Introduction
What. A. Week. I feel like I have barely stopped! I have definitely got half term fever – I am simultaneously elated and drained, a feeling that I am not unused to, after around a decade of working in childcare; but the intellectual draining that comes with teaching secondary English… it’s on another level! I have days where I feel like I couldn’t possibly fill my brain with anything else because I’ve learned so much – and that is the key difference. I love my subject. It is the one thing that stands out to me, the main reason as to why I took the leap from the smallest to the oldest in compulsory education and I have no regrets.
This is a week of celebrations, I cannot believe what I have achieved over this placement. I mean, I thought I was doing well in P1, but looking back now I am a whole new teacher. I am more confident, more knowledgeable and, most importantly, more like myself! I can confidently say (although I am writing this part on Thursday, so let’s hope I don’t have a wobble tomorrow! Note – it is tomorrow now and I am still very happy, other than feeling slightly ill… the inevitable half-term-it is!) I have only had one breakdown related to teaching this term. I was having these weekly in placement 2. It has completely changed my attitude and I feel so much better for it. A lot of it comes down to the advice I was given my Duncan – the ‘do it now, do it later, delegate and don’t bother’ model. That was the turning point in my PGCE. I love being organised and getting things finished way before they are due – so a lot of the last minutey things I have been doing reaaalllllyyyy stress me out. I have come to terms with the fact that in teaching, it is inevitable that things will need to be done last minute.
So anyway, as usual, I am rambling on and I probably could ramble on for a bit more… but I’ll break it down for those of you who read this regularly (basically my grandparents, auntie and university tutor!)
PT observation
For those of you who aren’t aware, my personal tutor (PT) is the deputy head of the school I am currently on placement in. She is an amazing mentor and is, obviously, a much more experienced teacher than me. Despite the fact that she is one of the loveliest people, I was dreading this observation – with the bottom set year 10s again. My AT observation with the same group last week went well, but I was not holding out my hopes for it to be the same today – this group of students can flip from being perfectly behaved to throwing stuff across the room in seconds!
One of the upsides for my PT being the deputy head, is that the students knowshe is the deputy head, so I was hoping they would be on their best behaviour – which they were thank goodness!
I was introducing poetry comparison in this lesson – they had done 11/15 poems and are due to take their end of unit assessment after half term. This was a considerable risk – by venturing into unknown territory I had no idea how they would react. Luckily, they seemed to really grasp the idea! I wove in their usual class teacher’s idea about using ‘snap’ to link poems – this led to them being super engaged and, honestly, I couldn’t have been prouder of them!
Once again, my observed lesson went superbly. The feedback I got was completely fantastic and has fed into my RP2. I am super proud of my class and myself.
Whizzing through the poems
So, following on from this lesson, I had 3 lessons to squeeze in 4 poems. This means that the assessment will be taking place straight after half term (Monday, period 1 after 15 minutes of recapping) – let’s hope that goes well!
Annoyingly, I left the 2 longest poems, My Last Duchess and extract from The Prelude, until last, alongside Storm on the Island and London. I had also only come across My Last Duchess before. Commence myself teaching myself about the poems!! As we colour code the assessment objectives in their anthologies, I saved a bit of time by printing out context points on stickers – which actually seemed to work a lot better! They really appreciated not having to write it down themselves, we talked them through, and they were still linking these points as they went, which is fantastic!
At times, I wasn’t sure if we would get everything done – especially as we got closer to the end of term! There was a lot of off task chatter going on. On Valentine’s day, there was a very sweet moment between two of the boys. One of them had a teddy out on the table, I asked him to pop it in his bag and he did, explaining that it was for his girlfriend. At this, another lad pipes up and the conversation went something like this:
“Mate! Did you get that from Tesco?”
“Yeah why?”
“No jokes… I’ve got the same one in my bag”
“No!”
“Yep” (Pulls out the teddy – whole class laughs)
At this point, he gets up and they swap teddies laughing, give each other a hug and then swap back again.
Honestly so cute! Really melted my heart… before I told them to sit back in their seats… luckily, the class got over it pretty quickly and we smashed through the Prelude!
