Introduction

My final days of P1 came around far too quickly; it’s strange to feel so attached to a place I was only at for a couple of months and always knew I would leave. This placement has given me the confidence I needed to kickstart my career in the best way. The staff and the students at the school were phenomenal and I’ll never forget my time there! 

M Shed Trip

This Monday I went to the M Shed on a school trip with the year 8s on the ‘unlocking potential’ scheme. The museum was closed to the public and the students had a private tour of the place, including having a look inside one of the storage units, then they had to pick an item to create a speech about. It was cool to get an insight into how students can be outside of lessons; all of them seemed to really enjoy themselves and had they gave some pretty good speeches as well, particularly considering it was the first time they had done public speaking on this course.

A Christmas Carol

As most of the teachers had year 11 parents evening, I had the opportunity to go with the same group of year 8s to see A Christmas Carol at Bristol Old Vic. I ended up supervising the students that couldn’t get home in the 2 hours before the coach got us… safe to say my babysitting experience came into good use! Getting the pizzas and garlic bread ready, finally deciding on a Netflix film and (within reason) letting them chill out in any way they wanted. The students were so well behaved… much to my surprise! 

Another member of staff came along me… there was an awkward moment where she thought I was in charge (she isn’t a teacher and just presumed I was a teacher there) English and I had to let her know that actually I wasn’t a qualified teacher and I’m pretty sure I am not allowed to have the kids on my own! 

There was a lot of waiting around involved… we got there at 6:10 and it doors didn’t open until around 6:45 annoyingly… we were also told the students couldn’t get drinks which was slightly odd… so I had 15 12/13 year olds complaining they were thirsty… at least the pizza meant they weren’t hungry as well! When it was finally time to let us into the theatre we had a slight issue with the seats… in that a couple of seats did not exist and another school had some of the same seats as us. Luckily it wasn’t too busy, so we just sat in spare seats.

 After I had a closer look at the tickets, 15 minutes into the show, I saw that actually we had been taken to the wrong level… we should’ve been on the level below us. As well as this, the kids were promised ice cream and only got one small packet of haribo each…. To say the organisation wasn’t great is most definitely an understatement!

At the end of the show more madness occurred as the other member of staff told the kids to make their way downstairs; then proceeded to have a chat to someone she knew who worked there. I frantically made my way through the hordes of strangers praying I would be able to count all 15 of them at the bottom. The second I found them all together at the bottom of the stairs (I am still over the moon at how well behaved these students were), I decided that we would all go together to the toilets, so I could keep an eye on everyone. At this point, the other staff member came and decided to say to them that if they didn’t need the toilet, they could go with her… walking outside as she said that. 

I had no idea how many children she had with her… no idea if we had them all again. Trying to keep my cool, I led the others to the toilets asking them who had come with me because I had no idea!!!! Thankfully, when we eventually found the others again, everyone was accounted for and we made our way back to school, obviously with another chorus of ‘All I want for Christmas is You’. 

To top it all off, we were 15 minutes late – resulting in some angry parents on the phone to some of the kids and one by in particular got quite stressed and upset as a result of this. Another boy’s mum took a further 15 minutes to turn up… he then told me that she had made him late to his own birthday party and they started bowling without him! Poor kid! 

It’s safe to say I was more stressed that evening than I had been when I was project leader for UNIT (a group for children/teens aged 9-18 with Asperger’s Syndrome) and SIBS (a group for children aged 7-13 who have a sibling with a disability). 

