Tag: English

Term 1… Blink and You’ll Miss it! [Part One]

So…. I have started this post at least four times over the past couple of months, but things just kept getting in the way! School related stuff, like planning, marking etc; socialising (I actually maintained my social life this term to an extent! I know, shock!); and most importantly spending time with my better half… we have now moved in together and are relishing every moment. This has also been amplified by the sheer exhaustion that is definitely more of a personality trait than a feeling!

I have decided to write two blog posts about the first term. This first one is going to be about strategies I have put in place that have worked for me this term, and the second one will be more focused on my classes and teaching and learning.

The first thing I would like to state is not only have I made it through my first term as an NQT, but I have loved (nearly) every second of it! After having a significant amount of low points (well hidden) last year, I was completely anxious about starting in September – mainly because the move from PGCE to NQT means a complete shift in responsibility and suddenly I was acutely aware that all these students will be dependant on me and me alone! I am still waiting for that overwhelming moment where I am consumed with doubt, stress or failure – it hasn’t hit yet and I am calling that a win!

One of the main things to help me this year, is to make sure I am prioritising myself. It is so much easier working on my time and not having to wait for another teacher to hear my ideas – if I want to go off the scheme of work slightly then I do! I have been giving myself the equivalent of two days off a week minimum. As much as I could live and breathe teaching, I am very aware that that is not healthy – it is necessary to have a life outside of school! One of my lovely colleagues has invited me down to the yard on Tuesdays after school, and it has been so therapeutic being able to spend some time around horses – something that I have not done for a very long time! Having something booked in every week as helped me focus and get my work done, so I don’t miss out on the fun!

Using the shared resources more is something that has also been ridiculously helpful. My planning time has been halved – there were so many boxes to tick last year, it often felt like all I was doing was ‘reinventing the wheel’ – even though that is what we were told not to do! I have contributed the odd idea to the department, but in using what is already there, I have saved myself a lot of valuable time. Marking has also taken up less time. I have managed to work out what I am marking and when so that I don’t have a lot to do in one go – I have even left myself with none for the half term which is a complete blessing.

But, finally, the main thing that has been helping me is the support I have around me. As mentioned earlier, I have recently moved in with my partner and he has gone above and beyond to make sure that I have a stress free life… well as stress free as it can be! He is so good to me and I am very fortunate… I know that he is definitely value added to my mental wellbeing staying in the positive! The other big support system is the school I am at, specifically the fantastic English department. I have got a lot of amazing friends in some brilliant teachers, that have let me observe them, shared resources with me and above all, let me know that everything I am feeling is normal! It is normal to have a class that drive you insane, it is normal to get annoyed by teenagers, it is normal to feel overwhelmed at times, it is normal to have to scrap your original lesson because the students aren’t making progress. They always have something positive to say to me and I will be forever grateful for their help both now and in my first placement.

Finished reading

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories – Ken Liu 

Jack the Ripper – Paul Rigg & John Bennett

Macbeth – William Shakespeare 

This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor – Adam Kay

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeymoon 

The Testaments – Margaret Atwood

Cracking India – Bapsi Sidhwa

And just like that, it’s September again!

I knew in my heart of hearts that my two months off would go quickly, but that didn’t stop the sheer panic I felt Sunday evening, knowing I would be starting a new job the following day. As I worked at this school during my first placement, I was grateful that I already knew the team fairly well – I had spent a few hours catching up with one of the lovely ladies on Sunday (she was incredible at calming my nerves… so thanks if you’re reading this!) and I knew I couldn’t do anything else to prepare for the job as I did not have my timetable yet.

Luckily we had an inset day Monday, so I was able to ease myself in. In all honesty, I was completely terrified and felt totally overwhelmed. I knew not much would go in so I thought I would be kind to myself and not give myself any more work than necessary! I found out I am going to be a tutor for a year 7 group, which is super exciting as I will get to experience helping out the newbies and hopefully become their first port of call over the year!

The one thing I knew I was going to have to get a grip on straight away was my own wellbeing. I have a tendency to throw myself completely into my work and think about the consequences of my own feelings later… which proved tricky last year. I am a workaholic but I know I’m going to need to try and minimise the amount of work I do at home (for my partner’s sake just as much as mine!). This week I have combated the anxiety by taking everything a day at a time and making sure I am not ‘reinventing the wheel’ by making use of the faculty’s amazing resources (my partner can vouch for how excited I get when I am looking through lessons on the shared area ).

