Half-term has come and gone faster than I ever imagined possible. It’s been a refreshing week – a mixture of spending time with beloved family and friends (including a cheeky spa day) alongside the inevitable weight of marking, planning and assignments. Honestly, I feel like I have worked much smarter this half-term – I have got pretty much everything I planned to do done in a much shorter amount of time – definitely a win! I have also begun to plan for my summer holiday trip around Europe with my boyfriend… it’s definitely been a motivating factor with any kind of work!
This is only going to be a brief update, as I am still on holiday mode and off to Ikea in about ten minutes (yes it counts as a day trip)!
9Y3 19thCentury Prose assignments
A slightly disappointing start to the half-term, not going to lie. It was a complete mixed bag of results but, the average grade was slightly lower than the average target grade, which is rather frustrating.
A good chunk of this comes down to one student, targeted a 6 and got a 2. In old GCSE terms that’s being predicted around a B and coming out with an F (more or less). I was completely disappointed. He had not included any contextual points at all, so I could not place him any higher. His analysis was ok, nothing spectacular – he probably would’ve got a 4 or a 5 if he was lucky – but the lack of context was detrimental. I’m not sure what happened there, but it has made me ever more vigilant – I need to ensure that he is completely clear on the assessment objectives next time. They all have a post it notes with the assessment objectives on it, plus a little message to themselves about their previous target grade – I don’t know if he lost it or if he just didn’t look at it, but clearly that method did not work for him!
On the bright side, I read 2 essays that blew me away – they were fantastic! It’s always completely reassuring to read essays that include things that I mentioned briefly – showing that differentiation can be as simple as mentioning something to a higher ability student.
That being said, this was a particularly difficult topic and I am very proud of my students; a lot of them missed out on a grade by 1 or 2 marks. They have worked very hard and have been slightly concerned about all the other classes that have been doing travel writing… luckily for them, we start travel writing on Monday!
I am also trialling a slightly different DIRT session with them. It is slightly more personalised, similar to the coded feedback I did with 8V back in p1, and my theory behind it is that it will give the students more focus with their feedback. I will comment on it next week!
EPS assignment
I am nearly there! Just need to gather the data that the teachers will (hopefully) be able to give me next week… if not I’ll be spamming questionnaires! I’ve structured my presentation and know what I am going to talk about. Let’s just hope that I actually find something useful!
Curriculums Practice assignment
The more I research into Animal Farm, the more I love it! I have got my medium-term plan finished now, with the intentions to imbed it closely (well at least the first couple of weeks for now) into the Science of Learning theory. I have to say, having a medium term plan has made my life SO much easier when it comes to planning – to have the objectives and outcomes already thought up, as well as a few activity ideas already down on paper, I am finding it more of a therapeutic copy and paste & pretty up the PowerPoint activity!
J
Currently Reading:
Poetry – So much Coleridge! My favourites this week has been Lime-tree bower my prison. I love that he has written a poem about FOMO because his wife spilled boiling milk on his foot.
Animal Farm –Whilst I technically haven’t sat and read much more than chapter 1, I have been dipping in and out for the CP assignment! I am starting to feel like I know the story pretty well – hopefully fantastically well by the end of the term!
Bleak House – Charles Dickens (ok, I may not have picked it up at all this week, but I am still ploughing on through!)
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!!
This week, I had an epiphany. This epiphany was that I can teach. I am a teacher.
No matter what happens next, with review point 2 and my PT observing me next week, I can sleep soundly knowing that when my students come into the lesson, they will leave it having learned something (the vast majority of the time!).
This epiphany has been a milestone in my PGCE career. I am no longer stressing about every little target and are looking at them as the stepping stones to make me the best teacher I can possibly be.
I want to be the best teacher I can possibly be.
So, with that in mind, I am as determined as ever to continue what I am doing, but to also let myself appreciate other things that are important in life. It was one of my friend’s birthdays this week, so I have allowed myself to have two evenings off (crazy I know) and dedicate my time to her. Yes, the work load is never ending. Yes, sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in things I need to get done. Yes, the stress that I am not working when I feel like I should be working 24/7 is never going to go away. BUT, I have been working on focusing on what I need to do to keep myself sane. Regardless of these epiphanies, I’ve been feeling more down than up this week and I can’t seem to pinpoint why. This next step in building my career is to make sure that it is manageable for me, and I don’t isolate myself in an infinite prison of work. I can be a good teacher and maintain good mental health – it’s just going to take a bit of time to work out how to harmonise the details.
Bottom set year 10, period 5, teaching tissue – so why the LOG?
Picture this….
‘Tissue’ by Imtiaz Dharker. Stunning, thought-provoking and inspirational, yet completely, utterly and astoundingly difficult to grasp. I have spoken to some teachers who still say they have no idea what Dharker was trying to achieve with this poem. Every English teacher I have spoken to has said this is, generally, the hardest poem to teach; the hardest poem for students to get their head around.
Tuesday, period 5. The end of the day, just had a break for lunch, concentration levels are low. The week is still new, there is more left of the week than done.
Year 10. Bottom set. Concentration levels aren’t best on the whole, throw something challenging in the mix and they don’t always appreciate it.
So why, why WHY did I decide to make this an officially observed lesson by my AT? He doesn’t know the class, but is obviously familiar with the lesson context, mentioned previously. (This was definitely a blessing in hindsight.) I was stressed beyond imagination about this lesson. One of my lovely colleagues said to me something along the lines of if you nail it, you’re a fantastic teacher. If you mess it up, you’re just like the rest of us – this made it feel more manageable but didn’t stop my nerves. Did I mention that I had already started Tissue the day before, it didn’t go overly that well and this is why it was moved to this lesson?
However, despite the over the top anxiety, the lesson couldn’t have gone better! (Actually, it definitely could have for reasons I will explain in due course… but in comparison to my expectations, it was the best it could’ve been!) The students were actually able to prove they understood (on a basic level) the poem and seemed to make progress in how they structure and write their ‘PEAL’ paragraphs (I mean we’ll see if they remember everything for the end of unit assessment, which will most likely be after half term!)
