100 of my best tips from my Top Tips Tuesday emails

I have somehow managed to find enough words of wisdom over the past couple of years to send out ONE HUNDRED top tips Tuesday emails 🤯

And to commemorate this momentous occasion, I have collated 100 of my best tips from these emails (one from each email) right here for you!

If you want any more details about any of the tips, simply ping me an email with the number of the tip, and I'll send a link to the relevant blog post, podcast episode or free resource.

1. Improve your language skills as an MFL teacher by listening to podcasts in the TL
2. It might be time to quit when you feel your work is out of alignment with your values
3. Embed phonics teaching with a phonics focus every fortnight
4. The new GCSE is a great opportunity to open up your KS3 curriculum
5. Connect with other MFL teachers by joining ALL (the Association for Language Learning)
6. If you’re taking a school trip abroad, plan it at least 8-9 months in advance
7. Introduce culture into your lessons by teaching vocab that is relevant to all target language countries, not just France, Spain and Germany
8. Check your students’ understanding by asking “is there a different way to say the same thing?”
9. Introduce creativity to your lessons through drama, music and films
10. If you think you might be sensing burnout on the horizon, get outside and move your body
11. One of my favourite digital tools is Puzzlemaker - great for crosswords and word searches!
12. Everything takes time and patience (when starting a business, but also in teaching)
13. Embrace mistakes - perfectionism is a killer of productivity
14. Make a bit of extra cash as a teacher by creating and selling teaching resources
15. Use one text for listening, reading and translation tasks in your lessons
16. Adapt old resources for the current GCSE by translating all rubrics and questions into English
17. Save time by protecting your boundaries - say ‘no’, don’t reinvent the wheel, don’t try to be perfect
18. Adapt old formative assessments for the current GCSE by incorporating reading aloud tasks and dictations, from Year 7 onwards
19. If you want to use AI in lesson planning, be specific in your prompts and try using the target language for better results
20. Make dictations funs with activities such as ‘picture dictation’ - describe a picture in the target language and students have to draw it
21. Make passive income as a teacher by hosting paid webinars/workshops, and selling the recording afterwards online
22. It’s always worth giving something a try - and if you ‘fail’, you’ve learnt something valuable from it
23. Start lessons effectively with simple, straightforward activities that need little to no explanation
24. When introducing vocabulary, focus on pronunciation before showing students the word/phrase written down
25. Before starting a reading or listening task, prepare students with a vocab exercise such as matching up the English and target language
26. Writing tasks should be done in class rather than as homework
27. Establish a clear end-of-lesson routine as it supports effective classroom and behaviour management
28. Practise phonics in a fun way with the SSC Caterpillar
29. Use Kate Languages resources by laminating the role-plays and photo cards and using them for revision with KS4 students
30. Motivate reluctant learners by prioritising creating a comfortable classroom environment before pushing hard on curriculum 
31. Find a way to truly rest at weekends and in school holidays by doing something you love, even if it feels ‘unproductive’
32. If you choose to use textbooks at KS3, use them as your framework, not a rigid script
33. Set (and stick to) your goals by using the concept of ‘atomic habits’ - start small and tack new habits onto other things you already do regularly
34. Ensure a smooth start to lessons by checking your tech before the start of the lesson
35. Finish a lesson effectively by getting pupils to tidy up before the plenary activity - and choose plenaries that don’t require writing in exercise books
36. Don’t make the marking and feedback mistake of taking in every listening, reading, translation, etc task done in class and putting them into a spreadsheet
37. If you’re thinking of starting an education business, focus on one thing and do it really well - eg GCSE tuition, KS3 resources, or behaviour management CPD
38. Start lessons with a zero-prep activity such as “What do you already know?”, about the topic or grammar focus of the lesson
39. Decrease your mental load by doing things as soon as you think of them where possible, or writing them down where you will find them easily later
40. Thrive at an in-person conference by taking snacks and taking breaks to get outside if you need to
41. Help your GCSE students to ace their writing by providing writing frames, model answers and scaffolding whenever you do writing tasks in class
42. Survive GCSE speaking exam season by setting very simple cover work and going through all of the materials thoroughly in advance
43. Make extra money as an MFL teacher through private tuition
44. Use model answers for GCSE revision with my ‘exploiting one text’ method
45. Create personalised revision for Year 11 students after their mock using Kate Languages resources
46. Engage parents in the GCSE revision process by showing them how to translate reading texts into English to help them work through the texts and questions systematically together
47. If you’re tempted to quit teaching, do your sums and work out if you would be better or worse off financially if you quit
48. Continue your own lifelong learning through podcasts, webinars and online courses
49. Get started with passive income by giving away lots of ideas and resources for free
50. Focus on bitesize, manageable chunks of learning to help motivate reluctant learners
51. If you want to create and sell resources, keep an eye on Facebook groups and other social media to see which resources fellow teachers are asking for
