As the saying goes, you only have one chance to make a first impression. That's the same in all walks of life, including teaching primary children. As far as possible, you need to create an impression that will lay foundations for developing a harmonious working relationship as from the first lesson. This includes establishing your credibility as teacher, displaying relaxed confidence in your role, showing care and interest in relating to children personally, planning and delivering interesting and challenging lessons, noticing children's responses and listening to what they have to say. It also involves setting clear parameters of behaviour and ensuring that learning outcomes are relevant and worthwhile.

That's quite a tall order and, however much experience you have, it's natural to feel slightly nervous before teaching a class of primary children for the first time – at least I know I always do. In my experience, it helps when initial lessons lead to concrete learning outcomes which link learning to children's life outside the classroom. In the case of lower primary, this might be making a simple origami book (see 63) with personal information that children take home to show and share with their families. With upper primary, it might be creating a personal blog (see 89), with content of their choice, which they can subsequently add to in a regular way during the course.

My key tips for getting started are:

• 1 Learn children's names – fast!

• 2 Keep it personal and encourage aspirations

• 3 Establish classroom routines

• 4 Start as you mean to continue

1 Learn children's names – fast!

When you start teaching a class for the first time, there are usually some children whose names you remember more easily than others. In order to avoid any perception of favouritism, it's important to make an effort to learn all the children's names as soon as you can.

For the first few lessons, it helps to make a plan of the classroom with the children's names and photos showing where they sit. You can keep this on your desk or computer screen and refer to it unobtrusively as you teach.