I also managed to tick off one of my targets – adapting the lesson as I go to meet the needs of pupils. I had a little… moment of human error. I may have been too prepared for the lesson, printing off the resources before checking them properly. I had typed up the paragraph we wrote together the lesson before, with the intention to have them underline where we would have met the assessment objectives. I then had another model paragraph ready, cut up so they could piece it back together. Turns out I had used the same paragraph for both activities, making the latter redundant… not my smartest move! However, I felt it was important to be completely honest with my students. They are all aware that I am a trainee teacher, and I feel that they empathise with me and – dare I say it – like me more because of my honesty with them. By treating them with the respect, on the whole, they have been completely respectful to me back. I like the idea that by showing them that I make mistakes, it makes it ok for them to make mistakes too – and that’s important.
After the lesson, I felt elated and relieved. However, the stress has come right back around again…. My PT is observing me with this class again on Tuesday. She is a deputy head, so hopefully they will behave… they definitely had ‘wind syndrome’ today, so I wouldn’t want a repeat of that!
Impostor syndrome strikes again
One of the things that I can’t seem to stop thinking about is how other teachers feel about my teaching. Every teacher seems to have their own personal list about what makes a good lesson, and they only seem to vaguely overlap with main ideas. This leads to me getting very varied feedback and can be completely confusing at times.
The one thing I find particularly hard to deal with, is when teacher’s interrupt my teaching to make a comment to the class. I know it is meant with the best intentions, and I am also completely aware that this is their class, and they are ultimately responsible for their progress – I am a complete risk in the eyes of education.
One moment that has particularly stuck with me this week, was when I was doing a preparation for the end of unit assessment. They were due to plan their assessment with their class teacher on Wednesday, as my PT meetings clash with that lesson, and she has taught travel writing many times before, and has a really clear idea about what she expects. Now, I knew that the students were going to write a piece of travel writing to entertain. We had looked at writing to inform and to persuade as well, and as a result used their ‘FASTER CARS’ acronym for what to include in persuasive writing.
I was taking general feedback about what makes good travel writing. I have been working on how to give students ownership over success criteria and, after spending a lot of time having to shut students down because it isn’t what I want them to come up with, I have found the easiest way to do this is to write down everyone’s answers and then come up with a final list. One of my higher ability students suggested FASTER CARS, and I added it to the board. In my head, I thought ‘great, a lovely little afl piece I can use later, asking them why we wouldn’t include this if we were writing to entertain’. Whilst I was writing this on the board, the class teacher addressed the class, completely shutting down the idea and explaining why that wasn’t going to be the case.
I know exactly why she did it, it just felt awful at the time. I felt completely undermined, more so because she didn’t give me a chance to see what I might’ve done with that information, or even catch my eye to see if it was ok to address the class. Moments like this throw my confidence and make me feel like just a trainee. I know it might sound silly because that is, in fact, what I am. But the majority of the time, as mentioned in my introduction, I do feel like a teacher. It’s just those moments that make me question my role in the classroom. Why am I doing this? Why am I humiliating myself?
Finishing travel writing….
On a slightly better note, I swiftly moved on from that moment and the students wrote their assessments on Thursday. They worked so hard! I have started marking them, based on the English Language Paper 1 Q5 mark scheme and grade boundaries and, so far, everyone has been on or above their target grade! It is such an amazing feeling!
… and starting 19thCentury Prose round 2
So, after finishing travel writing, which has definitely been my favourite SOW to teach, it was time to move on to 19thcentury prose. I recycled the introduction lesson, playing the Dickens’ game and research. It was a complete dream planning the second time round – I already had an idea of how to improve my planning, resources and teaching.
This was the sheet I used last time, for the research project:
They also had to find 10 more fascinating facts for homework and print out any pictures they want to use on their posters.
I found that some of this research was not directly relevant to the texts we study, and that it could be more useful to focus on gender and class, as opposed to London. Moreover, I had them take a page in their books and draw their own grid, with the intentions of having it filled in by the end of the lesson. I found that a lot of students spent nearly as long drawing and perfecting the grid than they did actually researching, and that a lot of them didn’t get at least 5 facts in each section – which was my minimum aim.
This is the new resource I created:
I figured that if they had a print out of the sheet, they would be able to take it home to finish off for homework (a fantastic motivating factor!). I also added to this homework, by telling them to find 5 fascinating facts about Bleak House. I am hoping that this will help them to have an idea about what the mammoth novel is about, before approaching it with them next week.
My hard work paid off – this was definitely an easier way to do the research! I also asked them to pair up and split the research, as we didn’t have as much time as I would’ve liked (Friday timings are slightly shorter and I was in a year 10 assembly that ran on for an extra 5 minutes = 10 minutes of lesson time gone… plus we had to actually get to the computer room!). The majority got at least 15 points down, and they worked well together to finish off their research… although they will be dismayed when they see I have put them in different groups on Monday!
J
Currently Reading:
The Eolian Harp & Kubla Khan – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Kubla Khan is now one of my favourite poems. It is a unique poem, interweaving the ‘sublime’ with the exotic, creating a beautiful Romantic masterpiece.
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
Animal Farm – George Orwell
A Monster Calls –Patrick Ness
More than one tear was shed in the reading of this book – cancer being an illness very close to my heart. I loved reading about a boy struggling with accepting his Mum’s inevitable death. A very accessible book, an easy read but a sensitive topic… may not be suitable for all students!
I am currently writing this in bed, in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday… thanks to the amber weather warning and waking up to a load of snow outside. (Kinda annoying as I spent ages preparing for today’s lessons, as it didn’t look like it will happen… at least my planning for Monday is done!) Today has been a short week at school, as we had a university recall day on Monday, so I have only had 3 days of teaching – luckily, I had an official lesson observation on Thursday!
This week has also been a week of assessments – so not the most thrilling to teach! In light of this… I don’t have masses to say this week, so will be a short post!
University Recall Day
As always, it was wonderful to be able to spend time catching up with my fellow course mates. Everyone generally has a funny anecdote to share, and there seems to be no one who can empathise more closely with the highs and lows of our PGCE placement.