Saying Goodbye

My farewells began on Thursday; a lot of my students seemed upset that I was going which was sweet… granted they probably won’t remember me after Christmas but feels good at the time! Some of my favourite messages from the students:

‘You were the best teacher I ever had’

‘It will not be the same without you’

‘Thanks for the hard work it helped me learn’

‘Thank you miss! You have inspired me and have been a great teacher! Thank you for pushing me to my best potential, you have made me feel special’

‘Thank you for always helping me and I hope you apply to work with us again as you have been the best’ 

‘Thankyou for giving me confidence when I needed it’

And perhaps the highest of praise from one of my year 8s – ‘You were a decent teacher J’ 

Reflections on P1

Placement 1 has been the best experience for me. Obviously there have been some low points but these have been massively outweighed by the high points. I have seen first-hand the progress the majority of my students have made, and I have loved the feeling of standing in front of a class, teaching them about the subject I am most passionate about. I am completely gutted to be leaving that school, but it is time to move on and look towards the excitement and nerves of moving to a new school.

Teaching Targets

Last week’s targets:

Pacing – Yeah pacing is going to have to be a focus for next placement. I’m getting there slowly, just need to get my head around what the salient parts of the lessons are, so I know exactly what must get done in the hour I have with them.

Behaviour management – Just as I thought I was getting somewhere with my year 9s, the last lesson I had with them was actually mental – to the point where I had to have a disappointed chat with them about how it was my last lesson with them… which led to even more outcries about how I’m ‘abandoning’ them and they will miss me…. Can’t win with that class, but I sure will miss them!!

Targets for the start of p2:

I’m not going to be too ambitious with these targets, as my focus will be settling into the new school to begin with, my main two targets will be:

Learning the names of the students as quickly as possible– I know people have said that this might not be doable, but I think I can learn the majority of names in my first week. 

Knowing who the key members of staff are: AT, PT, Head of faculty, SENCO and DSL

Getting grips to a new behaviour system: I am not sure whether this next school will have RtL again or not, but knowing what system (if any) is in place will be crucial in my first weeks. 

J

Currently Reading:

I didn’t actually end up reading anything this week… due to frantically getting my assignment and review point 1 done.

Introduction

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

Year 10 Drama

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

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

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

Year 8 Silent Debate

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

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

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

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

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

Year 7 Poetry Test

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

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

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

Scheme of Work

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

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

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

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

Tutor Periods

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

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

Making an Impact

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

Assignment

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

Teaching Targets

Last week’s targets:

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

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

This week’s targets:

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

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

J

Currently Reading:

Presents from my Aunt in Pakistan – Moniza Alvi

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

The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde

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

The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishguro

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

Introduction

So, this week appears to have been the climax of my time in placement 1, leading me to end up crying in a lesson, completely stressed out to the max. Despite Tuesday’s incident, I am still 100% committed to the course and, if anything, it has only reinforced to me that this is the perfect career choice for myself. The support I have had this week from the school – particularly members of the English faculty – has been overwhelmingly amazing. I can’t believe I have only got 2 weeks left here – I will miss everyone so much!

Year 11 Drama observation

As I do not have much drama experience, despite drama texts making up a third of English literature, I decided to observe a year 11 drama lesson on Monday. They were looking at physical theatre which was interesting, particularly because they were quite a weak group. Interestingly, one of my year 11s was in this group and he was like a completely different student. It always baffles me as to how different the students can be in different contexts.

Excellence in Tutor

During extended tutor time this week, I led the session on ‘excellence’ activities – these are set by the headteacher and every tutor group are expected to participate in them; this term year 8 are focusing on the idea of ‘self’. We looked at time management this week, thinking about what we do during the week and what we should prioritise. This led to a conversation about prioritising home learning and many students agreed that home learning is helpful – surprising for a year 8 group I thought! 

Along with this, we also discussed how we behaved during school hours and if we could change anything in our lives to ensure we get the most of our time in school. They all created a weekly plan, giving suggestions such as going to bed earlier and eating better food to help them concentrate in school.

Serious Incident

I am writing this the evening after this event happened; I don’t normally do this, but I find writing very therapeutic, so this is more for me to feel better about the incident myself.

