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!

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 19^thCentury Prose round 2

So, after finishing travel writing, which has definitely been my favourite SOW to teach, it was time to move on to 19^thcentury prose. I recycled the introduction lesson, playing the Dickens’ game and research. It was a complete dream planning the second time round – I already had an idea of how to improve my planning, resources and teaching.

This was the sheet I used last time, for the research project:

They also had to find 10 more fascinating facts for homework and print out any pictures they want to use on their posters.

I found that some of this research was not directly relevant to the texts we study, and that it could be more useful to focus on gender and class, as opposed to London. Moreover, I had them take a page in their books and draw their own grid, with the intentions of having it filled in by the end of the lesson. I found that a lot of students spent nearly as long drawing and perfecting the grid than they did actually researching, and that a lot of them didn’t get at least 5 facts in each section – which was my minimum aim.

This is the new resource I created:

I figured that if they had a print out of the sheet, they would be able to take it home to finish off for homework (a fantastic motivating factor!). I also added to this homework, by telling them to find 5 fascinating facts about Bleak House. I am hoping that this will help them to have an idea about what the mammoth novel is about, before approaching it with them next week.

My hard work paid off – this was definitely an easier way to do the research! I also asked them to pair up and split the research, as we didn’t have as much time as I would’ve liked (Friday timings are slightly shorter and I was in a year 10 assembly that ran on for an extra 5 minutes = 10 minutes of lesson time gone… plus we had to actually get to the computer room!). The majority got at least 15 points down, and they worked well together to finish off their research… although they will be dismayed when they see I have put them in different groups on Monday!

Currently Reading:

The Eolian Harp & Kubla Khan – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kubla Khan is now one of my favourite poems. It is a unique poem, interweaving the ‘sublime’ with the exotic, creating a beautiful Romantic masterpiece.

Bleak House – Charles Dickens

Animal Farm – George Orwell

A Monster Calls –Patrick Ness

More than one tear was shed in the reading of this book – cancer being an illness very close to my heart. I loved reading about a boy struggling with accepting his Mum’s inevitable death. A very accessible book, an easy read but a sensitive topic… may not be suitable for all students!

Week 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.

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, 19^thCentury literature afterwards.

9Y5 – 19^thCentury literature before half term, travel writing afterwards.

6^thform 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.

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 Six: Early Days Yet

Introduction

This week I worked in school Tuesday – Thursday, which meant that I have taken place in ‘Curriculum Enrichment day’, where one-year group spends the day in two subject areas, tutor evening and a whole school photo. Interestingly, this whole school photo on happens once every 5 years… just happening to fall on a day that I was at the school. I was also wearing a very subtle blazer… the shade of vivid canary yellow. Great… I will now be the member of staff that no one can remember! We missed a lesson and a quarter due to the photo, something I feel the kids appreciate more at the moment than the photo itself! It also provided me with having to make small talk to a lot of members of staff that I have no idea who they are or what they do… one thing I am forever grateful for is that everyone at the school is genuinely welcoming. I am also feeling relieved at the fact that a lot of the people I have met have graduated from the same university I am studying at… makes the future job prospects seem a little less further away than anticipated!

Assessments

In our university sessions this week, we had been focusing on assessments and looking at progress 8. We had been discussing how useful formative versus summative assessments are, as well as focusing more on what how assessment works at our various placement schools.

It was very interesting to hear about the different ways schools go about marking work. Some schools just give feedback on SPaG, whereas others focus on positive reinforcement – with the majority doing a mixture of both. Some give out grades for every piece of work and others just use comments, as they say the students were focusing too much on the grade and not enough on how to improve themselves. I think that a mixture of everything is healthy – and I also believe marking should be differentiated appropriately. For example, a higher attaining student would benefit from a focus on SPaG, if that is what could potentially bring their marks down, whereas a student with mental health issues may benefit from a lot more positive feedback so that their self-esteem does not go down.

The way the schools are now judged on attainment is, I feel, a lot better than the old system. When I was at school, a student had to get 5 A*-C grades to count. This potentially meant that lower attaining students might not have got all the support they needed, and they may have felt like a failure as schools were pushing students to expect to get a C grade. The way they work it out now is to do with how much progress they individually make. Each student gets a calculated predicted grade for year 11, and ‘progress’ depends on if they meet this grade, which potentially means that the higher attainers in year 6 have a harder time meeting this than a lower attainer. Obviously, the system isn’t perfect, and I feel as if it would be hard to create a perfect system in ‘judging’ schools, as there are a lot more factors in how a student does in their exams than just the school’s input.