In the morning, we had a session on how to go about applying for jobs; what to write in letters of application, and how to respond to typical interview questions. I’m not planning on looking to apply until around the Easter break – I want to make sure I put everything into this placement, so I don’t let my standards slip! However, if a job comes up that looks like it would be perfect for me, I am not ruling out applying before then… scary and exciting stuff!
The afternoon session was about how we can integrate the classics into the curriculum. Greek mythology is something I have always been fascinated with…. and something I would love to increase my subject knowledge in! It was really fun and also pretty useful to see how we can teach writing with just pictures. Inspiring.
Bleak House assessments – 9Y
I set the year 9s the assessment ‘compare how Dickens presents characters in Bleak House’ this week, breaking it down to a planning and a writing lesson. One of the students missed the planning lesson, and this was clear in his essay, suggesting to me that the planning lesson was in fact worth doing, and I am thinking about doing something similar for their official assessment.
I marked these essays this morning, and I would like to take a moment here to relish this feeling… the vast majority completely nailed the essay and have proven they understand how (and in a lot of cases why) Dickens presents his characters. It’s such a good feeling being able to see that my teaching has been beneficial to these students!
Unseen poetry assessments
I also had my bottom set year 10s do an unseen poetry assessment. They worked really hard on them and some of them have got higher than their target grades. Unfortunately, a few of them have not managed to get their target grade, so I am going to have to seriously think about how to word my feedback to them.
The main issue with this class is linking their ideas together – they know what language features to look for and they can use terminology accurately, it’s just they don’t always write points that make sense, therefore don’t link the evidence and analysis well. Bearing this in mind, I am going to trial a different approach to another poem on Monday, and hopefully this might help them understand what they need to do.
First Sixth Form Teaching
I honestly felt as nervous as the first time teaching my year 7 class back in October! I kept telling myself that they are just year 11s that are a little older and in non-school uniform… but that doesn’t really help. Mainly because it is the subject knowledge step up that is daunting!
I taught a section of the lesson on accent and dialect, and it went about as well as it could do! I think it is going to take a while to work on how to go about teaching sixth formers, but I know I am going to enjoy it!
J
Currently Reading:
The Emigree – Carol Rumens
Read in order to teach the year 10s. I’m slowly growing to love the poems in the poetry anthology… wonder if I’ll say the same after a few years teaching them on repeat!
It would be apt to describe this weekend as a rollercoaster – not the cheesy metaphor suggesting that there have been a lot of highs and lows – but more to describe the sheer elation that this week has brought along with it!
Most importantly, I did not have a low point at all this week! Yes, I have felt tired, completely overwhelmed and have been worrying about whether or not the students have met any of my learning objectives at all… but I have not felt consumed by panic and anxiety – a first for me!
As well as this, my AT has agreed with me that I will be starting to be alone in the classroom with the year 9s we share, I have shared a few resources that are being used with the faculty (one of them being an important literacy focus sheet that all year 9s will be sticking in their books for as long as they teach the 19thcentury unit!) and Friday brought two massive highs: a fantastic UT visit and finding out I have got a distinction in my first EPS assignment.
So, all around, I am very happy! Now, I know a few people may be thinking that I am boasting about my good fortune. This is not the case – the main reason I am writing this down and sharing it on the internet is that will undoubtedly need a reminder of how good teaching can feel at some point over the next few months – (probably on multiple occasions!). So, anyone reading this that knows me…. When this inevitably happens point me in this direction!!
Alone in the classroom
My AT had popped out a few times last week, never for longer than a few minutes. The first time this happened I completely had an internal freak out – what will I do without my safety blanket? How will I know if I am completely failing these amazing students in front of me?!
So, when he had the conversation with me about him dropping his presence in the classroom to one lesson a week, I had a tangle of conflicting emotions: my AT actually thinks I am a competent enough teacher to be left alone – I must be doing great! Versus AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!
However, when the time came for me to be left alone for the majority of the lesson, I couldn’t have loved it more! It really felt like they were finally my own class; I’m not just borrowing them for a bit here and there – I am their official, real, true-life teacher for these two schemes of work. It felt amazing. I could feel myself oozing with confidence and this worked wonders in engaging my learners. I am so excited for the next few weeks, finishing off 19thcentury prose with them!
On a side note, one of my highlights this week was reading a section of Bleak House with my year 9s. I had one boy reading as Jo, a cockney, very poor and young street sweeper, and another boy reading as Lady Dedlock, a very wealthy, fashionable lady. They completely nailed the parts and it was an absolute pleasure to witness! It was definitely one of those that-is-why-I-have-gone-into-teaching moments! J
Rising Star – 6thform helper!
It is worth pointing out here that I will not be completely alone for 3 of my lessons a fortnight – I will be having a ‘rising star’ in with me. The rising stars programme is for sixth form students looking to put something extra on their CVs/ personal statements – they pick the subject they are interested in and work as a kind of TA in the class.
Boy does this take me back! The whole reason I am an English teacher is because my incredible A-Level teacher took me under her wing and allowed me to help out in a few of her classes. I can honestly say that without that experience, I would not be where I am now. She completely inspired me and made me feel as if I was good enough to make a difference in other people’s lives, and it is an experience that will stick with me for the rest of my life.
And now I am standing in front of a class of students, with the opportunity to do the same to my rising star…. And I am not even qualified yet! This student is also in both of the year 12 classes I will be teaching, and he even asked me excitedly if I would be taking their classes soon! I am completely keen to get him helping out as much as he feels comfortable with – I gave him a particularly difficult passage form Bleak House to read and he nailed it! Very proud already… and very excited to hopefully inspire him as Mrs M inspired me!
EPS assignment 2
As mentioned before, today I found out my last assignment achieved a distinction, which I am completely over the moon! The main area of improvement I had was to write more on how this will impact my own practice, so that is something I will keep in mind for my next assignments.
But for now, this is done and dusted, and it is now time to face forward to ensure that I do not let my standards drop – something that is a very real possibility, considering the difference in workload on this placement, and something that I plan on being completely honest about! In monitoring my work ethic in this way, I hope to be able to pinpoint any reasons as to why I perform in a certain way – I like lists and organisation… this worked in my undergrad and will hopefully work for me again this year!