I had a supply teacher in with me and my year 9s in period 5 on Tuesday – supply + period 5 = chaos! The class were definitely rowdier than usual, and they aren’t the easiest class to begin with! But on the whole, I did the best I could with them and ended up going a bit off plan because I knew that there was no way some of the students would do the work I originally planned. I gave ready to learn warnings to a fair few kids, seemingly having no effect whatsoever.

So, the lesson to begin with wasn’t perfect but I knew it was the best I could do in this situation and I went into the lesson knowing full well the class would be harder to manage than usual.

 The serious incident lies with the student I was talking about last week – the one I had made a lot of progress with… oh, how I am laughing at myself now! However, I am not surprised at all that this happened, which makes it completely easier to deal with. I can’t remember if I gave him a pseudonym last week, but I am going to refer to him as Jack in this blog. 

Jack worked well during the lesson. I asked the supply teacher to work with him to help manage behavioural issues that inevitably come up every lesson with him. He did the work I asked him to do, apart from when he chose to go to refocus – which is all absolutely amazing. He even read out some of the lines for Louis in A View from the Bridge – yes it was only 2 short sentences, but the fact he did it so sensibly was a complete win in my books.

Then we got to the end of the lesson. He did his usual “I don’t want to be here, I’m going home” and I made my first mistake by standing in the way of the door. He got very close to me. Intimidatingly close to me. I took a step back allowing him to open the door, thinking to myself if he legs it that’s fine. In hindsight… if he had legged it that would have been preferable!!!

I asked him to come and stand behind his chair, also directing this to the whole class as the chatter was bubbling up again and students were moving away from their seats. The bell went. I repeated my instructions and waited for them to move.

Eventually, realising that I wasn’t going to give in to him, he moved to his seat where a few others had strayed to. He pushed a girl which led to another student standing his ground to him. I was so scared there was going to be a serious altercation.  

Luckily, by this point, the usual teacher had come back (she is head of English and it was the faculty review today, so she had other work to be doing hence the supply) and she helped me to quieten down the class enough for me to let them go.

As soon as Jack left, I felt a weight lift off my chest – I had been so scared about what could have happened. There have been many serious incidents involving Jack and I know what he is capable of. I lost my composure and started to breakdown – annoyingly in front of some of the students!

I have never felt so supported by so many people in my life before. Every member of the English faculty came to offer me advice, listened to me and were just there – exactly what I needed. One member of staff in particular offered to talk to the class for me earlier on in the lesson and she was so understanding – well everyone was- that it made me cry even more! (I am such a wet blanket honestly)

I don’t see another way I could’ve handled this situation. Nobody was hurt – well nobody was physically hurt – and I remained calm for the majority of the lesson. I am so glad this happened to me now, as opposed to when I have a class on my own.

I am looking forward to my next lesson with the year 9s. The usual teacher will be back in with me and I am going to make my classroom expectations explicitly clear at the beginning of the lesson and I really hope this will make the difference with this class. I know they won’t be perfectly behaved – and I don’t want them to be. I love the challenge this class gives me, they are feisty and a lot of fun to teach.

The head of behavioural management was involved at the end of the lesson as well; thank god her office is in the English department! She has said to me that this will be logged as a serious incident and, at the very least, it will be a Ready to Learn – potentially even an exclusion. I will have a restorative conversation with Jack before I teach him again – something my AT said she would support me with. I am slightly nervous about this, as I do not know how he will react – and I also don’t know how I will react when I teach him again. 

I still have a lot to learn. I will not let this one incident throw me off my end goal. I will be a qualified teacher this time next year. 

Curriculum Enrichment Day 2

This time round the English faculty had year 8s for the day, where they were teaching them about different genres of comedy. This was actually super fun to teach, especially as it was super laid back – lots of different clips to watch and analyse. 

The students also had a company called Unique Voices in to do a drama workshop about anti-bullying. It was definitely better than the poetry workshop, but I feel as if they focused too much on what the students thought as opposed to actually analysing their ideas. The drama activities were pretty fun though!