Curriculum Enrichment Day

On Wednesday this week, the school I am at had a Curriculum Enrichment Day (CED). This is where each year group spends half the day looking at one subject but doing things a little differently to a normal lesson, sort of like intervention sessions. English had year 9, and we spent the day looking at context for poems they will study for GCSE. It was super fun, most of the students seemed engaged, which was probably down to having a few more video clips to analyse than they would normally have! We also finished with a Kahoot! Quiz… they loved it so much that I have decided to put one in place to do in a revision session for A View from the Bridge.

‘Marco’ Starter Critical Analysis

My criteria for creating a starter for this lesson was to focus on the character of Marco in order to remind the class about him before getting to the ever-important chair scene at the end of act 1.

My first minor mistake was writing the title ‘Marco’ on the board, as the regular teacher asked me what the title of the lesson-was and I eagerly offered to write it out on the whiteboard. I swiftly realised that this then gave away the answer to my bell work question… and I didn’t intend them write anything down until we moved on to the language use… oops! My not so subtle groan and remark to the other teacher about how ‘I gave it away’ now lead to a few laughs in the class so at least I’m building up relationships with the class?

Screen Shot 2018-10-18 at 21.19.52 One thing I am going to note here is that my classroom management for this class did not feel very natural and I know that this is down to me only knowing a handful of names. Seating plans, without photos, are only helpful if everyone is sitting exactly where they should be, and this isn’t always necessarily the case. One thing the head of English (HoE) said to me was to ask them to remind me of their name if I am not sure. Side note… I also find a lot of names extremely hard to pronounce, so if parents could start naming their children one syllable regularly pronounced names that would be great!

Nevertheless, I strode on with the lesson and, despite muddling my words up every now and again (still working on that… and I imagine it will be something I will be working on for the rest of my life). I introduced the next part, where we were looking at the language used and whether they felt it had positive or negative connotations. I asked them to discuss this with a partner for around 5 minutes, and I went around the classroom ensuring I spoke to a range of different students.

Focusing now on one of the students I talked to, I was particularly proud with the progress she made. She did not engage with the text originally, but when I broke it down for her, asking what the connotations for each individual word have, she came up with a fairly strong analysis of his character. I then asked her to share this with the class and she seemed very proud of herself for being able to share a valid response with the class.

Another student analysed the picture instead of the stage directions, so it made me aware of both being completely clear with my instructions, and also ensuring that the PowerPoint slides are clear – I could potentially have made the image smaller, not used an image at all or even explicitly stated do not use the image.

Screen Shot 2018-10-18 at 21.20.01 In order to provide a better understanding of why Marco and Eddie’s relationship begins to get a bit strained at the end of Act one, I decided to focus on what kind of relationship Marco and Rodolpho had, and where the power lies with the siblings. I had discussed with their usual teacher during their previous discussion to tell them that I will expect silence in this part. I did this, but, as they are sharing the class reader between two, in my opinion it was hard and potentially unfair to enforce silence. In hindsight, I feel like this task should’ve been a discussion and the previous task could’ve been in silence.

Screen Shot 2018-10-18 at 21.20.08 When it came to getting feedback from the group, I used the seating plan to randomly pick on people who hadn’t contributed much so far. This kind of backfired on me, as one of the pupils I asked had quite clearly not been doing the work and could not give me much more than ‘I don’t know’. I said to him to have a quick look now and then I will come back to him later. Firstly, I forgot his name when I went to get back round to him, and then he was still adamant that he did not have anything to contribute. I was not sure how far to push him, but I also did not want to lose their respect so early on in teaching them, so I went over to him and pointed to a stage direction that would help him. He eventually gave the class an answer, even if it was not particularly well thought out.

It was around this time that the class started to lose concentration, and one of the things the teacher observing me said was to make sure I wait for silence, use my language and my body language to be clear about what I expect in the classroom.

Ultimately, I feel as if the students did revise the character of Eddie, and they used that understanding later on in the lesson when they read the play. Despite a few classroom management issues, I feel that this went ok for my second time.

Drop Everything and Read

I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before, but drop everything and read is where the students spend 20 minutes silently reading, regardless on the lesson they are in. I absolutely love this idea. Reading is something that generally is only done in English lessons and, despite being asked to spend at least an hour a week outside of school reading for pleasure, this is not something every student does – or even has the ability to do.

Tutor Evening

This week I stayed behind to see how tutor evening works. The class I am with for tutor time is also one of the classes I will be teaching in English, so I felt it was extremely useful to learn a bit more about each child that came. I was only going to stay for an hour, but I ended up staying for the whole time as English came up as an issue with a few of the students. I feel like the more I get to know the students, the better equipped I will be able to teach them. It was also good to be able to spend some time at the school in a less formal setting. They have subject evening next term, and I will be interested to attend that to see the difference!