As I believe I have mentioned previously, I will be looking at high achieving sixth form students and how feedback can be used to aid pupil progression. This assignment is pass/ fail – not at masters level – thus the stakes are much lower, so I feel way more comfortable about taking my time with it, prioritising my lesson plans. Although, saying this, I plan to get the majority of my reading done by this week, and begin to look at pinning some teachers down to interview in the near future! The only thing I am worried about, is that the research will be boring or will not be of any use to anyone. Feedback, in my opinion, is one of the most important things in teaching, and I want to be able to give my learners, present and future, every opportunity I can to achieve and even surpass their target grades.
University Tutor Visit
It felt pretty surreal to have my UT observing me so soon into P2 – that is, until I realised that we are actually half way through P2 now! (Pretty scary when I think about the amount of work I need to cover with my classes before their end of unit assessments!)
Friday timings are slightly different in this school, as they have extended tutor time, and I had already agreed to take the tutor session before my UT timetabled our observations. I had a few stressful thoughts – there are a lot of lovely students in my tutor group (year 10s) but they are probably the least engaged class I have worked with so far and will constantly chat throughout any of the sessions. I am a little unsure as to whether planned tutor sessions for every tutor is fair to the students – I have many fond memories of tutor time just being a bit of fun – light relief from the heavy work load placed on secondary school students! Obviously, there are some issues to cover, but surely it should be down to the tutor to decide when and how they deliver the topics?
That being said, the session I delivered today was ridiculously interesting! So much so that the class was completely engaged, and nearly all the chatter in the class was about the topic! Very exciting to me – especially with my UT watching! We had a look at algorithms, self-driving cars and thought experiments (much to many of my tutees’ delight, we watched this clip from The Good Place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWb_svTrcOg) Following this, we had many interesting discussions about ethics and whether it is right to prioritise ourselves or our loved ones instead of thinking about the ‘greater good’.
I’m not going to lie… the nervous sweats had started before then and they weren’t letting up for my year 9 lesson I was being formally observed in! To have both my university tutor and head of English in with me – and me wanting to impress both of them! – was a little too much for my stress levels to deal with rationally! But, much to my relief, the feedback I had was completely fantastic, and I am still aiming for the ‘very good’ teacher pen profile – a realistic target for me, which is good to know!
I think part of my success today was down to my subject knowledge – I taught a lesson where my students wrote a piece of travel writing about Fiji. Those who know me, are aware that Fiji is my favourite country in the whole world, and I hold it very dear to my heart as my beloved grandparents lived there for 3 years. Being able to tell my class little anecdotes – even having one of my students (usually too ‘cool’ to appear interested in anything I say) putting her hand up to ask in awe “Wait, miss have you actually been here?!” – felt completely amazing.
What was even more amazing was marking their work this evening. These students who have never set foot in Fiji – some of them had never even heard of Fiji – have convincingly written about ‘Kava’ and ‘Fiji time’. I can’t even put into words how proud I am on them… I can’t wait to tell them on Tuesday! And, even more importantly, I believe I am doing my grandparents proud, following in their footsteps with both Fiji and teaching!
J
Currently Reading:
Poppies– Jane Weir
Another one of the anthology poems! Again, I have found I really enjoyed this poem – even more excitingly for me, one of my bottom set students gave a beautiful explanation as to why we wear poppies (even referencing In Flanders Fields!).
The Importance of Being Ernest – Oscar Wilde
I have finally finished this play! Again, I am obsessed with it – I love Wilde’s works! The twist at the end was completely fantastic and I am tempted to do some extra reading around it, to see if any contextual factors influence my reading of it! I will definitely be reading some more Wilde in the near future, however, for now, I feel as if I should move to reading something maybe more contemporary?
Bleak House– Charles Dickens
Still persevering with this epic novel! I am enjoying it and, the more my AT explains little parts of it, the more I am truly appreciating Dickens’ genius!
Girlhood– Cat Clarke
I always find YA fiction easy to read – in some ways it is more addictive than some of the other genres I read, as they are often very accessible and easy to read, as well as including gripping plots. This was no exception.
Girlhoodfollows the protagonist, Harper, who goes to a private boarding school as her family won the lottery – the day her twin sister dies. It is a story about friendship, mental health issues and family. It is definitely more for older teenagers to read, there are a lot of mature themes to deal with, as well as (as far as I remember – could be wrong!) some coarse language. Nevertheless, there are a few interesting twists – predictable, but enjoyable all the same!
I am currently writing this with overwhelmingly consuming stomach pain… not sure why this is the case, but it was bad last night too! I seriously considered not going into school this morning but, as I didn’t feel too bad this morning, I decided to go in! Annoyingly I’ve felt ok all day… I’ve got a lot to do this weekend, so I better get better!
Anyway, on a lighter note, teaching has been going well this week! I am finally starting to get my head back around planning and teaching and everything in between. The main comments coming out from my observations at the moment is to draw everything together… easier said than done!
Tech fail 2.0
My not so lovely work laptop is the bane of my life at the moment! It has many, many quirks that I am beginning to get my head around, such as changing the display settings every time I plug it in. On the whole, however, I can cope with what it throws with me in a 6-hour school day,
Monday was definitely a case of having to think on my feet – I merely shut my laptop and it decided to completely turn off and not save/ recover any of the files I had open ready for the lesson. Things were the wrong way around on my PowerPoint (and I had been very excited about teaching this lesson – journalist writing about New Zealand!), I couldn’t open SIMS for love nor money (thanks to the teacher I was with for getting it up on her laptop!) and it had decided to make a weird noise when I plugged the sound in to watch a video. The laptop is already very slow, and this completely shook my confidence.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I managed to adapt my way around this, thinking on my feet as it were. It is more that I completely lost face in front of my class! It led to a few dips in the lesson, meaning they just talked over me – more so than they usually would.
It wasn’t the end of the world, but, due to my stressed state, my explanations were anything but clear and I ended up forgetting bits of the lesson I had meticulously planned in.