Scaffolding

I read an interesting blog this week about scaffolding and how the term has become to generalised, leading it to lose its meaning and potentially leading to teachers not actually helping their students with the supposed ‘scaffolds’. The whole idea of scaffolding is to scaffold their knowledge – not just give them a framework to put the knowledge into, as many students just simply do not know what to do in the first place. https://strangecaseofteachingandlearning.wordpress.com/2018/09/30/scaffolding-how-broadening-the-term-narrows-learning/?fbclid=IwAR0Pkpi8zmLwgUwqufWb_Ka5ZTaGXdZb6Sr9seVJnam1qWyC3mQj8VWSFsE

Teaching Targets

Last Week’s Targets: 

• Questioning – I think I have made a good improvement in my questioning over the past week. I am now consciously choosing which kind of questions to use and I have successfully gotten every student to answer – even after they say the dreaded ‘I don’t know.’
• Assessment for Learning – Adding in a temperature check has been super helpful. Just being able to gauge how much the learners understand has been allowing me to let the higher attaining students start the tasks, thus allowing me to direct additionally support to anyone needing further assistance.

This Week’s Targets:

• Behaviour in 9V – After Tuesday’s lesson, I have decided to ensure that the year 9s are behaving as I expect them to in my lesson. The most effective way to do this, I believe, is to give out RTL warnings as and when the students are not behaving as I expect them to.
•  Assessment – I am going to attempt to use coded feedback for my year 8s this week – to both save time for me and them. We will see how this goes after my lesson Tuesday morning!

J

Currently Reading:

Mother to Son – Langston Hughes

I have been reading this poem with my year 7s and I have been thoroughly enjoying teaching it! We have been focusing on how knowing the context helps us to decipher the intended meaning of the poem. Next lesson I will be asking them to read it in an American accent – should be a lot of fun!

The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde

Nothing more to add to this as of yet! Thoroughly enjoying it though.

The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishguro

I have only read the prologue so far, but it seems to have the potential to grip me further. I thoroughly enjoyed Never Let Me Go and I am excited to read another one of Ishguro’s novels.

Dark Woods – Steve Voake

I really enjoyed reading this novel, not too keen on the ending; a cliff-hanger would’ve been more effective in my opinion – but other than that I was pleasantly surprised. A very interesting concept and I liked the way the abductor helps them out… albeit it unrealistic. 

Introduction

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

 

Marking

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

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

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

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

 

Sixth Form

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

 

SEND Assignment

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

J

 

Currently Reading:

The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry

A few notable poems from my reading this week:

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

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

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

The Tempest– William Shakespeare

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

 

Introduction

So, I had my first full week at school this week and, honestly, I am loving it so much I am already worrying about leaving here in December! I’m only going to talk about two lessons this week, as I feel like these are the ones that have had the most impact on my week and are also my proudest moments. I am concentrating on my assignment this weekend, so I am keeping this post short and sweet as my brain power is needed elsewhere.

 

First Whole Lesson

Even though the year 7s I teach are such a lush group of kids, I was still fretting about having them on my own for a whole 60 minutes as well as being formally observed for the first time.

The lesson I took was what they call a ‘spacing’ lesson – basically a lesson used to practice the skills needed for narrative and descriptive writing. My AT gave me a choice of which one I wanted to do and, as creative writing is one of my favourite things about English, I jumped at the chance of doing a descriptive writing lesson.

The aim of this lesson was for them to have created a descriptive piece and my teaching would give them a bank of ideas and vocabulary they could use to really make a well-crafted piece of writing. I used a planning sheet, inspired by my UT’s lesson on descriptive writing, and this meant that they had a structured bank of ideas before they even thought about starting. One of my downsides of this part, was that I gave them a tad too much credit – I thought that the grid was pretty self-explanatory, so I went through it once and figured that was enough. With this particular group, my AT noted it would have been more useful for them, particularly the lower attainers, for me to be absolutely clear about what needed to go where when I was talking about it.

