Questions to prepare for!

You're going to get a lot of questions thrown at you throughout your interview, you also need to really think through these questions and come up with some killer answers for them.  Having these answers will help you with your application, through any written test, group interview and the individual interview itself.

The all important:

• Why do you want to be a teacher? - This questions will be asked all the time, even by people in the profession who are thinking why on earth do you want to be a teacher.  Having a good solid, passionate answer is key.  This answer needs to convey you're commitment to the profession and make the interviewer see that you've thought this through, thoroughly, and that you definitely want to be a teacher for the right reasons.
• What makes a good teacher?
• What qualities do I have that will help me in teaching? - link this to the above question
• What are you looking forward to most about the course?
• What concerns do you have about the course?
• Why this course?
• Can you cope with the demands of a teacher training course/PGCE? - back this up with evidence.
• Why go into teaching now?
• Why should we take you? - similar to what qualities do you have, talk yourself up!
• What skills do you need to improve? What is your weakness? - pick this wisely.
• Talk about a time you had to use your initiative.
• What did you enjoy about your work experience? - Think of very specific examples of things you did.
• What is your ideal classroom set up? - Think about the classrooms you've seen and what you've liked about each, don't forget to adapt this for different ages.
• Talk about a strong lesson you observed.
• Talk about a weak lesson you observed.
• Talk about good classroom management - think of some strong examples you've observed.
• Talk about some good behaviour management techniques - good to read up on this topic as it always comes up.
• Were there any difficult scenarios you encountered?
• How would you ensure there were equal opportunities in your classroom?
• Why not designing? - I came from a design background, so if you are in another profession at the moment then have an answer for why you are leaving it.
• How would you teach a mixed ability class?
• Why primary?
• What are your hobbies and interests? - Very important! These are all extra skills you can incorporate into your teaching (musical instruments, sports, artistic skills, etc).

There could be any number of questions asked but if you have a few of the main ones perfected then you should be able to handle some of the others.  If you would like a few more to practice then this website is fantastic and has a HUGE list of them!