New Planning Style
In light of how long it had been taking me to write a plan, I decided to use a different pro forma, that I designed myself. So far, it has been quicker àI use a key instead of writing everything out. However, I have been finding myself short of time for planning and, with two assignments on the horizon, I may end up adapting it once more.
Rock Bottom on Tuesday
Following my tech fail on Monday, my confidence was not very high on Tuesday. My 9X lesson went well but my 9Y lesson, on language analysis in the opening of Bleak House, was definitely not. To the extent where I could not say if my students had successfully met the lesson objectives or not. On reflection with my AT, he gave my lesson a 5/10…. Compared to the much higher I had been doing the previous week.
This led me to think about why it had happened. In theory I know what I am doing, I know the aspects to include in a lesson and I know how to present it – I learned all that in P1. So now, I feel, this placement is more about harmonising the different aspects which, I’m hoping, will result in teaching feeling more natural and less of a brain explosion. I felt as if I knew that lesson plan inside out but, when it came to teaching it, I had left out crucial afl pitstops as well as information that would’ve been useful to tell them.
I am lucky to have such a diligent class in most respects, however this was not the case in a lesson like this. The higher attaining students get on with it with no problem, and the lower ability students constantly asked questions and eventually got there. Unfortunately, I had no idea about what was being (or wasn’t being) learned until I flicked through their books at the end. So I am taking this hit as an important one for my journey into a teacher!
Another struggle I face is that the small ways of running things are slightly different to P1… so here is a list for me to look back to if I forget!
Always include a starter and a plenary task – even in the lessons when I feel like they may need a bit more time writing.
Always keep the lesson objective on the board, as well as activity timings and whether they are working in pairs, groups or individually.
Make sure the powerpoint is clear about all (or mostly all) details for that part of the lesson, including differentiation parts.
Remember that different teachers have different ways of teaching their classes and expect feedback that differs widely!!
Pulling myself back up!
That’s enough of the negative points from this week now! There were also a lot of things that went fantastically this week and now, starting as I am writing this, I am going to move on from the bad and focus on the good this week.
I taught my bottom set year 10s this week and completely loved it! They are so lush, yes they chat a bit and do take a lot of nagging to stay on task… but they are so much fun to teach! One of my highlights this week is one of the boys in that group turning the visualiser round to show the whole class his face on the whiteboard. Probably doesn’t sound all that funny but it certainly tickled me! I also did my first bit of marking and ‘reflecting and improvement’ time with them. I feel as if this will be where the challenge lies – they can annotate the poems fine, it’s just knowing how to translate this knowledge into a cohesive paragraph – any tips on teaching this (whilst keeping their engagement!) would be handy!
I also had my first official lesson observation on Thursday, with the 9y class. This lesson will definitely be one of my favourite lessons I have taught so far. Firstly, I got them to go back to the language analysis sheets we did on the Tuesday and use a red pen to improve what we did. I saw improvements first hand – always good to see! This was a very promising start, leading quite nicely into an introduction to satire.
Now, I feel as if satire is one of those things that once you get it you completely get it, but it is pretty challenging to understand. I have also found that the difference between satire and parody is very subtle – and often comes down to the objectivity! This lesson consisted of watching Tom and Jerry, then Itchy and Scratchy – discussing how violence for children is a bad thing. Then looking at Mr Tumble and how we might write a satire of him. All in all – I had fun, they had fun and actually had a lesson essential to their progress!
However, upon discussion that following evening, myself and my AT decide that Mr Tumble/ Justin is hard to satirise – yes he doesn’t care about the children he spends time with when he films something at schools (first-hand information from my cousin, who was working at a SEN school when he came to film there) and yes he is probably just in it for the money. However, is this something that would be worth satirising? We felt that it was in fact more of a parody, which lead to my first sort of ‘off topic’ medium term plan change – looking at the differences between parody and satire.
This then led to another fun lesson today, looking at a parody for an iPhone advert and a SNL satirisation of Trump. After talking through the differences (and a lovely explanation given to the group by one of my HA students!) the class made a unanimous decision that their Mr Tumble satires were in fact parodies. At this point, I said to them that they could create their own satire or parody about anything they wanted. I had some very interesting responses to this, some rather dark! But on the whole, I am looking forward to marking them! (I did have the intentions of doing that this weekend, but I left in a hurry (eager to be home and just have a rest) leading me to conveniently remember half way home – although this isn’t necessarily a bad thing! I also have to write plans/ make PowerPoints for next week, polish off my medium term plans look at some assignment readings amongst a sackful of other things… so I’m taking this as a good thing on this occasion (even if I do end up having a lot of work on Monday!).
Teaching Targets
Due to my increasing work load, I will be now cutting this part of my blog – I go through it with my AT in our weekly meetings, so I still have a record of it!
J
Currently Reading:
To also cut down on my time spent writing blogs, I will only write a mini-review when I have finished a book/ play/ poetry.
Poetry – Focused on Exposure again this week, as I was teaching it.
So, I am sat writing this a day early, as I have a rather busy weekend ahead of me, and I already can’t quite believe what I have achieved in 3 days of teaching and observing (excluding the inset day on Monday!). I am over the moon to be back at school; by the end of the week, I will have taught 4 starters, half a lesson and 3 full lessons. I am extremely proud of how hard I have been working this week, and I am certain I will keep this up for the rest of the term (hopefully!!).
Alongside the highs, I have also seen a glimpse into the lows – they have already started and will inevitably only get worse as my work load increases. My university tutor has suggested I make sure I take one night off during the week (probably a Tuesday or a Wednesday as that’s when the stress seemed to be hitting me) and actually get out of the house! Now, I haven’t done that this week, but I aim to start it next week and I will hopefully see some improvement in my wellbeing! I am also already ridiculously tired… so if anyone reading this has any suggestions other than sleeping more (I always average 7-9 hours a night) or drinking coffee (can’t abide it!) they will be more than welcome!
Inset day
It was really interesting to see what happens on an inset day, after making the most of so many of them as a student with lie ins and socialising with friends/family! The day was split into three: Housekeeping, feedback and gifted and talented students; Faculty based work (I also had a chat with my AT about my teaching this week); recent safeguarding issues and recapping ready to learn.