I am also going to try and limit the amount of time I spend blogging – there were a few occasions last year when I spent well over an hour, because I was avoiding doing anything else. So I am going to trial just thinking about what has gone brilliantly and what I want to make a priority next week. I am hoping these small steps will help me to have a positive outlook on the week and give me focus for the next. There will be no doubt the odd funny anecdote included too… I have got a few um…. interesting characters in my classes that have had me in hysterics.

Things to celebrate

This week I have made a good start in building good relationships with my classes. My year 10 and year 11s are a tad painfully quiet at times, but I’ve got them working hard already so that’s fantastic. They were the two classes I was most nervous about, with the looming GCSEs in the summer. My year 10 this year couldn’t be further from my bottom set I had in my final placements last year, but I have a feeling I am going to like them just as much. My year 8 and year 7 classes are completely bonkers… which I love, but may become challenging at times. I also survived my first time on duty… which was on the first day the students were here!

I am also proud of how I have been dealing with the work load – I’ve even made sure I have time to do a bit of yoga and jogging this week (let’s see how long that lasts)! As I said earlier, the faculty is AMAZING and I know I could ask anyone anything and they will help me out with anything I need…no matter how ridiculous the question! The support I have there is the main reason I was so ecstatic to accept the job there. Most importantly the lovely head of department (who obviously has loads on her plate without adding me to it!) is my NQT mentor and I couldn’t ask for a better mentor. She helped me out a ridiculous amount last year, so I am looking forward to having her help me out this year too!

Things to focus on

During my first NQT meeting with my mentor, we discussed the targets we should make for me in my first term. The two main things that came out of our conversation were getting used to the KS3 curriculum, including how grading works, and becoming ‘warm but strict’ (she picked up on the fact that I can be a bit soft at times and I need to ensure I am using the behaviour policy correctly and effectively). As it is still early days, I am going to focus on RtL next week, hopefully getting to learn more of their names in the process (honestly makes RtL MUCH easier to use). In particular, I want to work on my year 7 group. I’ve only taught them once, but they were an extremely lively group and I need to ensure standards are set well, as they will be mixed up in the next few weeks and we will have slightly different groups.

I am also intending to continue to organise my classroom – note to self, bring my folders into school!!! – and I would like to have a look through at least the year 10 and 11’s books mid week.

The most entertaining job…

I’ve had a couple of face palm moments this week (often things I do or say oops). But here are a couple of great moments from my classroom this week…

Year 8

(Written on the board is the class’ definition of a ballad starting with ‘A ballad is…’

Me: Do we all think this is a good enough definition? Does anyone think we should add anything or change anything?

Student: Me! I think we should…. oh wait I’ve forgotten……………… OH! Yes we should put at the end ‘and it is a ballad’.

Tutor group

(I had been explaining the ready to learn behaviour system)

Year 7 student: Had this been checked out by a psychiatrist? Us year 7s have enough stress to deal with without having to worry about being in isolation…

Safe to say I reassured him that many schools were using ready to learn and that if he was concerned, maybe he should simply follow the school rules and not end up there.

Anyway, I have finished the week on a high – I am truly loving teaching Macbeth (the text I was most worried about teaching) and I am feeling more confident now I have met most of my students. Bring on next week!

Currently reading

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories – Ken Liu (This is the book I will be reading during ‘drop everything and read’ at school!)

Jack the Ripper – Paul Rigg & John Bennett

Macbeth – William Shakespeare (Obvious reasons)

This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor – Adam Kay

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeymoon (Finally… late to the party with this one, I know!)

Week 26 – Inspiration is Everywhere.

Introduction

Another whirlwind week has gone by and I can’t believe that there are only 3 more weeks left in this placement! We had another university day on Friday, cutting our week short, so this blog will be less about the teaching and more about the other parts of my week!

EPS Presentation

I’ve finally done it and it went really well! All my feedback was lovely, so fingers crossed I’ve passed! It feels amazing to have gotten it over and done with, luckily, I didn’t go my standard shade of maroon (it’s happened with pretty much every other presentation I have ever done. The one thing I find most interesting about this is that I was a million times more nervous presenting to a group of 4 adults than I am for 32 students (or less!). I knew my project inside out – better than some of the lessons I have whipped together! But somehow, I still got super shaky, living through the ‘flight not fight’ response. 

World Book Day

After spending around a decade working with under 5s, it was definitely super exciting for me to dress up as one of my all-time favourite characters – Katniss Everdeen! (I nearly went Harry Potter, but felt that it’s a bit over-done). It was the easiest costume ever and I was super comfy all day… unlike some of my colleagues; my AT dressed as ‘sandman’ (had a big coat and a gas mask on) and another English teacher dressed as Mrs Havisham and looked absolutely fantastic!

