Introduction
Spending the tail ends of the week in other schools, combined with the year 10s sitting their PPE during our lesson on Wednesday, I have only had a meagre 6 hours teaching this week – and half of that being on Thursday! That being said, I have had a lot of fun in my lessons; really reaffirming to me why I want to teach English. It’s crazy to think that I have only got one week left on placement now, saying goodbye is going to be extremely hard. I have met a lot of people at this school that have dramatically helped to improve my teaching and I have felt so completely supported by everyone I have come across, and I appreciate that this makes me one of the lucky ones. However, the blow will be softened knowing I am going back to my P1 school for my NQT year, starting in just under 3 months!
Peer Visit
I can’t remember if I mentioned it or not in my last blog post, but just before half term one of my fellow PGCE English students came to observe me at my placement school. It was a lot of fun, particularly as my school is quite different to the school she is at. As I didn’t have any lessons this Monday, I figured it would be a good day to go and visit her school.
She was only teaching two lessons, and there was a slight mix up with room changes (thanks to exams!), but it was really fun getting to see her in action. She clearly has a good relationship with her class, and they seemed to enjoy her lessons. As I was interested in behaviour management strategies, before the lesson she told me which students to keep an eye out for during the lesson. However, I don’t know whether it was because it was the first day back after half term, the fact I was in there with a notebook looking official or some other reason, but the students were really well behaved – some of her year 7s even volunteered to move as they knew they were getting distracted.
On the whole, I didn’t see anything drastically different to what I had observed already, which is surprising since the school body is very different.
Reports
This week I experienced another first in the art of teaching: report writing. After inputting all of the Yr 9 PPE exam results into the analytical spreadsheet, then sending them to my AT, we discussed me filling in their reports. He sent me a document with all the reports he had written for his year 9s and I basically used that as a guide to write them up. I am unsure as to whether or not I have given enough detail – I kinda wanted to make them more detailed and personalised than I have, but I wasn’t sure what is allowed and not in reports these days! I will have a session with my AT on Monday checking over them before they get submitted officially.
Speaking and Listening Units
Both my year 9 and year 10 classes are doing speaking and listening units now and, I’m not going to lie, this is what I have been looking forward to teaching the least. I dreaded the speaking and listening tasks as a student – becoming horrifically anxious to the point that the whole world could see… honestly at times it’s like I’m turning into a tomato.
However, I have been having the best time teaching this – particularly with the year 9s! They are doing a room 101 project, where they have to persuade their audience to put a pet hate, fear, or global issue into ‘room 101’. They are hugely passionate about it and have been coming up with a plethora of ideas. I am very grateful that this is only a 2-week scheme of work, as I will be able to see this out as my last official scheme of work!
Marking Year 10
The year 10s have started their PPEs this week but, annoyingly, they won’t be sitting their English Literature paper until after I leave. After putting in a LOT of work helping them to get exam-ready for this paper, it would’ve been lovely to see the end result (well hopefully lovely anyway!). However, they sat their English language exam at the beginning of the week, and I volunteered to mark these papers, despite not giving them much of the input for this exam.
I hadn’t read any of their creative writing before, and some of my lowest ability students really excelled! It’s a shame I didn’t know this before, as it would’ve been nice to a bit of creative writing in the Animal Farm or poetry unit. Other than the two students who didn’t complete the writing section (one is due extra time and the other told me he fell asleep in the exam… good), the writing seemed to be the strongest part for this group.
However, the reading section was not as strong, particularly section 3, about structural features. Many of them appeared confused about what a structural feature was, despite the prompts on the page, telling me that it was definitely something I needed to flag up to the class teacher – I won’t be giving their DIRT lesson, as they have to wait for a ‘results day’.
Annoyingly, I don’t have the grade boundaries, so I am not sure whether they have met or surpassed their target grades. I am conscious that some of these students are very self-conscious, and getting a low grade is extremely unmotivating, so I may speak to their class teacher and see if I can squeeze in a few extra marks anywhere (obviously if they deserve them).