I am not going to into too much detail about this, as a lot of it is directly related to the school’s recent Ofsted inspection (happened the day after the inspection for my P1 school!). However, it was interesting to see the sort of training that goes on for teaching and support staff; it was also really good to get a chance to get to know the faculty a bit better before the students came in!
EPS assignment
Following the inset day, I felt as if it would be more appropriate to go for my second idea of looking at gifted and talented students in sixth form, with an emphasis on how feedback can aid pupil progress. I feel that this will be particularly interesting, as I looked at a few different ways of giving feedback in p1 – this should definitely both help me give feedback that genuinely aids pupil progress, as well as reduce marking time for me! I submitted my proposal mid-week, so I will hold off on doing anything further now until my idea has been ok’d!
Sixth Form
It was amazing to finally get a chance to officially observe sixth form classes – I thoroughly enjoyed helping out in 12 literature and 12 media last year when I did a bit of work experience! In particular, I really enjoyed going into the English Language class – looking at Robin Lakoff really brought back memories of why I am so passionate about my subject! I intend to purely observe the lessons for the first few weeks before beginning to teach. Teaching sixth formers is slightly different to teaching ks3/4, therefore I want to ensure that I am able to adapt my teaching style to suit each class.
9Y3 – Nineteenth century prose
I believe I have manged to grasp at my students’ interest, thanks to an interesting start to the Dickens half of 19thcentury prose, and on the way, I have been reminded about how much I love fiction from the Victorian era! My AT started off Tuesday’s lesson with a game https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/multimedia/dickens/(need to make sure flash player is allowed, or disable then allow flash player for it to work). There is the opportunity to get 2000 points and the students had the challenge to get as high as they could get in the time limit. The winner got just over 1,200 points!
I then introduced the research task, which was finished off for homework and helped them to create posters on Dicken’s life, works and times. We had a competition to see who had the best poster – all the students seemed to have a lot of fun doing this and, as I opened the second lesson by asking them to tell me a fact they had learned when I called their name on the register, they all seem to have good contextual knowledge in time to start on Bleak Housenext week!
9X5 – Travel writing
This topic gives me great pleasure as it combines two of my all-time favourite things: English and travel! The introductory lesson was about the differences between a tourist, traveller or explorer. I introduced the definitions of the three, before doing a quiz with the students to find out if they were more of a tourist or a traveller. This was also a lot of fun; the students all appeared to be engaged and were loving finding out what everyone was!
The next lesson I taught was on the ‘ingredients’ of travel writing, which involved analysis of the first extract they will see. This was the first full lesson I was to take, and I was pretty nervous about doing so! However, on the whole it went really well – the students are completely amazing, I am very lucky to have two eager year 9 groups!
Tomorrow I will be taking them again, looking at the positive and negative connotations of different words, particularly adjectives.
10X5 – Power and Conflict poetry
It has been decided that I will be teaching the year 10s for the first-time next Wednesday, looking at ‘Exposure’. In the meantime, I have been doing ‘Haribo’ starters with them – a quiz looking at different aspects they have covered so far, tallied up each lesson and at the end of the half term, a winner will receive a packet of Haribo. They seemed to really enjoy this concept – although not many of them got the questions right. Teaching bottom set will definitely be a challenge for me – I am so used to having to stretch and challenge students predicted grades 7+ that I am going to have to do a lot of work to in order to teach them well – one of the reasons I decided to do my curriculum practice assignment with them!
The lessons the teacher is doing with them have a rigid structure that is applied to each poem, with the theory behind it being that they will then be able to apply this to any poem that they come across. Each student has chosen their own colour for each of the three assessment objectives, has split up the page in the anthology so that each AO is together, and annotated the poem, heavily scaffolded by the teacher. This has meant that each poem has only taken one or two lessons to teach, and they all seem to be getting a basic understanding of the poems. My challenge is to keep them engaged to continue this for the rest of the term!
I have also chosen to let them know I am a trainee teacher – only time will tell if that was a stupid mistake or not! I want my students to know that I respect them, so if they ask me why I am here and what I am doing, I intend to be as honest as I can and hope that they have the integrity to respect me back! So far so good, I have already got a couple saying they are excited for me to take the lessons – this may because the only teaching I’ve done with them so far has involved the prospect of sweets, but I’m taking it as a win!
Teaching Targets
I have decided to start my targets a fresh and will only do one main target a week until I get back into the flow of teaching (hopefully by this time next week but you never know!)
Lesson timings: pacing is one of the aspects of teaching I regularly seem to not quite get right. One of the teachers I am working with suggested that I put the time expected for the activity on the PowerPoint so that the students are completely clear, thus, in theory, helping me to not go off on a tangent!
J
Currently Reading:
Poetry – Tissue by Imtiaz Dharker
I had a look at this poem earlier on in the academic year, when myself and a colleague prepared a lesson plan for it – little did I know that it is many teacher’s least favourite poem! I love this poem. The extended metaphor is beautiful, and I love how it questions the fragility of humanity in such an elegant manner.
Drama – The Importance of Being Earnest byOscar Wilde
Ok, so I only read one-page last night before falling asleep…. Update next week!!
Novel –Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Definitely questioning whether I will finish this book before I get around to teaching it the second time! Just got to the part where Esther meets Lady Dedlock for the first time. I have read a summary for this novel, as I will be teaching extracts from it next week, therefore it has been very interesting to me to read it in light of what I know about their relationship to each other!
YA Fiction – Girlhood by Cat Clarke
I intend to start this novel tonight, so will update next week!
I have had the most wonderful couple of weeks back home, seeing family and friends and making the most of the Christmas and New Year celebrations! However, P2 is dawning on me rather quickly, and I didn’t want to take the full 2 weeks off when I know I will only be doing my PGCE year once.
I know what I will be teaching in P2, so my priority has been making a start on reading any texts I may be teaching, and glancing over the medium-term plans in case there is anything I am totally not sure of. I have also made a start on the reading for my curriculum practice assignment. I anticipated I would spend some time looking at the EPS assignment, but I am waiting on my new PT to give me one of my ideas the ‘OK’ before starting that.
Due to this, this blog is slightly different to the others; I will be extending my usual ‘currently reading’ section to go through some of the books I have been looking at over the break.