Transferable Techniques

Kahoot! – Being mindful of the fact that the kids have a great time choosing their names (trying not to laugh at some of the more inappropriate names is going to be a challenge for me!)

Teaching Targets

Last week’s targets:

Teach at least 2 more starters next week.

Target complete! Well, I only actually taught two more starters, but that was mainly down to being off timetable Wednesday.

Ensure I am confident in all aspects I will be teaching before I begin to teach.

Before taking the two starters, I ensured I read through the content thoroughly the night before, even reading the out loud to myself to make sure I don’t jumble my words up too much (my cousin must think I’m mad when she hears me!). However, I am 100% sure that I did not complete this target. I feel this is mainly due to making it a bit too broad, thus being unachievable in my second week (something I fully intended not to do!). There is no way I am going to be confident in all aspects of what I am teaching at this stage. There is far too much going on in the classroom and I have learned my lesson this week to concentrate on just a few things at a time, which I am going to choose for next week’s targets.

Next week’s targets:

Scripting ‘teacher talk’ so I know what I will be saying when, and also scripting ‘student talk’ so I have a clear idea of what I want the students to be saying to me, so I know they have learned something.
A focus on minor behavioural issues: Remember to use the Ready to Learn system already in place, and also ensure that the students are silent when I speak as well as before I start speaking.
Learn all the names of the students I will be teaching. Slightly ambitious, I know. But, as stated earlier, class management felt 100% easier and more natural with the year 7s, as I am fairly confident I know all of their names now. I am in school all week next week and honestly, I this is the only thing I achieve next week I believe I will thank myself a lot for it! (Let’s just hope I don’t forget them all again over the half term!)

Currently Reading:

Contemporary Poetry: Poets and Poetry since 1990 – Ian Brinton

Still ploughing through the theory… kinda just want to get on to the poetry now.

The Point – Kate Tempest

I don’t know what it is about poetry, but the more I analyse it the more I grow to love it, and this is definitely the case with this poem. I looked at it briefly last week, with the intentions of taking half the lesson and, in preparation for playing it in the lesson, I listened to Kate performing the poem. Listening to poetry poignantly read out always provokes an emotional response to me, but the more I listened and reread it, the more its beauty stood out to me.

The Tempest – William Shakespeare

I don’t know if I’m the only one who does this, but to appreciate Shakespeare plays fully I need to read them aloud and give voices to each of the characters (another way for my cousin to find me slightly insane). I have whizzed through acts 2 and 3 now, and I have to say my favourite parts are still with Caliban! The scene in which Ariel winds up Caliban, Stefano and Trinculo is absolutely hilarious, and the fact that Caliban keeps insulting Prospero and treating Stefano like a King is equally funny. I am thoroughly enjoying rereading this play!

A View from the Bridge – Arthur Miller

I am going to have to add this to my list at the moment, seeing as we are reading it in the year 9 class I am team teaching in. We are just at the end of Act 1, and I reread the closing scene of the act whilst preparing for the lesson starter I designed. The power struggle in that scene provides gripping entertainment. The more I read this play the more I completely fall in love with it!

Demon Dentist – David Walliams

I read just over a third of the book in the half an hour I designated towards teen fiction this week, and I have to say it is a blessing to my overworked brain to be able to zone out and just read something ridiculous! I can totally see why this novel would be popular with the young people. It plays on the idea of a fear of dentists by creating a hyperbolised evil character that has all sorts of gruesome ways to ensure the children go to the dentist. I also appreciate the fact that Walliams has made the protagonist’s father a single Dad in a wheelchair, and a social worker is called in to help them. I always find it refreshing to see children’s authors taking a step away from the nuclear family – something I know authors like Jaqueline Wilson have always made an attempt to do.

Week Four: Poetry, Planning and Placement Preparation

Introduction

Another week has flown by, and my head has once again been bombarded by pedagogy – starting placement next week will be a refreshing change! Sitting here on Friday, as I begin to write this blog post, I am looking back over the week and Monday feels like months ago. Yet, at the same time, I cannot quite believe that the past month has passed by so quickly. I am definitely looking forward to relaxing this weekend with a few of my old uni friends!

First Tutorial

We had to sign up for one-to-one tutorials with our tutor last week, and I was eager to get this done as soon as possible, mainly so I could clear my head with someone who knew what was expected of me. We talked for quite a while, and I expressed some of my concerns about getting in front of a class for the first time. I am so used to observing, or acting as a teaching assistant, that I am starting to freak out a bit about making the transition into teacher! She made me feel heaps better about it, and we decided that the best approach for me is to jump in at the deep end and teach sooner rather than later. As much as I hate to admit it, that will probably be the best way for me to get over these ridiculous nerves as quickly as possible! Watch this space… I could be saying a completely different thing next week!