Final Visit to the Middle School
So today marked the first of my goodbyes. I am super grateful to the teacher who has organised my visits to the middle school; she hasn’t had PGCE students before, so I appreciate how lucky I am to have had this opportunity!
I started in year 6 today, as I was interested in what the end of term looks like for year 6. Although there won’t be as drastic a change in a middle school, as most of them stay there, I was still curious as to how the curriculum differs in the summer term– if at all – in comparison to the rest of year 6. The teacher said she finds that there has to be such a massive emphasis on terminology for the exam, and it often gets lost in early KS3. This is particularly interesting to me, as a lot of my students have misidentified different techniques or word classes in assessments, but I know they have been actively taught them since KS2 – KS1 in some cases! It’s definitely worth thinking about how to make sure these sorts of things are committed to their long-term memory.
They were looking at genre in English, there was so much seamless afl! I really liked how the teacher started the lesson by giving them a jumbled-up recipe, asking them what they thought about it. Then used that as a starting point to lead to a success criteria for writing to instruct. One of the girls, on the table I happened to choose to sit on, was one of my year 10s siblings! He had told me to look out for her, but there are 5 year 6 classes, so I didn’t think I’d get to meet her. She told me that I’m one of his favourite teachers and that he says nice things about me (how much of this is actually true I don’t know, but it felt great!). I also stayed for maths where they were sewing parabolic curves – I made one too and it was genuinely so much fun! Makes me seriously consider primary school teaching any time I visit a KS2 or 1 classroom – I love the variety of different things to teach in a day! (Although I do love doing straight English). The teacher also had some great displays – my personal favourites being the ‘spagrid’ display (Harry Potter themed SPAG – I am obsessed) and ‘Starbooks’ where they have reading loyalty cards, can recommend a book and also have mystery books – ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’.
I then managed a guided reading group, of 5 students, in the library. They read different texts, talked about the TAP (text type, audience, purpose) and any features, before comparing them. The group I had were pretty quiet, so it felt like I was spoon feeding them a lot to begin with. I’m not sure if it is to do with the fact they don’t know me well and were shy, or they weren’t sure about what they were supposed to be doing, but I got a few good answers eventually!
To finish off my time at the middle school, I went to year 5. I honestly couldn’t get over how adorable this group was. They were so super keen and excited to do the work – as well as share what they did with me! I ended up sitting next to a Smiggle enthusiast, who basically wanted me to guide him every step of the way (every time I went somewhere else in maths, I found he hadn’t done what we discussed independently). But he was very sweet. They had ‘free write Friday’ (an idea I absolutely love!!!) and this kid gave his protagonist my name, telling me that he needed to do this so he wouldn’t forget me. Too cute. The one thing that struck me was how keen they were to share their creative writing – it’s very unusual for me to get more than1/5 of the class to want to share any of their work!
There were a few other things I wanted to write about, but I have promptly forgotten them now and I need to focus on my assignment this weekend (it’s due Monday!!) so I promised myself I would publish this today – and I will now fulfil that promise!
J
Currently Reading:
Half-Caste and other poems –John Agard
I finished this anthology this week – all I can say is…. Boy do I love this poet and what he stands for!
The Miniaturist – Jessie Burton
At first, I was not keen on this book, it has a slow pace at the start, leading to me getting fairly bored. However, I felt as if there was something more to this book, something bubbling underneath the pages – and I was right! After about half way through the pace abruptly changed and it was filled to the brim with drama and tension, leading me to completely change my opinion on the book!
The Woman with the Red Hair– Clive Tuckett
I demolished this book on Saturday night (living the wild life as usual!). This book was fantastic. I could not put it down! Crime novels are my guilty pleasure and this one is now up there with my favourites!
Noughts and Crosses– Malorie Blackman
I have been dying to try this book for ages… hopefully it is as good as I hope it will be! From just reading the first few chapters.
The Missing Girl – Jenny Quintana
…
Ok… I definitely caught the reading bug again this week! It has been so refreshing to have extra time in school to get admin bits done, leaving me to have more free time in the evenings, and I have swapped my Netflix addiction back for my book addiction and it couldn’t feel better!
Much Ado About Teaching 