I also made sure to do something World Book Day related in tutor time… only 2 students put their hands up to say they read regularly! Slightly disheartening, but not unexpected in a Netflix and social media dominating society. (I also think some of them read more often but were ‘too cool’ to admit to it.

Having all the teacher’s dress up is so simple but so effective. The school was buzzing with chatter about different books; students and staff alike guessing who was dressed as who, stimulating talk about favourite books and books we want to read. Simply magical.

Recall Day

We were back at university for another recall day on Friday, having an in-depth discussion about the old KS1 SATS and how it has impacted the way our current students feel about reading. We also got a chance to split up into groups with people at a similar stage in the curriculum practice assignment and then had a lecture about how, why and how our students should approach reading. It was super interesting and made me think about using a class novel – how much should I tell my students and how much should I get them to come up with?

I have done my best to ensure that my classrooms are a safe place, emphasising the importance of alternate opinions, both validating and expressing excitement at the more ‘out there’ suggestions. The idea that students feel like there is a ‘right or wrong’ answer to literature is definitely salient in the school I am at – most of my students (KS3,4 &5 alike) often start their sentences saying, ‘I’m not sure if this is right, but…’ and variations of this. I hate that this probably means that, at some point in their school careers, someone has shut down their opinions, saying it is wrong. 

Reimagining the Diary

Unusually, I am writing this on a Saturday instead of a Friday, mainly to mention this! My university tutor is undertaking research into keeping a diary to help teacher wellbeing, inviting the PGCE English cohort along to the launch event. I was the only student attending and, when I found this out on the Friday, I very nearly changed my mind and didn’t attend.

I am so glad I didn’t change my mind. The session was both empowering and inspirational. The children’s author Mimi Thebo came and we did a workshop on diary writing, with the emphasis of staying in the body for an enlightening experience as a writer. She said that in every one of us is a poet (creative, playful, getting words down on a page and not worrying about anything being right or wrong) and an editor (focusing on the rules of the English language as we know it, making sure our work is grammatically correct and is as good as it can possibly be) and great writers have poets and editors that work in harmony with one another. 

I won’t go into detail about the workshop, but I will just say that it was completely and utterly transformative for me; I aspire to be a children’s author one day myself – a fact not many people know about me – but I never find the time to commit to doing this. Seeing Mimi and hearing her astounding work (I ordered Dreaming the Bearon Amazon Prime there and then… will be beginning it as soon as it comes tomorrow!) as well as hearing her talk about how busy her life is, yet how she ensures she starts the day by doing at least 45 minutes of writing – just by cutting out some of the less important day to day activities. 

As part of this research, we have been asked to keep a diary; writing every day for at least a week. I have regularly kept (and promptly stopped for one reason or another) diaries all throughout my life for as long as I can remember! I am an extremely nostalgic person and love having diary entries, photos and videos to look back on. I am excited to see if I truly find writing on a busy week day as therapeutic as I do when I have designated time for a workshop on a Saturday – or doing this blog once a week! 

J

Currently Reading:

Bleak House – Charles Dickens

Animal Farm – George Orwell

Split Second – Sophie McKenzie

This book was rather odd – I cynically couldn’t put it down. The characters were ridiculously annoying and naïve, and it was the most ridiculously predictable plot with the worst possible ending – it was no Girl, Missing! However, it poses some interesting questions about radicalisation and is a stark reminder about how vulnerable children are at risk of getting involved with things they don’t understand – quite topical at the moment!

Our House – Louise Candlish

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 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!

Week 20 – Rollercoaster

Introduction

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!

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!

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.

The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde

Bleak House – Charles Dickens

Girlhood– Cat Clarke

Week 18 – Back at it again!

Introduction

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!

References (if necessary)

Week 14 – Placement 2 Preparations

Introduction

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!

Week 10 – Overwhelmed

Introduction

So, this week has been significantly more intense than last week. I have classically gone and done what I always do; agree to take too much on. At the beginning of the week, I agreed to go and talk to the Ofsted inspectors for university, which not only but a halt on my planning time, but also meant I had to rearrange my PT meeting this week. On top of this, I had my university tutor come to observe me on Tuesday afternoon and, despite her being so lovely, I found myself getting unnecessarily nervous for this. So, let’s just say the stress was ramped up a level and I ended up breaking down a bit on Wednesday. However, my lessons on Thursday and Friday proved to be a million times better and I have started the weekend with a new instilled confidence in myself.

