Week 27: Kindness

Introduction

Kindness. It goes a long way. I have grown up smothered in it and I know first-hand what a difference it can make. I am a massive advocate for bringing a tiny ray of sunshine into someone’s gloomy day; just one moment of brightness has the potential to change someone’s life around.

I learned this from my paternal grandparents. Like myself, they were secondary teachers, as well as being Methodist missionaries. Their lives revolved around making the world a better place, bringing this light into people’s lives and consistently putting other people first. They were retired by the time I came into their lives, but I can imagine the sort of teachers they were. On my bad days I think of them, I think of the difference they must have made in hundreds of thousands of students’ lives between them and I know that this is in my blood. I want to be like them.

This week has been a great week for me. Because I have been putting other people first, putting kindness first. There are a few people (both friends and students!) in my life that are going through a tough time (understatement – you know who you are!) and it completely breaks my heart. However, in putting these other people first and giving up a bit of my ‘busy’ schedule to show how much I care for and about them, and doing my best to make a difference in their lives, no matter how small, I have found that I have become quicker at lesson planning – particular now I am planning in reverse and keeping it more focused around lesson objectives and outcomes.

I am so happy to say (and with two weeks left of placement 3 I’m hoping it stays this way!) that I am feeling the best I have felt in years both mentally and emotionally. I am genuinely proud of myself and the progress I have made – doing it the Duncalfe way!

So, if this is as far as you read (and I won’t blame you if this is the case… I’m clearly in a rambly mood!), make sure you sprinkle a bit of kindness in your day – it can really make a difference to both your life and the people around you. This is something we all need to remember – especially with the news about New Zealand this morning. My heart still belongs in that country, and it is broken to hear that such devastation has hit Christchurch again.

Anyway, now that’s off my chest, I will go through my week as usual!

Cutest moment with a year 9 student!

Its moments like this that make everything worth it. One of my lovely year 9s mentioned last week that she had read ‘Red Queen’ by Victoria Aveyard, and she said she enjoyed it just as much as the Hunger Games… I was sold!! I just mentioned in passing that I’d add it to my ‘books to read’ list and she said she would let me borrow it. I didn’t think anything of it and, honestly, totally forgot about it!

Tuesday’s lesson came around, and this student hung around after the rest of the class had gone. She rummaged around in her bag for a bit, I asked her if she was ok and then she pulled the novel out of her bag with a shy smile on her face. My heart melted. She was so excited for me to read it. She even said to me “Don’t rush it. I know you’re really busy and reading lots of other books too!”

MY HEART COULD BURST. This is one of the sweetest things anyone has done for me – let alone a student. I will remember this moment for the rest of my life.

9Y3 First drafts

I was extremely proud of my 9Y3 class this week! As (I think) I have mentioned before, I decided to take more of a coursework-y approach to the travel writing unit with 9Y3. When I did this unit of work with my other year 9 groups last term, it couldn’t have gone better and nearly all of them met or surpassed their target grade. So, after speaking with my AT, I decided to try something completely different – and I figured I may not have a chance to do this kind of drafting and redrafting when I have my own classes (hopefully!) next year.

This idea of coursework was lost on the majority of the class – they are reluctant to edit their own work, often struggling to pin point what they have done well, let alone what they could improve!! However, I believe they have come around to the idea – particularly after saying they may jump up one or even two grades after editing their work!

The majority of them finished their first drafts on Thursday, and there were even a few keen beans who wanted to do more at home! I started marking them today… and I have to say… the progress made from the last paragraph I marked (just over a week ago) is phenomenal already! I am very excited to see what they will be producing!

10X5 absolutely crushing Animal Farm!

It’s clearly the week of feeling proud of my students this week. My bottom set year 10 classes are showing a fantastic understanding of Animal Farm. I have taken to do ‘team challenge’ plenaries (they love a bit of competition) and they have been flourishing. Some of them have even started quoting from the text already!

Language A-level

I’ve sandwiched this part in with the good parts of the week, hiding the not so good amongst the great to lessen the blow. I mean, it’s not that bad, but it is definitely more than the recurring little niggling thought it started out as.

So, my university tutor is coming to observe me with my 12 language class. This is totally fine. Totally fine, except I still haven’t taken them for a whole lesson. Totally fine, except not all of these students want to be here (thanks to the ‘you must stay in education until your 18 rule’). Totally fine, except I am 110% terrified.

Now, it may not seem like a big deal. On the whole, they are a well-behaved class and I have really enjoyed teaching them when I have team taught a lesson. However, the amount I am required to know suddenly shoots up. I have always loved English language – I definitely would not have graduated with the grade I did if I did not do language. So why then…. Why why why does my brain decided to regularly fail me. I KNOW WHAT THESE TERMS MEAN. Why do they disappear from my head when I need them to be fresh.

I guess it is partly because my priorities lie with the year 9s and 10s. I see them (pretty much) for all their lessons, whereas I only see each a-level class around twice a week. Therefore, I often find it lower down on my priority list.

But anyway, I’ve spoken to the class teacher I share the class with. We have a plan in place. It’s just a waiting game now. I’ll take the whole lesson with them – for the first time – next week. So, I’m just praying that it goes well and gives me a confidence boost!

Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Feminism, Marxism and Psychoanalysis!!!!

Contrasting my previous point, I have found that I am loving teaching a-level English literature – and I was completely sure that I would not enjoy Coleridge one bit!

This week I took my two lessons to go through the mammoth ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’; I quite enjoy the poem myself and (after reading York notes along side it) found it relatively easy to understand – particularly in comparison to some of his other poems! As my feedback was to use a range of different activities with the 6^thformers, I made sure I meticulously planned a range of different activities with them.

I was then told 5 out of 10 would be on a school trip! Slightly annoying, but not the end of the world!

I decided to keep my plan similar (I won’t go into the details – just included group work then creative consolidation), however, I ended up completely changing this as 4 out of the 5 students weren’t sure about the poem (I’ll bet a couple didn’t even attempt reading it!). I ended up literally talking through the poem with the students – and it felt fantastic. They went from not having a clue to coming up with remarkable suggestions that I hadn’t thought of in the space of just under an hour. It was a lesson where I could see definite progress had been made, and the students were very thankful for me to have helped them out with it!

The following lesson I had them on my own for the first time and, annoyingly, the lesson went perfectly! Exactly as I wanted it to go! Obviously there are still many things I need to improve on, especially stretching and challenging, but, by the end of the lesson, the students had adopted different critical points of view (feminist, Marxist and psychoanalysis) and used them to talk through ideas and themes in the poems, then seamlessly linking it altogether with An Ideal Husband. I don’t see them next week, but in my last week I will definitely make it my aim to ensure I am including way more challenging moments to ensure I have covered enough for the students to get the top grades!

#reimaginediary

Finally, I wanted to end by talking about the reimagine diary project I started last weekend. I have loved keeping a daily diary – especially as I have been using Mayfly Sound(click to go to their website!). Now, don’t get me wrong, I love writing! But it is ridiculously time consuming. With Mayfly, you capture your voice recording and link it to different pictures of mayflies – so you can listen back to the recording when you scan the picture. Very simple, but very effective; saves a lot of time too! I love it!

Currently Reading:

Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Red Queen – Victoria Aveyard

Animal Farm – George Orwell

Week 22 – The Epiphany

Introduction

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 19^thCentury Prose round 2

So, after finishing travel writing, which has definitely been my favourite SOW to teach, it was time to move on to 19^thcentury 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!

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!

Week 19 – Rock Bottom and Back Up Again!

Introduction

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!

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.

The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde

Bleak House – Charles Dickens

Girlhood– Cat Clarke