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
I will be teaching sections of Bleak House as part of the 19thCentury prose unit I will be doing with the year 9s. I have read a simple summary of the book and, as I do enjoy a Dickens novel, I decided to give it a read as well. As I do not have the luxury of sitting down and simply reading all day, I anticipate this will take me a while to finish!
That being said, I am really enjoying it so far. The intense Dickens language requires me to focus harder than I do with some other texts, but I love the density it gives to the text, each description more intricate than the next.
I am completely curious about the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case and where this will lead the protagonists to at the end of the novel.
Mortal Engines – Phillip Reeve
One of my new year 9 students recommend this novel to me and I am very glad she did! It’s set in a dystopian future where cities act like predators and prey as they move around ‘eating’ each other. It is a unique and innovative idea, refreshing in terms of YA fiction, where things can tend to get a bit samey. That being said, the plot was fairly predictable – until the end! A film adaptation has recently been released, so I am excited to go and see that!
An Ideal Husband – Oscar Wilde
I finished this play in a matter of hours. I completely fell in love with it! I really enjoyed A Picture of Dorian Greywhen I studied it in my undergrad degree, so I had high hopes for this play! (I have also started The Importance of Being Earnest and loved that… until I lost it! (I have found it again now so will be resuming it!)).
I love the characters in this play, particularly Mrs Cheveley, the way she tries to undermine each character is very cleverly played out. Along with this, the complex relationships between all the characters proves to make a very interesting plot! Would recommend to anyone!
Kamikaze – Beatrice Garland
I have mentioned this poem in a blog post at the beginning of the year, so I won’t go into much detail about it. In a nutshell, it is a poem about family, shame and dishonour, after a Japanese Kamikaze pilot fails to complete his suicide mission. The more I read and analyse this poem, the more I fall in love with it! It is so cleverly written – one of my new discoveries in annotating was that it only had 3 sentences, and the speaker changes with each sentence. Every word has been carefully selected and framed in a particular way to amplify the meaning of the poem.
Exposure – Wilfred Owen
Exposure is another one of the poems from the GCSE AQA Power and Conflict anthology I have analysed over the break (I’m aiming at doing at least one a week!). I observed a lesson looking at this poem during P1, so I had a good baseline to start. The poem is about Owen’s struggle against the horrific conditions – life in trenches and the awful weather they faced – exposing the world to the truth about war. It is a harrowingly beautiful poem, only amplified in knowing that Owen died just days before the end of the war.
Other readings
For my curriculum practice assignment, I have decided to look at teaching Animal Farm from a Science of Learning Perspective. I started by refreshing my memory about the basics of SOL (taking out my handy cards given in the lecture!) and I am now slowly making my way through the reading list on blackboard… I am not sure how useful any of this will be when I get round to planning my assignment… but it feels good to get a head start on the reading!
The last week before the Christmas holidays… not gonna lie I’m writing this now the other side of Christmas, (had a hectic couple of weeks as everyone does!), so don’t expect as much detail as usual if you’re one of my 3 regular readers! Anyway, if you are reading this, I hope you had as good a Christmas as I did! J
P2 Second Visit
I spent Monday in P2 again, and I have now got my timetable finalised – I will be teaching 2 hours of year 12 English Lit and 2 hours of year 12 English Lang a fortnight. I am unbelievably excited (and completely nervous) to be teaching A-level. In literature, I will be looking at Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, as well as a selection of Coleridge poetry. I haven’t read either of these before, so I will use a bit of my holiday time to make sure I know a bit about each of the texts before I come across them in the classroom. In language, I will be teaching stand-alone language issues, such as the need for a gender-neutral pronoun but will discuss details with their teacher closer to the time.
As this is a Church of England school, each of the houses were attending a church service in tutor time this week. I was lucky enough to be part of this – and my AT gave me the handy tip of standing at the back by the radiator to stay warm!
After discussing with the teachers, I have decided to team teach the first week back, probably taking over the year 9s sooner rather than later which is exciting. I finally got given a work laptop, which will allow me to access everything from home… getting a head start on the planning
University
Throughout this week, we have touched on a few more things to bear in mind for our next placement.
One of the most useful (and fun!), was having a look at some of the resources our colleagues have created and sharing things that may be useful for us next term. I have seen some really fantastic activities that I shall be adapting and using in my teaching next term! Plus, it was really interesting to hear what went well for others, as well as what didn’t work so well.
The last thing I will mention in this post is the poetry by heart. Those of you on the course will know I did not share my pitiful attempt of learning a poem. I had chosen Two Pages, by Choman Hardi (link here). It is such a beautiful poem, and I found the more I tried to memorise it, the more I connected with the poem itself, unravelling layers of meaning and making sense of it. However, I did not dedicate sufficient time to learn this properly, thus I knew I could not do this poem justice so opted out. I can see the benefits of learning a poem by heart, but I feel like I would not make my students do this in front of the whole class unless they wanted to… no matter how safe a space may feel to one person, to another it could be anything but that!
Back at university again this week, although it has been lovely to see all my colleagues, I can’t help but miss being in school… that’s why I’m doing the course after all! However, despite feeling completely exhausted and pretty unwell, I have enjoyed some of the things we have been doing.
Reflecting on Placement 1
As anticipated, everyone was full of anecdotes from their first placements and we spent a fair bit of time reflecting on our placements using a visual metaphor. I opted for a bungy jump, focusing on the nerves before the placement, the lows, the highs and saying goodbye. I didn’t quite get a chance to finish it, colouring in takes a long time! Yet, I got the main points down before we got a chance to go around and see the metaphors everyone else had created, commenting using post its. It was a lovely way to bring our first placement to a close before we found out where we would be placed for the long placement.
Visual Metaphor of Placement One
Mental Health in Schools
As part of the EPS lectures this week, we had a session on mental health in young people and how we can build strategies to help support our students. This was fascinating for me, particularly as, when I was at school, there were many of my peers struggling with their mental health – including myself – and it never got picked up on by anyone. I struggled by myself for a long time and I know now, after sharing with some of my friends, I was not alone in my feelings. However, when I was at school mental health was nor normalised and actually, I didn’t know that what I was feeling was an illness.