 

Ofsted Round 2

Not long after getting an email, about Ofsted coming to carry out the second half of the university’s inspection, the course leaders sent another email around asking for volunteers to come and speak to the lead inspector. As I had a free in period 5, I offered to come into university, which meant that I sacrificed my planning time, to speak to Ofsted.

Obviously, I am not sure what the outcome is, but the inspector seemed very happy with what we were telling him about the course… fingers crossed to stay outstanding!

 

University Tutor Visit

As previously mentioned, I was a complete nervous wreck thinking about the university tutor’s visit; I didn’t know what to expect and had no idea how the class would react to my lesson – after the supply teacher incident, my confidence was knocked with this class.

My lesson was the third lesson on Shakespeare sonnets; we focused on the meaning of sonnet 18 and began to compare it to the beginning of sonnet 130. I managed to ensure that every child had contributed verbally, at least once, during the lesson, thanks to my handy ‘good names’ list on the board. I have to say; a lot of credit goes to my gorgeous year 7s… they worked so diligently and had some fantastic comments – I am continuously and regularly very proud to be teaching them!

It didn’t take long for the nerves to wear off to be fair, I got into the swing of the lesson pretty quickly and my confidence grows every time I teach something, and they prove to me in the plenary they have understood it.

I had a meeting with my UT and AT after this lesson and they both had super nice things to say. We worked through my targets for the rest of placement one and my UT noted that, if I gather enough evidence, it seems as if I am teaching at a ‘very good’ standard; for those of you not familiar with PGCE talk, this is the highest you can be. It’s safe to say that I was elated and extremely proud of myself – all the hard work looks like it is going to pay off!

I am going to leave this section with a part of the email that my UT sent me, as a follow up to the visit:

‘Joanne, you should be really proud of the lesson that you taught. You have a calm and confident teaching persona and it is clear to see that you have already established a lovely rapport with your learners: well done. You used a range of questioning techniques to ensure that all learners were involved in the lesson and made progress, and you demonstrated some live modelling with the visualiser.’

 

 

Debate Mate

One of the English teachers runs the ‘Debate Mate’ club after school on Wednesdays and, as I didn’t have a PT meeting this week, I came along to help out. Debate Mate is basically a club to help students with their debating skills and they also have an opportunity to compete in national competitions. (Click here to watch the 2018/19 launch video).

I only teach one of the students who attended, but it was super nice to be able to meet a variety of different students. It also amazes me at how much talent lies within the midst of the student body. The students that spoke, spoke eloquently and with such passion and confidence… at the ages of 11-14!

 

Midweek Breakdown

You would think that after all this great news at the beginning of the week I would be feeling elated and confident in my role as a teacher, that is what any normal human should feel after such fantastic news. Tuesday evening, I definitely felt that way! But for some reason come Wednesday evening I felt my panic and stress levels begin to rise and I just felt utterly overwhelmed and helpless. I negotiated with myself and only checked over my lesson plans for the next day before having an early night.

I’m not going to go into any details, I have no idea as to why this happens to me. It happened the previous week, but I presumed it was a one-off ordeal. It’s starting to become a pattern mid-week, so I am just going to monitor myself and adjust what I am doing accordingly.

 

Back on Track

Despite this set back Wednesday evening, Thursday proved to be a great day. The only lesson I had to teach was the lovely year 7s…. but, unfortunately, my AT was off again so I was in with a supply! I began to feel the beginnings of panic but held myself together – I knew what I was going to teach (thanks to a kind teacher who talked it through with me in the morning) and I was confident that I knew the lesson well enough, so I only really had to think about behavioural management techniques – that and pray they would be better behaved than last time!

My plan was to give them between 20-30 minutes to finish off their poetry comparisons (I’ve started marking these and some of them have blown me away – there aren’t many adults I know that can write this eloquently about Shakespeare, let alone an 11/12-year-old!), and then we were going to move onto their spacing task for this fortnight – viewpoint writing. The spacing task was to get them to agree or disagree with the statement: ‘‘Parents today are over-protective. Children should be allowed to take part in risky experiences to prepare them for later life.’

Yet again, I have to give credit to the year 7s. They now completely see me as their teacher – it is just the sweetest thing. I felt fully in control all lesson and, despite a few of them getting excited about the spacing task (one kid was adamant that if you went to the park without an adult you were extremely likely to get kidnapped, another asked what would happen to you if you got kidnapped) – I managed to keep them all on task appropriately so I’m calling that a win!

