Week 8 – October Half Term

Introduction

Half term begins! Well, it does for those who are already in the teaching profession but unfortunately, for us trainees, we had three days at university, ending with a couple of study days thankfully! I managed to get most of my work done at the beginning of the week and have enjoyed a few days off… definitely needed!

Marking

I started my weekend off with a mixture of assignment work, lesson planning and marking the creative writing from my year 7 lesson. As I have not done much marking before, and I am still getting to know the children, I have decided to pick out one or two positive things from each piece of writing, only picking out SPaG stuff depending on the individual.

After doing a few, I realised I hadn’t done any ‘even better ifs’ or targets. I was about to go through them all again, when my AT suggested looking at peer assessment.

So… in theory… I will get the students to peer assess each other on the first lesson back: one more good aspect and two or three areas to improve on. I am hoping this will help them to look and think critically at their peers’ work. I will put a PowerPoint together for them to look at when marking, noting common areas of improvement for them to look at, which should hopefully guide them all, but especially the lower attainers.

This is kind of an experiment of sorts- I’ve never marked before let alone led a lesson on peer assessment – but I feel like this will be useful to do early on in my teaching career. Only time will tell… I will update you all next week!

Sixth Form

At the beginning of the week, we had a teacher come from a local school to talk to us about a-levels. We were given an unseen extract exam paper and we went through it in groups. I honestly had so much fun, and I know for sure that I want to teach a-level English… it’s the only downside to my current placement school! Talking through the different ways of teaching sixth formers made me reminisce on my own sixth form experience, as well as the time I have spent on work experience. It is crazy how you can get really mature, insightful responses from the students, despite being only a year on from GCSEs.

SEND Assignment

The most exciting part of my week was actually finishing off my assignment with a few days to spare… I had forgotten how good it feels to finally decide that an essay is worth submitting! I have been looking at Autism Spectrum Disorder and it has been fascinating to research… although there wasn’t much to work with! But, after conducting a fair amount of research for my literature review, I am looking forward to finishing off my observations next term

J

Currently Reading:

The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry

A few notable poems from my reading this week:

 ‘My Company’ by Jules Romains – striking imagery ‘my doling gave birth to sensual gratitude’; ‘This is a hell/ Immortal while I live’; ‘My men, my modern Christs’; ‘Earth yawns’.

‘In Memoriam Private D. Sutherland killed in Action in the German Trench, May 16, 1916 and the Others who Died’ by E.A Mackintosh – Wow. This poem brought me close to tears. An officer talking about his soldiers and comparing his relationship with them as to that of a father. How he saw and held them as they died. Beautifully heart wrenching.

‘Into Battle by Julian Grenfell – The juxtaposition between the beauty and life of nature and Religion with the death and destruction seen in war makes this poem particularly resonate with me. ‘Life is Colour and Warmth and light’ ‘Death moans and sings’

The Tempest– William Shakespeare

Finished it finally! Thoroughly enjoyed rereading it and I am inclined to start reading more Shakespeare plays after I have reread A View from the Bridge!