There are many things, such as academic stress, bereavement or bullying amongst others, that can trigger poor mental health. Teachers, due to the amount of time they spend with students, may be the people who pick up on these things, thus have a responsibility to help a struggling young person.
Personally, I feel as if all of this was very similar to the safeguarding lecturers – if I have doubts about any of my students, I will voice these doubts to the appropriate people. However, what I have taken from this lecture is that I need to model appropriate behaviour to my students and I also need to ensure my classroom is a safe space, talking about mental health (particularly in tutor time) to normalise it.
A-Level English Language
We were lucky enough to have an expert in A-level English language come to speak to us this week and it brought back all the amazing memories I have from taking the course myself way back when. We were looking at word classes and linguistic terminology – including a bit on phonetics – and I wish I had been feeling well enough to completely engage in the task. I love this stuff! It also reminded me to send my uni notes to my cousin… something I have been promising since September!
The Science of Learning 2
Following on from his previous lecture about engage-build-consolidate, we had the professor in to give us a specific seminar in how we can relate that to our subject – more specifically the use of creativity.
In a nutshell, different environments can help to stimulate different responses to learning. For example, generally one may expect to find a learning environment that increases focus, offers rewards and has an element of mild stress, potentially through anticipating assessment. However, when doing creative tasks, it is actually more beneficial to have a disruptive or broader focus, less stress and only use evaluation after generating ideas. This is in an attempt to move away from the automaticity usually expected for students to consolidate their knowledge, thus being able to apply this knowledge in different ways (moving up blooms taxonomy).
It’s been a while since I did anything remotely scientific, so at first these lectures appear a little intimidating, but actually this approach makes a lot of sense and will hopefully help me plan lessons in a more useful way!
2 More Assignments
People who say the PGCE year is intense and stressful weren’t kidding – the workload is ridiculously high, and I constantly have waves of imposter syndrome and feeling completely overwhelmed. Every colleague I spoke to this week feels pretty much exactly the same, so I am so glad that we are in this together, providing support when we all need it. Such a lush cohort!
On Monday we submitted the assignment on SEND, I finished this last Friday and relished in having a completely free weekend. By Thursday we had another two assignments left and I was kinda wishing I could Groundhog Day last Saturday. Nevertheless, I am actually looking forward to doing both assignments.
The EPS assignment is a research-based task, and we can pretty much choose to research whatever we want, as long as it relates to one of the teacher standards. My two ideas are:
Looking at something to do with looked after children (LAC) and ready to learn/ behaviour management techniques (influenced by my last placement!)
Looking at something to do with gifted and talented sixth form students
I honestly don’t know which one I would rather do! I spoke to my new PT about this on Friday; she says I will definitely be able to do the second but will need to look into whether there are enough LAC in the school.
The subject assignment is to design your own scheme of work, basing it within selected pedagogy, teaching and reflecting on it. After speaking to my AT, and class teacher, I think I will be doing Animal Farm with the bottom set year 10s. Should be interesting to do from a differentiation perspective!
Placement 2 Induction
I met my PT for P2 on Thursday afternoon, and she seems completely lovely and so supportive (I have heard lots of good things from my colleague who went there for P1). It is a very different school to P1, which I am excited about as it will hopefully give me a completely different teaching assistant. On paper, it sounds a lot like my own school experience – I am most excited about getting sixth form classes!
With regards to what I will be teaching, I have already got a provisional timetable and will have 4 sixth form lessons to teach as well – to be confirmed by January. The classes I will definitely be taking are:
10C2 – Tutor group: not teaching this group this time, hopefully I will build up just as good a rapport as I did with my year 8s in P1!
10×5 – Looking at the power and conflict poetry anthology before half term, animal farm afterwards. A bottom set which will be interesting after coming from all mixed ability!
9×5 – Travel writing before half term, 19thCentury literature afterwards.
9Y5 – 19thCentury literature before half term, travel writing afterwards.
6thform classes to be confirmed.
I am particularly excited to be having two year 9 classes (side note: I observed a lesson with 9X5 today and they are lush, got into a full-blown conversation with a couple of girls about harry potter and the hunger games… I love them already!), my AT gave me the choice of teaching the same thing side by side or doing two different units. I opted to go for two different units, as I know I will learn a lot in teaching each SOW and will be able to put these reflections into good use when teaching the SOW again! I’m excited to have the chance to actually redo the lessons how I see fit, taken on board observation notes.
I am not gonna lie, I am completely nervous to be starting at a new school, even after going in for a day. Everyone seems so lovely and it seems like such a lush school – the kids appear to be beautifully behaved the majority of the time! It’s crazy to think that I have only had a week’s break from teaching – I already feel like I am not sure what I am doing: it’s like the bungy jumping metaphor, no matter how many times I go to start again I will always feel like I am standing at the top of that bridge waiting to jump. Hopefully all will be well – I have already agreed to teach both year 9s from the first day back… jumping in at the deep end worked last time so I am praying it will work again!
Transferable Techniques
Getting A-level English Language students to go through the mark scheme with three different coloured highlighters for nouns, verbs and adjectives. Looking through the bands to see what is expected for each level.
J
Currently Reading:
The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde
I seem to have misplaced this play…. reading will be on hold until I find it annoyingly!
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishguro
Still (slowly) ploughing my way through this novel, don’t hate it and don’t love it, not really much else to say on it at this point in time!
Ketchup Clouds- Annabel Pitcher
I love this book! It is about a young girl writing to a murderer on death row, talking about the boy she says she murdered. It is an epistolary novel; written in letters. The form works beautifully for the story line and each letter slowly reveals a new twist in the plot – I am dying to find out who she killed and what happened, and even if it is even her fault.
Over the next few weeks I am going to prioritise reading what I will be teaching, but I will still aim to read for pleasure alongside it! I am determined that the degree will not impact my reading levels, obviously unless I have too much work to do (like last week). I have also been recommended Mortal Engines by one of my year 9s, so I have promptly ordered that and looking forward to reading that after Ketchup Clouds!
Much Ado About Teaching 