 

Progress with a Student

One of the biggest achievements for me this week is making progress with one of my more difficult students in year 9. I can’t remember if I have written about this before, so I’ll just do a quick background: one of my year 9 students has a lot of additional needs, which has related to him being off task and disruptive in lessons. I’m not going to give any details, but there are considerable reasons behind this that I am aware of and I have agreed with the normal teacher that she will help me with him. He very rarely does anything more than write the date in his lessons.

Due to him being in Ready to Learn or being excluded, he has only been in the class twice before, and I have only taught part of one of these lessons.

In fact, it is very rare to have the whole class in – more often than not there has been at least 6/31 off for various reasons.

The first full lesson I taught them… there were only 2 off and I had to adjust the seating plan accordingly. On the whole, my behaviour management was not great in that lesson, but I am going to focus on the positive in this section.

I managed to get him to verbally tell me which introduction was better and why; he responded accurately giving valid reasons behind his opinion. He took himself off to refocus during the lesson but, for me, the biggest win was getting him to stand behind a chair at the end of the lesson. It was period 5, so obviously they are all keen to leave, but I have been insisting on silence and order at the end of the lesson to maintain control of the class. He rushed to the door just as the bell went and I calmly asked him stand behind his chair. After reminding him to do this a few times, also informing him that I too would like to leave, we compromised with him standing behind the closest chair. At the end of the following lesson, I got him to stand behind his own seat.

This might not sound like very much, but I did not think I would even get to talk to me in a respective manner, let alone get him to follow my instructions and even begun to do some work. In just a week I have gotten so far with him, thanks to the teacher working with me acting as teaching assistant as well. I am hoping to see more progress, hopefully he will get to the stage where he participates in a lesson without causing too much disruption, even if he doesn’t do it whilst I am teaching them. It’s the smallest steps that feel like the biggest in learning to teach.

 

EPS SEND Assignment Feedback

On a final note, we got our feedback on the first part of our SEND investigations and I am thrilled to say that not only was my feedback good, but it was also extremely helpful. I have never had such specific feedback that I completely understand and agree with before. I’m not going to look at my assignment until next weekend, but I am glad that my mind is at ease with regards to this.

 

Teaching Targets

Last Week’s Targets:

  • Examples & subject knowledge: Subject knowledge is going to be one of those I will be constantly improving, so I am going to remove it from my weekly targets – I am aware I am going to have to adapt and learn as I go, especially as I move from school to school over the PGCE year. With regards to the examples, I am becoming more confident and finding that planning my examples into my lesson plans really helps me – even if I end up not using them and eliciting a model from the students.
  • Questioning: I have been attempting to use think time, something that is definitely a lot easier in theory than in practice, but I have come to the realisation that before I can even think about attempting some of the more advanced teaching skills, I need to work on my basic questioning skills.

 

This Week’s Targets:

  • Questioning: Building on what I have previously said, I have noted to adapt my questioning techniques depending on what I know about the learner I am questioning: ability levels, any SEND or any prior knowledge. To do this, I am going to attempt to use Bloom’s Taxonomy, something I am going to have to read into a bit more before I can make effective use of it. My university tutor suggested I laminated seating plans so I could write next to the student what kind of question I should be asking them: to monitor who is contributing to the lesson and to what level their answers will be. I am going to attempt to include this into my planning – hopefully it will be effective!
  • Assessment for learning: another target that has cropped up this week, is that I have been neglecting to use assessment for learning techniques to gauge if learners know what they are supposed to be doing; particularly when I give input or set an extended piece of writing. On Friday, I used a few techniques (thumbs up/middle/down; temperature check; common problems) to assess this, and already I am seeing a difference in how well the students are understanding my instructions. As noted in some of my earlier blogs, one of my biggest concerns is that I am not clear enough in how I speak to the pupils, thereby I am wasting my time and their time by having to consistently reword my instructions because I wasn’t clear enough the first time.
Bloom’s Taxonomy

J

Currently Reading:

The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry

Reading first world war poetry on Remembrance Sunday – the centenary of the end of WWI no less – made the readings ever so more poignant. Poetry is one of those beautiful forms where the poet can express a multitude of emotions in written word – often, in my opinion, much more effectively than prose. I find that poetry is not the same read inside my head, so I often read poetry aloud to myself, in doing this last Sunday it made me realise how important this poetry is in remembering those who have gone.

The last surviving English veteran of WW1 died in 2009; in keeping the heightened, harrowing images of ‘the war to end all wars’ alive through various creative means, we are able to remember and be thankful to all of those who fought for us to live the lives we live today, also, hopefully, serving as a reminder to what we should never have to live through as a species again.