52. Use AI such as Claude or ChatGPT as a ‘coach’ to work through questions and problems in your teaching. (Disclaimer: AI is not a substitute for a real, qualified coach or counsellor and should only be used as a starting point, or to work through basic questions and help you get unstuck eg not knowing what starter activities to use with a particular class that week)
53. Connect with other teachers through free and paid memberships to communities
54. Feel on top of your teaching environment by throwing away pens that don’t work on a regular basis
55. Have a great start to lessons by displaying your starter/do now on the board before your students enter the room
56. When you start a new school, get to know the support staff, front office staff, cleaners and caretakers - and always treat them as the extremely valuable members of staff they are
57. Before conducting GCSE speaking exams for the first time, have a run-through with a colleague
58. If you want to do some private tuition, think beyond GCSE and A Level prep - teaching adults and younger children can be really fun and rewarding
59. When delegating (as a head of department or even as a class teacher), invest time in training the person you are delegating to
60. When you notice you’re feeling more stressed than usual, take 30 minutes to do something physical, like gardening, cooking, going for a run/walk, even cleaning the bathroom!
61. Do the 54321 quiz as a starter or plenary activity - it’s great for checking understanding, retrieval and revision
62. Use a writing or speaking model answer as a listening activity
63. Use the Edexcel role-play prescribed settings to your advantage and practise them thoroughly with GCSE students
64. In the AQA GCSE speaking exam, the only compulsory unseen questions are the 4 questions that follow the read aloud task
65. Increase your income as a tutor or teacher by setting up a paid membership to support others with their teaching, behaviour management, businesses, resources, or whatever is your superpower
66. Kate Languages resources I use myself every week include the vocabulary booklets I made from the AQA and Edexcel prescribed vocab lists
67. Practise role-plays in lessons by playing trapdoor - give alternate possible answers to the role-play questions
68. As a working parent, sleep rules everything - and there is no point trying to fight against this fact
69. Children’s excitement levels towards the end of term (especially at Christmas) are directly proportional to your tiredness levels
70. If you’re on my mailing list, you sometimes get secret free resources that I don’t tell my social media followers about
71. Survive the first week of term by allowing yourself time to get back into the rhythm of the working week
72. Everything takes longer than you think it will
73. Shout out for German by having a German cultural day once a year (maybe on 3rd October)
74. When using AI, don’t forget to check and double check everything it produces
75. The new (first exams 2026) GCSE exams only use vocab from prescribed vocab lists, and this is a good thing as we can predict what words will come up, in a way that we have never been able to do before
76. Learning a language teaches us that some things are just different, and that doesn’t mean “bad” or “stupid”
77. The timings for the individual elements of the GCSE speaking exams are just guidelines
78. Help your students ace their writing exams by working with model answers in depth
79. The photo description in the GCSE speaking exams doesn’t need to last for two minutes
80. If you enjoy a presentation at a conference, find the speaker afterwards and let them know
81. The only timing that really matters in the GCSE speaking exams is the overall maximum time
82. Read the key (if rather boring) documents published by the exam boards ahead of the exams
83. Survive speaking exam season by having plenty of tea, coffee, water, biscuits and sweets (for yourself and students)
84. Start your GCSE speaking revision sessions with low-stakes speaking games and activities (from Isabelle @lapetitecagouilleresources)
85. During GCSE speaking exam season, set KS3 cover work that is super simple and self-explanatory
86. There isn’t one “correct” way to teach languages
87. Prepare students for GCSE reading and listening exams by going over false friends and distractors
88. Work through a writing model answer using my “exploiting one text” method and work as a class to improve the model answer
89. In the GCSE reading exam, students should try not to panic and waste time on one question that they don’t know the answer to
90. Play zero-prep games like corner game and hot seat when you’re exhausted at the end of a long term
91. At the end of the academic year, take time to reflect on what has gone well over the past 12 months, and what can be improved on next year
92. If you’re a new teacher (or starting in a new school), try to visit and spend time getting to know the new school in the summer term before you start (this tip came from Kirsten @themflteacher)
93. Bring other cultures such as Morocco into your classroom through posters, such as the free one from Discover the World Education
94. If you’re moving schools, have a digital tidy up before you go - unsubscribe from email subscriptions you no longer want, and change your email address on ones you do want to keep
95. Keep learning during school holidays through podcasts, online courses and visiting interesting new places
96. Give your glue sticks names at the start of the school year to prevent them from going missing
97. Use one text for a whole lesson - use it as a listening task, dictation, reading aloud, translation and writing frame
98. A great retrieval activity for the start of term is ‘odd one out’
99. GCSE students need to write clearly and focus on details in their exams
100. Wear sunscreen (so, I realised that this was actually the 100th email so there were only actually 99 tips, but this is a great piece of advice for all occasions!)

Congratulations if you made it this far and thanks for being here!