Week 7: A Week to be Proud of

Introduction

So, I had my first full week at school this week and, honestly, I am loving it so much I am already worrying about leaving here in December! I’m only going to talk about two lessons this week, as I feel like these are the ones that have had the most impact on my week and are also my proudest moments. I am concentrating on my assignment this weekend, so I am keeping this post short and sweet as my brain power is needed elsewhere.

 

First Whole Lesson

Even though the year 7s I teach are such a lush group of kids, I was still fretting about having them on my own for a whole 60 minutes as well as being formally observed for the first time.

The lesson I took was what they call a ‘spacing’ lesson – basically a lesson used to practice the skills needed for narrative and descriptive writing. My AT gave me a choice of which one I wanted to do and, as creative writing is one of my favourite things about English, I jumped at the chance of doing a descriptive writing lesson.

The aim of this lesson was for them to have created a descriptive piece and my teaching would give them a bank of ideas and vocabulary they could use to really make a well-crafted piece of writing. I used a planning sheet, inspired by my UT’s lesson on descriptive writing, and this meant that they had a structured bank of ideas before they even thought about starting. One of my downsides of this part, was that I gave them a tad too much credit – I thought that the grid was pretty self-explanatory, so I went through it once and figured that was enough. With this particular group, my AT noted it would have been more useful for them, particularly the lower attainers, for me to be absolutely clear about what needed to go where when I was talking about it.

  

Despite that, every student used these grids well, and I found that the ones that were unsure asked me for help as I circulated the room.

The main task was to create a description as suggested by the picture shown below. I was very aware of the timings, and I overran a little, so I didn’t have time to go into as much detail I would have liked to with this slide. Instead, I briefly talked them through each technique and left it up on the board as a challenge task.

When I finally set the task for them to work silently, I was actually astonished at how eager they were to work. Every single student had their head transfixed on their work, scribbling away. Not gonna lie, I got a little bit bored at this bit, as they were working so well independently, I felt a little bit redundant – AT said to me that I will appreciate the silence when I work a full timetable!

The main target that came out of my LOG was to ‘provide clear instructions from the very beginning and use position in the classroom to assert authority. Reinforce expectations throughout the lesson.’

 

First Year 11 Teaching

Me being me, I totally panicked when I was asked to take half of a year 11 lesson this week. They have their mocks straight after half term and I was seriously worried that I would mess up the lesson and they would use my horrific teaching in their mocks, resulting to failures all around.

Fortunately, I managed to throw together (by throw I mean spend a week finding the perfect clip… the clip being the first one I looked at) a lesson that actually went a million times better than I ever imagined it could’ve done.

I decided to use ‘the present’, a Disney Pixar short about a kid who gets a puppy with an amputated leg as a present… long story short he also has an amputated leg and this puppy helps him to feel happiness. I was unsure as to whether or not they would engage with the clip, but as soon as I put it on a couple students said they had watched it before and, during the clip, there was ripples of laughter and remarks showing to me that they were not only engaging but enjoying the short film. This gave me a lot of hope.

 

I’m not going to go into the lesson in too much detail, basically I made super basic sentences, as seen above, and asked the students to ‘upgrade’ each sentence, using my prompts as starting points.

The students contributed a lot more than I had anticipated, and they really seemed to be working hard. I have read a few of their pieces and they are exactly what I hoped they would’ve come out with.

It really is a fantastic thing to see what you have taught shining through in their work.

 

Teaching Targets

 

Last week’s targets:

• Scripting ‘teacher talk’– I decided to make full lesson plans for any teaching I did, whether that was a full lesson or a section. This really helped me to focus on what I wanted the students to know by the end of the lesson, as well as what I wanted them to tell me in responses. It was time consuming, but it really helped me and
• Ready to Learn – I ensured I consistently used RtL with the year 7s, and it worked fantastically! Just by giving a warning to a couple, the classroom was exactly as I wanted it to be. I am definitely getting more confident with it, and now I just need to ensure that I am consistent with it across all of my classes.
• Names – I feel like I’m nearly there! I’m pretty confident I know all my year 7s, 8s and 11s, it’s just the year 9s left now – I probably know about 1/3 off the top of my head.

 

Next week’s targets:

• One recurrent theme in both my lesson reflections and the observations from other teachers this week, was the way I use examples. I feel like the best way to do this is to make sure I have a part of my lesson plans detailing what examples I am going to use and how I will use them.
• As mentioned previously, I am going to focus on learning the year 9 names (hopefully over half term with the help of the photo class list I have!) So far I have noticed that using a pupil’s name is the most effective way to both praise and manage behaviour as well as building relationships and respect. I definitely feel less confident with my year 9s as I am not sure on a lot of their names, and I feel it is crucial I perfect it asap so I can concentrate on actually teaching.
• Subject knowledge – Use this week to brush up on what I will be teaching next term, so I can really do the best I can!

J

 

Currently Reading:

The Tempest – William Shakespeare & Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

Not much to say on these two texts this week, haven’t been making masses of progress with them as I have been concentrating on lesson planning this week.

Demon Dentist – David Walliams

This novel is pretty much exactly what you would expect – ridiculous, unrealistic and hilarious… but I did really enjoy reading it! I know I would have loved reading this as a kid, and I think it’s important for me to read novels that I get recommended by the children I teach as both common ground to talk about, as well as a way to understand the reading level, thus giving me scope to recommend more books.