The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde

So far so good! I’ve not read much but I am looking forward to reading some more this week!

Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

I have finally finished this novel and I reluctantly say that I did not particularly enjoy this novel. However, I can totally appreciate why people do love Woolf’s writing, the description is detailed and eloquent and her characterisation is phenomenal – I just did not overly enjoy the story.

Dark Woods – Steve Voake

The main gist of the story is that two children go off exploring in the woods near their campsite and a man finds them and drugs them, bringing them up to his cabin deep within the mountain forest. He then shows them that he can bring dreams alive; all he wants them to do is go into his dreams and bring his dog back to life. But there is a twist: he has brought Cal’s nightmare to a reality, and the kids set it free to torment them as they try to escape.

This is a novel that you really have to suspend your disbelief for and I find, when reading children’s and young adult novels, that I read them slightly differently to how I would read other novels; I imagine what my childhood self would’ve thought about them. Bringing myself back to opening up my imagination in any way possible, I am finding I am actually really enjoying this book. It is a simple horror for young people and holds the same gripping nature I would find in that of a Stephen King novel, only made accessible for the younger generation.

Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter’s Life with Autism – Clara Claiborne Park

The chapter I read this week was about her daughter’s experience with language – how long it took her to be able to communicate her unique way of seeing the world. The more I read into autism, the more I feel as if we are extremely fortunate to have these individuals in the world; different perspectives bring layers of meaning to an otherwise mundane world.

Week 9 – What a week!

Introduction

I’m not going to lie, this has been the longest most intense week. My placement school got the call from Ofsted Monday morning, which led to panic stations all around and, even though I wasn’t directly affected, I think I subconsciously picked up on everyone else’s stress. I also helped my AT with a poetry workshop ran by Black Artists on the move… which was also fairly stressful, some of the reasons I will note below. Then, to top it all off, I had my comfort blanket (my AT!) taken off me on Thursday, as she was off sick. I have so many different emotions and thoughts running through my head, I feel like this blog post may end up being fairly rambly… bear with me, I may say something of use or interest somewhere!

Ofsted

I have avoided Ofsted for the whole decade I have worked in childcare, unintentionally already having a day off in place when they have come in to the settings I worked at. One of my friends even informed me that I narrowly missed Ofsted at the primary school I was placed at – her daughter attends that school.

Monday morning.

The end of period 3.

The gossip started.

“Have you heard, they’ve had the call”

“What call?”

“Ofsted are in. For 2 days!”

Long story short, the main gist of it was, (I mean I think this was the main gist, I am getting my information from a wide variety of sources!) that they wanted to do an in-depth inspection due to the 2017 results. They focused on the disadvantaged kids and high ability kids. They have made a decision, and we do not know what it is yet – that will take up to 15 working days to come through. We did have a feedback session about it Wednesday morning, but I am unable to share anything as it was strictly confidential. However, I will definitely post the result in the blog after I find out!

Despite the stress it caused my colleagues, I actually feel as this couldn’t have come at a better time in my career. I got to witness first-hand the impact Ofsted has on the English department as well as the whole school. There were some teachers that have been qualified for longer than 4 years and still never encountered an Ofsted inspection, so I feel fortunate to have been able to witness this.

Despite this, after getting an email saying that Ofsted have spoken to the university to say they are getting the second half of their inspections, I really hope that they will not be coming to my placement school to look at the Bristol uni NQTs there!

Black Artists on the Move

On Wednesday we had a poetry workshop run by the CEO of Black Artists on the Move, Akulah Agbami and, as she kept what she was going to do a mystery from everyone, we had literally no idea what to expect! All that we knew was that there would be 2 workshops for 2 different sets of year 8s, handpicked by their teachers, and then there would be a showcase period 5 – a chance for them to show their work to their peers.

Speaking to one of my tutees, who is also in my year 8 English class, she expressed how concerned she was about speaking in front of everybody. I can totally empathise! I would have completely hated that at her age. I reassured her and said that if she honestly felt that strongly about it, she wouldn’t have to do it.

In the first session, she asked the students questions to warm them up, before taking key points and writing them up to create a class poem. To emphasise the fact that poems don’t have to rhyme, and that repetition is a key point in poetry, she randomly decided that they would say each line a certain amount of times. The end result was pretty cool and, eventually, the kids seemed to be actually engaging and enjoying themselves.

