Meeting a new class is a stressul experience. Especially when your new year tens arrive and you find that they're all about six foot tall and tower over you. It's quite intimidating standing in the doorway of a classroom and finding yourself crowded by thirty one not very small children. Last year my year ten class was mostly girls and as a rule they weren't especially tall so it was a bit of a shock to the system.

I definitely felt very nervous as I made my introductions, I could see all these eyes looking back at me and I was terrified that I had some food on my top lip or had accidentally put on make-up in the morning. Though several of the pupils in the class have seen me in make-up anyway, but that's another story.

I prefer to plan very simple lessons when I first teach a class. I know some teachers pull out all the stops for a spectacular hour of learning related fun but I simply don't have the confidence for that yet. So I make sure it's something the pupils will be able to do well and then heap on the praise when they get it right. I'm determined this year to use praise on positivity as the basis of my classroom management. My preparation for this over the summer involved watching lots of Sue Cowley's videos on Teachers TV. The problem with this is that I think I've internalised her. I found myself saying things today in the same intenation that she does on some of the clips. It was rather unnerving.

Things actually went quite well with my new year tens, though it probably helped that it was the first lesson of the day. They're a top set too, though that hasn't helped in the past seeing as my least favourite class last year was in fact a top set. Fingers crossed that we can build on this though.