing the classroom and student behaviour

Behaviour management in the chemistry classroom

A chemistry teacher demonstrating a practical while her student exhibit some worrying behaviour

The challenges of managing behaviour in the chemistry lab

A teacher with students showing their answers on whiteboards

Get to know your students better to improve outcomes

A teacher demonstrates safety goggles to a group of puzzled looking students

Targeted strategies to support good classroom behaviour

An exasperated teacher watches students collect lab equipment incorrectly

Establish good learning behaviours in the science lab

Managing behaviour beyond the classroom

Tiny students climbing ladders among lab equipment as directed by a teacher to claim chemistry prizes

Set your students up for success

A cartoon of singing chemistry teachers and happy students

4 ways to boost behaviour management

Behaviour management in the chemistry classroom
The challenges of managing behaviour in the chemistry lab
Get to know your students better to improve outcomes
Targeted strategies to support good classroom behaviour
Establish good learning behaviours in the science lab
Managing behaviour beyond the classroom
Set your students up for success
4 ways to boost behaviour management

Successfully stop disruptive behaviour in its tracks
Use these tips to achieve subtle but effective behaviour management when students are pushing the boundaries
When things go wrong in the classroom, a video can help
Practical demo gone wrong in the chemistry lab? Here’s how to save the day
No words necessary: the classroom hand signals you need to know
15 essential gestures to control students’ behaviour and save your voice when teaching from the front

Developing subject and pedagogical content knowledge

Explore our professional development courses

On-demand online

Self-guided teacher professional development courses

Live online

Free, remotely-taught teacher professional development sessions

How to build pedagogical content knowledge

By David Read and Niki Kaiser

How research translates into classroom practice

How to teach...

Discover more ideas for teaching key topics

Common questions and challenges

Classroom questions

An illustration of a woman bent over tired with a clockwork key in her back

Classroom questions: Reducing teacher talk, beating NQT exhaustion and boosting test performance

An illustration of a woman dressed as Sherlock homes in an office

Classroom questions: finding a job and choosing a school

A photo of a student in a wheelchair during a practical science lesson

Classroom questions: making chemistry accessible to all and remote teaching

An illustration of a teacher sending ideas to a student at the back of the class

Classroom questions: cold calling, the back row and key concepts

An illustration of a square man being hammered into a round hole

Classroom questions: fears, units and chat

A photo of a desk with stationary and a tablet computer

Classroom questions: advice for new teachers

Classroom questions: Reducing teacher talk, beating NQT exhaustion and boosting test performance
Classroom questions: finding a job and choosing a school
Classroom questions: making chemistry accessible to all and remote teaching
Classroom questions: cold calling, the back row and key concepts
Classroom questions: fears, units and chat
Classroom questions: advice for new teachers

Mental health and wellbeing

How to succeed in your teacher training – and enjoy it
How to not only survive the initial teacher training year, but to thrive
How can an educational psychologist help with teacher mental health?
Educational psychologist Katy Goymour gives her advice on stress management
Asking for help
Teachers report being stressed and not receiving enough guidance about their mental health. Is compulsory counselling the solution?

Early career conversations

Lesson planning

How to plan a brilliant lesson as a trainee teacher

Wondering how to write a lesson plan? Use this template to create logical lessons and improve learning outcomes

Using cognitive science for more effective lesson planning

Take advantage of how the mind works and improve learning outcomes

Are misconceptions on your RADAAR?

How to use the EEF’s RADAAR framework to help you better consider misconceptions when planning your lessons and curriculums

Providing effective feedback

3 ways to provide effective feedback

Use these principles to ensure your feedback is timely and helps your students succeed

A new approach to marking

Reduce your marking time and increase student’s engagement with your feedback

One simple way to provide quick and effective online feedback

Use objective-based marking to save time and engage students with online feedback

Find support when you need it

Get support from … Teaching Staff Trust
Helping you through financial pressures
Get support from … ASE
Helping science teachers and technicians gain job satisfaction, and helping department heads to understand their teams
Get support from … Education Support
From a free helpline to peer support groups, Education Support is dedicated to improving teachers’ mental health and well-being

Upcoming events

Events

Our events for teachers range from small, informal resources sessions, careers sessions and curriculum contextualisation workshops to larger events such as teacher conferences. We also run competitions for students to put their chemistry skills into action

Our courses

Teacher PD

Expand your skills, knowledge, expertise and confidence. Take a comprehensive approach to professional development with our well-rounded programme of training and learning that aims to support every aspect of your chemistry teaching

Practicals, lesson plans and more

Resources

Browse our resources designed to support your teaching of chemistry to primary, secondary and higher education students. Including our collections on analytical and practical chemistry