  

Despite that, every student used these grids well, and I found that the ones that were unsure asked me for help as I circulated the room.

The main task was to create a description as suggested by the picture shown below. I was very aware of the timings, and I overran a little, so I didn’t have time to go into as much detail I would have liked to with this slide. Instead, I briefly talked them through each technique and left it up on the board as a challenge task.

When I finally set the task for them to work silently, I was actually astonished at how eager they were to work. Every single student had their head transfixed on their work, scribbling away. Not gonna lie, I got a little bit bored at this bit, as they were working so well independently, I felt a little bit redundant – AT said to me that I will appreciate the silence when I work a full timetable!

The main target that came out of my LOG was to ‘provide clear instructions from the very beginning and use position in the classroom to assert authority. Reinforce expectations throughout the lesson.’

 

First Year 11 Teaching

Me being me, I totally panicked when I was asked to take half of a year 11 lesson this week. They have their mocks straight after half term and I was seriously worried that I would mess up the lesson and they would use my horrific teaching in their mocks, resulting to failures all around.

Fortunately, I managed to throw together (by throw I mean spend a week finding the perfect clip… the clip being the first one I looked at) a lesson that actually went a million times better than I ever imagined it could’ve done.

I decided to use ‘the present’, a Disney Pixar short about a kid who gets a puppy with an amputated leg as a present… long story short he also has an amputated leg and this puppy helps him to feel happiness. I was unsure as to whether or not they would engage with the clip, but as soon as I put it on a couple students said they had watched it before and, during the clip, there was ripples of laughter and remarks showing to me that they were not only engaging but enjoying the short film. This gave me a lot of hope.

 

I’m not going to go into the lesson in too much detail, basically I made super basic sentences, as seen above, and asked the students to ‘upgrade’ each sentence, using my prompts as starting points.

The students contributed a lot more than I had anticipated, and they really seemed to be working hard. I have read a few of their pieces and they are exactly what I hoped they would’ve come out with.

It really is a fantastic thing to see what you have taught shining through in their work.

 

Teaching Targets

 

Last week’s targets:

• Scripting ‘teacher talk’– I decided to make full lesson plans for any teaching I did, whether that was a full lesson or a section. This really helped me to focus on what I wanted the students to know by the end of the lesson, as well as what I wanted them to tell me in responses. It was time consuming, but it really helped me and
• Ready to Learn – I ensured I consistently used RtL with the year 7s, and it worked fantastically! Just by giving a warning to a couple, the classroom was exactly as I wanted it to be. I am definitely getting more confident with it, and now I just need to ensure that I am consistent with it across all of my classes.
• Names – I feel like I’m nearly there! I’m pretty confident I know all my year 7s, 8s and 11s, it’s just the year 9s left now – I probably know about 1/3 off the top of my head.

 

Next week’s targets:

• One recurrent theme in both my lesson reflections and the observations from other teachers this week, was the way I use examples. I feel like the best way to do this is to make sure I have a part of my lesson plans detailing what examples I am going to use and how I will use them.
• As mentioned previously, I am going to focus on learning the year 9 names (hopefully over half term with the help of the photo class list I have!) So far I have noticed that using a pupil’s name is the most effective way to both praise and manage behaviour as well as building relationships and respect. I definitely feel less confident with my year 9s as I am not sure on a lot of their names, and I feel it is crucial I perfect it asap so I can concentrate on actually teaching.
• Subject knowledge – Use this week to brush up on what I will be teaching next term, so I can really do the best I can!

J

 

Currently Reading:

The Tempest – William Shakespeare & Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

Not much to say on these two texts this week, haven’t been making masses of progress with them as I have been concentrating on lesson planning this week.