Not letting the down points be down points
As per usual, after I have a completely fantastic lesson, normally my observed one thankfully, I tend to have a run of actually laughable ones… like, apparently, I cannot just have average lessons. They’re either fantastic or passable.
In order to prepare my students for their 19thCentury prose assessment, I planned in a ‘stop and think’ lesson, covering general essay skills. I had meticulously planned this lesson to include ‘what a good one looks like’, individualised target planning and group work. Behaviour for learning wasn’t great this lesson; not helped by me being completely unclear about what I expected with the group lesson, and not breaking down the instructions enough. I was expecting them to complete a quote explosion (we have done a few before!) and then write a collaborative PEAL paragraph. They had just over 15 minutes to complete this task and, out of 5 groups, 1 completed their paragraph, 1 nearly completed their paragraph, and the other 3 had barely finished their quote explosions.
Now, I am fully aware that this all came back on me – how did I allow such little work to happen in my lesson? Simple. I wasn’t clear to begin with. It would probably have been more useful if I had given roles to begin with, rather than let them choose (I am still finding it hard to balance between building resilient learners by giving them just the right support). I also was too lenient, in that I should have been prompting the groups that were consistently off task to work harder.
I have also had a small issue one of my students in my other year 9 class, with regards to working. This student does a lot of sport outside of school, and she is rarely motivated in English. When asking for homework on Monday, she said she did it with another student, despite the fact that I remember specifically giving her the sheet on the Friday and telling the group she was working with that they would not be working together on the poster together, and I addressed the class twice, insisting they have finish their sheets as well as adding in the extra homework. I also noticed that she had done the least in the class on the language analysis sheet, yet she verbally contributed to the discussion as I modelled what to do. In going forward – I have moved her right under my nose for next term, next to another student who has the tendency to be off task! The usual teacher was off sick today, but, after half term, I will speak to her as well about potentially phoning home to voice concerns.
But anyway, linking back to the sub-heading, in my first placement I would’ve let these moments really get me down and I would over think them, really beating myself up mentally thinking about what I could’ve done better. This time round, and I don’t know if it is the excitement of half term looming, or the fact that I have become more comfortable and confident in the role of a teacher, but I have reflected on these moments briefly, to aid my practice but will now be sweeping them under the rug and pressing the reset button!
EPS assignment progress (finally)
So, this week I have conducted two observations into year 12 classes – Chemistry and Business Studies. Those who know me, know that I did Chemistry AS-level myself, I mean even if I got an E, that still counts as a pass right? Ha! So, going back and observing a class on ions definitely brought back some memories… definitely made me wish I actually listened in those lessons!
Not sure if I’ve mentioned before or not, but I am conducting research into how feedback can help the ‘most able’ sixth form students. Unfortunately, the Business Studies lesson didn’t give me much to work with – the Chemistry lesson definitely did though! I have also decided to hand out a questionnaire… although I am not convinced I will get results back quick enough to finish my project in 3 weeks!
End of term!
Finally! Placement 2 is over! I have (nearly) seen three full units of work through and I have completely loved it… but I am completely exhausted now!
The highlight of today had to be saying goodbye to both of my year 9 classes, telling them I had set them loads of homework to do over half term (all I have asked them to do is read). Honestly, their facial expressions were gold!
J
Currently Reading:
London– William Blake
Extract from the Prelude – William Wordsworth
My Last Duchess – Robert Browning
Storm on the Island – Seamus Heaney
I powered through the poems this week! These were the last in the power and conflict cluster of the AQA GCSE exam. Unfortunately, as we were rather strapped for time (why did I leave the longest poems til last?!?) I had to whizz through these poems in a not particularly engaging way for my bottom set year 10s. Nevertheless, they seem to have at least a basic understanding about what the poems are about and have been thinking about how they link to other poems. So proud of them!
Bleak House –Charles Dickens
Another 2 pages read this week… oops. I’m just too tired in the evenings! I may finish this novel eventually… or not… who knows!!
Animal Farm –George Orwell
Split Second – Sophie McKenzie
Much Ado About Teaching 