They were then given three different scaffolds to base their poems on. A lot of the students wrote some really beautiful poems and were inspired by what they were asked to write. However, I feel like the better poems digressed from the scaffold a bit, so I feel it would’ve been better if they were given as a suggestion rather than being told to work that way.

At the end of the first workshop, the kids were told they would be sharing their poems in the showcase and, naturally, they were reluctant to come forward and the initial few volunteers took a little coaxing to come forward. Akulah seemed adamant that everyone should be proud of themselves and show their poems to each other, so much so that when the bell rang, she let the volunteers go and asked the others to stay behind to see if they would change their minds.

The next session was much the same, they made another group poem and the same kind of process took place. Although this group seemed more confident, they were still pretty reluctant to do the showcase.

The showcase ended up being a shorter workshop, asking the kids to write a poem in response to a Fairtrade video, and one of the kids in my English class won the prize for the best poem! I was very proud. Then the students had a mini-assembly on the impact of poetry and then some of the workshop students bravely read out their poems to the rest of the year.

This was an interesting day, being able to see the students outside the classroom was great, as well as being able to see some of the work of students I do not teach. On the whole, I feel as if they enjoyed themselves – although one student said defensively ‘miss told me it was going to be fun!’ – so maybe it wasn’t for all the students!

Supply in the Room

Unfortunately, my AT, who has been suffering all week, was too unwell to come into school Thursday, which meant that a supply teacher would be covering her lessons. Initially, we discussed whether or not I would be happy to still take the lesson, as Jo had set cover work, and, me being me, I smugly said I would be happy to still take the class, as they are such a lovely group, as long as it was alright with everyone else.

The head of English agreed with me, saying that it would actually be more beneficial for me to save face in the class by continuing with them, as I have fully taken over this class. I was to teach sonnet 18 to them, focusing on the structure of sonnets, and I was fairly excited about this as I absolutely love Shakespeare’s sonnets.

I’m not totally naïve, I did expect the class to act differently without my AT there as well, I just thought that they would try it on and then go back to normal when they realise, I am running the class as normal. And, to give them credit where credit’s due, they weren’t that bad either… they just wouldn’t shut up! All they seemed to do was talk talk talk. It was driving me up the wall to be perfectly honest! I gave out a few RtL warnings and they settled a bit, but every time I had to sort something out (technology was not my friend today… never thought I would be that teacher!) they would just start whispering again… and those whispers got louder and louder.

Like it wasn’t the end of the world, and the supply said that I did a great job (even if she kept her face completely emotionless throughout the whole lesson). It was just disheartening to go from feeling like their teacher, to feeling like an outsider again.

 

Ready to Learn

Luckily my AT was back on Friday’s lesson, and it was a library lesson too – basically just doing crowd control! We agreed that I needed to make myself known as an adult in charge and, due to this, I would really crack down on behaviour in this lesson. The rules are simple in the library – work in silence and work hard!

One kid in particular, I’m going to call him Harry*, for no reason other than I love Harry Potter and I can’t use his real name in this post, is regularly and consistently off task and chatting away to anyone who is remotely close to him, distracting both them and himself. He gets a warning almost every English lesson – from either my AT or myself – and has been sent to RtL twice before.

I don’t want to tell the kids off. I get that it can be boring or it’s just generally hard to maintain concentration for large periods of time – I am horrific at procrastination myself and I’m over a decade older than them.  I gave him an informal warning before giving him a RtL warning, willing him to just do the right thing (next library lesson I’m going to make sure he is sitting away from people who will engage with him!).

I then had another discussion with my AT, and again we agreed that I should be the one to send anyone to isolation if they are not following the rules (by this point there were a few more names on the RTL warning list). With a few minutes to go before the end of the lesson, AT had begun to tell them about homework expectations, as I was unsure about what they needed to do. I was keeping an eye on all of them, as they were spread out around the library, and Harry* started laughing and speaking to another kid, who was stifling a giggle but not responding to him. I quietly went over to him, said that he had had a few warnings and that he was still talking over AT, being rude and that he had to pack up his things and go to isolation.

Naturally, he did not take this well and stomped off to pack up his things. I repeated that he was not ready to learn etc. and also that I had given him extra chances and he was still talking when he wasn’t supposed to be.

I can’t help but feel slightly guilty – to me, it feels irrational to send a child to isolation just for talking. I know that is the point in RtL – cutting down on low-level disruptive behaviour – and I am also confident in my decision – I had given Harry* amples of warnings on top of the official warnings, in both this lesson and previous lessons. I also get that just giving a warning and not sending them to isolation defeats the object of RtL, but I still feel for Harry*.

