Week 12 – Penultimate Week in Placement 1

Introduction

The penultimate week of my placement has come around quicker than I could ever have imagined. With Christmas and a fair few deadlines looming, it’s safe to say I’m feeling rather stressed at the moment… but it is a good stress! I am feeling confident and on top of my work load at the moment…. Let’s just hope I say the same next week!

Year 10 Drama

It was particularly interesting to observe the year 10 drama class this week for two reasons: they were having practical assessments and their teacher told me it would be thought-provoking to compare this group with the year 11s. 

There are more natural performers in the year 10 group than the year 11s; both are relatively small classes and the year 11s struggled with the physical theatre element they were asked to do. However, the year 10s seemed to take it in their stride. Their assignment was to create a production, between 8-12 minutes long, based on the seven deadly sins; only using physical theatre (no speech, but they could use music of their choice). 

The performances I saw were fantastic and their teacher talked me through how they were assessed in drama… it’s definitely more complicated than English! She also told me about rank-order marking, basically getting the students in ability order than correlating their grades to this list. She said it was really helpful for her as an NQT – it helps to ensure that the marks given are accurate.  

Year 8 Silent Debate

One of the lessons I took with the lovely year 8s this week was a bit of an experiment – a silent debate. I had never heard of this before their teacher brought it up to me, but I thought it sounded really interesting! 

So, the idea of a silent debate is that a big piece of paper is put on the table and students write their responses to a statement or question in the middle, linking ideas with lines, questioning ideas with question marks, agreeing with ticks and disagreeing with crosses – all done in silence.

I am not going to lie… I thought that this wouldn’t be as successful as it was. 8V listened beautifully to my instructions, and all of them engaged in writing – even one of the students that wasn’t normally in lessons due to being excluded or isolated. 

The topic we were looking at was the textile industry –are their workers treated fairly? We had done a fair amount of work comparing the industrial revolution textile workers to today’s industry and a lot of the students had really strong views on it. This definitely helped with the silent debate – I did a bit of statistical input before starting them off, to start them thinking about the conditions the workers are both living and working in. 

On the whole, I do think that this was a successful lesson. Engagement levels were high, and it was an easy group task, with regards to behaviour management. 

Year 7 Poetry Test

After studying poetry since the first week in secondary, back in September, all the year 7s were set a mini poetry knowledge test, testing them on some of the ideas and techniques they have learned over the topic. 

I only did one revision task with them, which I feel might not have been enough as there were some ideas that came up in the test that they hadn’t looked at since the beginning of term. Next time I do a test like this, I will be sure to include extra revision time in multiple lessons throughout the topic to help them learn any new key words, techniques or ideas. 

Despite this, the year 7s did really well and I am super proud of them! I had a range of marks from 11-21 (out of 25) which completely reflects the attainment levels of each student. Unfortunately, I am on a school trip on Monday, so I won’t be able to go through the answers with them – their usual teacher is doing that.

Scheme of Work

I am not coming to the end of my time in school and I realised I hadn’t written anything about the scheme of work I am doing (in detail) with each class. The year 7s, 8s and 9s all have ‘spacing’ tasks once a week – where they plan and write either a descriptive piece or a viewpoint piece. This is to prepare them for the GCSE English Language – both practising the skills need to write each piece and also to practice writing for extended periods of time.

With regards to year group schemes of work, year 7s have been doing introduction to poetry, a scheme that gives a fantastic overview of different poetry forms from Shakespeare to contemporary; year 8s have been doing a ballads unit, closely linked to GCSE English language paper 2 (comparing viewpoints), including aspects such as language analysis; year 9s have been using A View from the Bridge as a class reader, and I will do a summative end of topic assessment with them next week; year 11s were looking at English language paper 1 last term and paper 2 this term. 

When I started teaching here, I can honestly say I was not wholly confident with any of the schemes of work. There were poems I hadn’t ever studied, I read A View from the Bridgefor the first time over the summer, I had no idea what the topic objectives were for the ballads unit and I had only briefly looked at GCSE English language papers last year when doing work experience. 

I began to research various different aspects – looking at the whole scheme of work on the shared area, reading around the areas I have been doing and looking at sites such as teachit and TES to get ideas for lessons. However, the most useful thing I did to help myself get to grips with the curriculum was to ask the teachers for help – not just the teachers I was working with, but anyone who happened to be in the faculty if I was unsure about anything. In doing this, I have been able to gain a deeper understanding of not only what I am teaching but why I am teaching it, which, I believe, has led to me being more confident, thus increasing my standard of teaching. 

Tutor Periods

I have been undertaking a more active role in tutor time over the past few weeks, but the most important thing I did this week was to talk to the year 8 girls about their HPV vaccinations. They had these on Wednesday and the vast majority of my tutor group cannot remember ever having an injection before – safe to say a lot of these kids were completely scared about the unknown. I had the advantage of having had that vaccination when I was at school and I believe I was able to ease some of their worries about it. Also, asking them about it in the afternoon really helped me to bond with the students a bit more – they seemed genuinely happy that I cared about how they were feeling. Such an amazing feeling.

I have also been fist bumped by one of my tutees because I have played fortnite before (I mean I played it once for like 10 seconds but that still makes me cooler than most teachers apparently). 

Making an Impact

The highlight of my week this week was a conversation I had with one of my year 7s. She told me that I am doing fantastically on ‘work experience’ and she said she thought I would make an ‘excellent teacher’ – sometimes it’s the small things that make working with kids completely worth it.

Assignment

I am writing this on Sunday, instead of Friday, this week as I have had to prioritise my assignment this week. I have really struggled getting my head around what is expected from a Master’s level piece of work, and have had to reach out for help a fair few times! But, thankfully, I completed a first draft yesterday… I still have a few things I need to do to it but it is no longer a weight hanging over me. 

Teaching Targets

Last week’s targets:

Behaviour in 9V –  I have noticed a difference in the year 9s after re-establishing my expectations last week. We worked through a lot of the play on Wednesday, and they worked so hard on a mini-essay last lesson. They spent the majority of that lesson in silence, which I never would’ve though was imaginable for this class when I first took them. I have tried to have a restorative conversation with the student I had the incident with last week, but he did not want to have one. Hopefully, this won’t impact anything too much if he is back in lessons next week.

Assessment – I successfully used coded feedback with my year 8s this week; it was both easier for them to understand what they needed to do to improve their work, and quicker for me to mark. What made this even more fantastic, was that I was able to walk around during ‘DIRT’ time and see that the majority were actively engaging with the feedback to improve their essay

This week’s targets:

Pacing – One of my main issues in teaching is that I rarely get through every activity I have planned. I think this is both to do with overestimating the amount I will get through in the lesson, and sometimes spending a bit too long getting class feedback – I love to hear from as many different students as possible! One thing I can do to improve this is to make sure I am realistically planning lessons and making sure I know details such as how many students I will ask to answer each question. (hopefully leading me to not overrun!)

Behaviour management – I still feel like I need to make behaviour management a priority in my lessons, especially in my year 9 classes. I regularly feel as if I don’t give out RtL warnings when I could. (at least I’m being consistent though?!)

J

Currently Reading:

Presents from my Aunt in Pakistan – Moniza Alvi

I looked at this poem with my year 7s this week; I haven’t looked at it myself since I studied it at high school! It is such a beautiful poem – I had completely forgotten about how vivid the imagery is and how it poses such interesting questions about coming from a mixed heritage. 

The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde

I haven’t actually read any more of this yet – focusing on assignment and review point things!

The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishguro

My hopes are slowly being crushed…. This book is not gripping me as Never Let Me Go did. However, I will persevere in the hope that things will turn around.