Demon Dentist – David Walliams

This novel is pretty much exactly what you would expect – ridiculous, unrealistic and hilarious… but I did really enjoy reading it! I know I would have loved reading this as a kid, and I think it’s important for me to read novels that I get recommended by the children I teach as both common ground to talk about, as well as a way to understand the reading level, thus giving me scope to recommend more books.

 

Introduction

I would like to note that I had written out a longer, more detailed account of my previous week, which is probably hanging around a dark space on the internet somewhere, but it deleted itself after I pressed publish. Let’s hope that this isn’t a metaphor for my PGCE year!  I am, unfortunately, now rewriting the post, but I have not included as much as I originally did, as I don’t have the time to go in to as much detail sadly.

 

Placement Begins

I am very fortunate to have been placed yet again in another amazing school. My Personal Tutor (PT), Associate Tutor (AT), the rest of the English department and any other member of staff I have come across have been eager to help me in anyway I can. I have already been asked if I want to observe more lessons than I have originally been put down for!

One interesting thing about the school that I will note, is that they have a Ready to Learn (RtL) behaviour management scheme. This is basically zero tolerance behaviour management, and is based on these three rules: Be Prepared, Be Polite and Work Hard. If a student breaks any of these rules, they have a warning and their name is written on the RtL section of the board. If they repeat the incident, or break another rule, they are then sent to the RtL room for a day. It seems a bit harsh, but I think it works well for this school –low level classroom disruptions have more or less disappeared since this was introduced last year. Along with this, I appreciate that the school already has firm behaviour management procedures in place, as this gives me scope to work more on the teaching itself initially, before thinking about the wider teaching experience.

 

First Teaching Experience

All English classes are mixed ability, and my timetable consists of years 7, 8, 9 and 11, as well as a year 8 tutor group. Initially, the plan was to teach a starter next week, but my AT suggested teaching a part of the lesson and I jumped at the chance to get my first time over and done with. Not that I thought it would be a negative experience at all – more so I can prove to myself that I do have the ability to do it.

The lesson I taught was the second part of a lesson on extended metaphors within Walt Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain!

 

 

  

I’m not going to go into details about the lesson, but I will say that originally I was going to take the first two slides, but I ended up asking to teach a bit of the third slide as I was enjoying myself so much. I was amazed at how natural it felt being at the front of the class, and I am excited to give it another go next week. One thing I will note, is that I definitely need to ensure that I am comfortable with the plan before I start teaching, as I had a brain blank midway through the third slide and completely forgot what we had agreed to do! I surreptitiously handed the class back over to my AT but I am so proud of myself for getting further than I imagined I would in my first week.

 

Teachers as Writers

A lot of our conversation at university this week was about the role of teachers as writers. A lot of English teachers have graduated with Literature degrees, and will identify themselves as readers, but not necessarily writers. What I believe this all comes down to is that we should not expect our students to do things we are not comfortable in doing ourselves. One of the things that particularly pointed this out to me was a task we did on Monday, where we had to craft a piece of writing using the hand we wouldn’t normally write with:

Once standing proud covered in speckles yet unblemished. A sight to behold as green as a new born caterpillar and glistening in the light of the classroom.

                                                Apple.

                                                            Murdered.

Ripped apart by the cool steel knife blunted so every slice cut deep. The subtle heart wrenching crunch as it spat out the last of its juice. Eaten alive.

I mean it’s quite obvious to begin with that my handwriting is atrocious, and we discussed how appearances do not reflect the quality of work – but it’s easy to make judgements on how the writing looks. Also, most of us noted that as we were concentrating so hard on actually writing, most of the SPaG and content was not at as high a standard as it would be usually. This provoked interesting conversation in how our students may feel the same way, and what strategies we could use to help our students to find writing more enjoyable.