Later on, AT informed me that she had received an email from Harry*’s mum, asking why a ‘cover’ teacher had sent him to isolation. AT replied saying that I was a trainee teacher and would be taking the class for the next month – hopefully nothing more comes of this!

A View from the Bridge – Beginning of Act Two

On a lighter note now, as I’m sure those of you who have read AVFTB are aware, the beginning of act two has Rodolpho and Catherine having sexual intercourse for the first time, and Eddie catching them just at the end.

Reading this with year 9s, 13-14 year olds, proved to be highly amusing. This play covers many mature themes, and I am very proud of them for being able to understand and apply them in their writing. Now, the reason I am writing about this week is to thank the teacher I was working with for letting me team teach this session, as I would not have bene able to compose myself as she did!

So, after blowing their minds by telling them that the fact that Rodolpho and Catherine were in the bedroom together, and that Catherine had to ‘adjust her dress’ after coming out of the bedroom, implied that they had engaged in sexual intercourse (a good three quarters of the class were unaware of this), the teacher asked them to compare how Catherine is feeling after being caught by her uncle as opposed to how she should feel after losing her virginity with someone she loves deeply. A few students said she should feel happy etc, but one student said that she would feel ‘sticky’.

LUCKILY, a handful of people heard (I didn’t!), and the teacher kept her composure beautifully, telling him that that was inappropriate and giving him an RtL warning (the poor boy looked a bit confused as to why it was inappropriate) and she moved the class swiftly on and eventually everyone forgot about it (or just ignored it!).

The main reason I am bringing this up is that I had literally just read the scene with them, and passed over to the teacher to set the writing task, as I wouldn’t be with them in the lesson they will write it in, and it got me thinking – how would I deal with a situation like that?

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a slightly immature sense of humour, and yes, I definitely find things like that hilarious. Therefore, I feel like I have to start practicing maintaining a straight face for circumstances like this – any tips would be gratefully received! (side note – I did manage to keep a straight face when the class were roused by Eddie kissing Catherine and then kissing Rodolpho! So hopefully all is not lost!)

 

Teaching Targets

Last Week’s Targets:

  • Examples: Still need to work on this to know exactly what I want to do!
  • I’m confident on the majority of the names of the year 9s now, there are still a few I’m unsure on but the seating plan I have made really helps!
  • Subject knowledge: This will be an ongoing target as there is a lot of stuff coming up that I’m not 100% sure on!

 

This Week’s Targets:

  • Examples & subject knowledge – to keep adding to my subject knowledge and to attempt to make my examples as relevant and useful as possible.
  • Questioning: One of the teachers, who observed me this week, suggested that I mix up my questioning techniques in order to stretch each pupil to their maximum potential. One interesting thing she was telling me about was think time – not giving praise straight away so that the students build on their responses independently.

 

J

Currently Reading:

Contemporary Poetry: Poets and Poetry since 1990 – Ian Brinton

I gave up reading the theory, as I feel like my time is better used elsewhere at the moment, as I am not actually teaching contemporary poetry as of yet. I’m not sure if it was because I wasn’t in the right mindset when I was reading it or what, but I wasn’t overly enamoured by the majority of the poetry. However, it did reignite my love for Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry – The World’s Wife  was one of the first anthologies I fell in love with, and also I stumbled across the poem Prac Crit by Anthony Wilson. I have not come across this poem before, as I can remember, and it is a poem about analysing poetry – I love it!

The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde

Although this is the next play I will read, I have not had time to start it as of yet.

Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

I am totally aware I am taking an embarrassingly long time to read this novel and, honestly, I do feel this is because I am not feeling overly engaged by the text. I want to love it – I really do! I’ve heard so many fantastic things about it from a range of people, but I just can’t get into it. I appreciate that it is written beautifully, but the story isn’t gripping me, so if anyone can recommend me a Woolf book to change my opinion it would be most appreciated!

Dark Woods – Steve Voake

I have been wanting to read some of Voake’s novels since he came into university to talk to us. This one was on the top of the pile in the YA fiction library we have at uni, so I thought I would give it a go! I’ve only read a couple of chapters… and the chapters are a couple of pages long (I’m not so good at reading before I go to sleep anymore!) but so far so good!

Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter’s Life with Autism – Clara Claiborne Park

I bought this as I came across it on blackboard when researching autism for my assignment. It is a memoir about Clara’s autistic daughter Jessy, and her life as an adult. I am enjoying it so far… but again, finding the time to just read is proving difficult!