Mental Health Awareness

Mental health awareness day was this week, and I feel as if it is something that cannot go unmentioned, both on a personal and professional level. I have battled solitarily against my own mental health for well over a decade now, and I believe that over the years I have grown to accept that I suffer from anxiety in various forms (one of these being a rather attention-seeking shade of violent magenta that attacks my face when I feel uncomfortable or stressed). I have been happy enough to deal with this on my own, as my life is the only life it had been affecting dramatically, and I normally can talk myself out of uncomfortable situations.

However, I feel like now is a time for this to change. The last thing I want to happen is for my anxiety to get the better of me when I am teaching a class. It is not fair to have this affect my classes, and therefore I pledge to seek professional advise to see whether I am fine as I am, or if I should equip myself with a few tools to help keep a handle on my stress. Unfortunately, I know a fair few other people who suffer from worse mental health issues than myself, most of these due to traumatic incidents. These people, (and you know who you are if you read this!) deserve all the love in the world and should know that I will be there for them no matter what.

Professionally, I also pledge to look out for any signs of mental distress in my classroom. In one of the readings I did this week, Fleming and Stevens note that ‘The English teacher is in a highly privileged position – but this privilege carries its own burden of responsibility in terms of sensitivity’ (2015, 117), in talking about what we may come across within a student’s writing. I am so lucky to be in the position where I can encourage my students to write creatively, but this may result in conscious or subconscious disclosure within their work about. I feel that knowing exactly what to do in this situation (and we have all had enough safeguarding rammed down our throats) is the best way to appreciate the position we are in and ultimately be in such a privileged position where we can help the young people that need help the most.

Transferable Techniques

• Lesson menu – ensuring the students know exactly what will happen during the lesson, particularly useful for ASC learners
• ‘Chilli’ lesson objectives – ‘mild’ = All students will… ‘spicy’ = Most students will and ‘hot’ = some students will
• Learner of the lesson – picking an outstanding student to be learner of the lesson, and giving positive phone calls home.

 

Teaching Targets

I have decided to start making weekly reasonable, reflective targets that I shall reflect on each week in order to ensure that I am doing something new each week.

• Teach at least 2 more starters next week.
• Ensure I am confident in all aspects I will be teaching before I begin to teach.

 

J

Currently Reading:

As part of the PGCE, we have all been ask to read a recent young adult fiction novel to review. I chose Geraldine McCaughrean’s Where the World Ends, as it was the Carnegie medal winner this year. I have also included a few of the texts I have looked at this week in my placement, and due to this extra reading, I have not continued with Mrs Dalloway, The Tempest or the poetry anthologies I have been looking at. I expect I will resume this reading next week.

Where the World Ends – Geraldine McCaughrean

I have to admit, when I started this novel it felt a bit dry and was pretty hard to get into. Despite this, I perservered and I am 100% glad I did. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Reminsicent of William Golding’sLord of the Flies  in more than one way, yet based on a true story, the story follows a group of boys as they are seemingly abandoned on a tiny island as their return boat never came to get them. I won’t go into too much detail, but the ending was phenomenal – I would never have seen it coming in a million years which, to me, normally suggests that this was a book well worth reading.

O Captain! My Captain! – Walt Whitman

I had never come across this poem before going into a year 7 class Tuesday morning, but the more I read it the more I fall in love with it. In short, the poem is about the outcome of the American civil war and includes an extended metaphor where the USA is compared to a ship and Abraham Lincoln is implied to be the captain of the ship. It is exceedingly effective and is an absolute pleasure to read.

Shylock’s ‘To bait fish withal’ monologue – The Merchant of Venice – William Shakespeare 

I am somewhat ashamed to say that I have never come across this monologue before in my literary career.  Set to the usual Shakespearean standard of beautiful eloquence, Shylock talks about what it is to be equal and, despite the fact that his intentions are smothered with revenge, it is the epitome as to  why prejudice is hatefu;

 

References

FLEMING, M. & D. STEVENS, 2015.  English Teaching in the Secondary School” Linking Theory and Practice.  Abingdon: Routledge.