National Poetry Day

I wouldn’t be an English teacher if I didn’t acknowledge that it was National Poetry Day on Thursday! In spirit of this, our lecturers gave us a small anthology of four poems all written by female poets and taken from the current AQA GCSE Poetry Anthology. The poems were:

– The Emigre by Carol Rumens

– Poppies by Jane Weir

– Tissue by Imtiaz Dharker

– Kamikaze by Beatrice Garland

I focused on Kamikaze to begin with, after quickly reading through all four I found I was particularly drawn to the narrative. It follows a story about a Japanese girl’s father, who left to be a suicide bomber but came back, bringing shame to the family. I fell head over heels in love with the poem. The language is beautiful: ‘strung out like bunting on a green-blue translucent sea’; ‘dark shoals of fishes flashing silver as their bellies swivelled towards the sun’; ‘cairns of pearl-grey pebbles’, as well as presenting a powerful thought whether it would have been better for her father to die a ‘hero’ or live but bring shame on her family. I always find it interesting looking at different perspectives on the war, particularly after visiting Laos and seeing the devastation the ‘bombies’ from the Vietnam war, amongst other places.

We were then given the task to work in pairs to create a lesson plan for one of these poems. As much as I loved Kamikaze, the poem my partner and I chose to write the plan for was Tissue. It is such a beautiful poem, and I love the use of homonym ‘Tissue’ and the process of it starting as paper and becoming skin. The more I read it, the more I came to appreciate it. I will explain the lesson plan we made a bit further down.

On National Poetry Day we were asked to get into groups to perform different poems, and we were all given different ways in which we should perform. I won’t go into detail, but it just reminded me how powerful it is to see a poem performed, and how that could be used as a way to get my students to actively engage with the text, rather than just listening to it being read by me.

The Planning Process

We spent a lot of time in our sub sessions talking about lesson planning, focusing mainly on medium term and specific lesson plans. I am going to focus on the lesson plan I created with my partner, and the turmoils we faced whilst we attempted to perfect the timings and activities.

Our initial idea was to explore figurative language in Tissue. We drew upon ideas, decided to do various activities and then hit a brick wall. How where we going to cover everything in a one hour lesson? After getting a bit of help, we realised that it would be more beneficial to us and the students if we were more specific with what we wanted the learning outcomes to be – in other words keep it simple and specific. So we narrowed it down to imagery. Turns out this is just as vague so eventually we narrowed it down to the senses and then our plan took place!

I’m including a picture of our plan, it is hella messy because we changed it heaps, it is also not 100% finished as we discussed a lot but ran out of time to write it down! However, I am confident that we have refined our plan and it is now a teachable lesson. This was also due to, I believe, finally getting a mock up class list so we had an idea of how we could differentiate the lesson. This made it somewhat easier, but I think it will also be a million times easier (note easier not easy) when I know the children I will be teaching well enough to adapt the lesson for everyone. (I know that probably sounds optimistic but we’ve all got to aim somewhere!)

Class Readers

We also had a look at class readers, the text (generally a play or novel) that a class will read together and follow along at the same pace, usually over a few lessons. We discussed various ways to approach class readers and also talked about the advantages and disadvantages of using them.

We then got the first few chapters of Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman, and were asked to try out a few techniques to read them in a group. I think the resounding thing our group found was that, even as literature lovers, we found we got distracted easily for a range of reasons. The text itself was phenomenal and I have definitely decided to put it on my to read list… so why did we find it so hard?

Reading out loud can be a nerve racking thing, everyone slips up now and again and it is easy to get bored if someone is reading too fast or too slow. For me, the best way we did was the ‘popcorn method’, where the reader can nominate anyone to read and each person only reads as much as they want to. This kept us on our toes and, interestingly, we found ourselves picking on our colleagues that did not appear to be paying attention. Now who knows if this is something the children will do or if this is just the teacher within us all making an appearance!

Inclusion and SEN/D

For our first masters level assignment, we will be following ‘learner x’, a pupil with SEN/D (Special Educational Needs or Disability) and we had the introductory lectures to this task this week.

My favourite of the lectures has to be the one where we had people from a SEND department come in and talk to us, bringing along a few students with additional needs. Hearing the students side of their school life really hit home – I know inclusion is important of course, but knowing the little details that could change the child’s day for the worse only emphasised to me that it is of the upmost importance that I get to know my students as well as I can.

I am actually looking forward to this assignment, and eagerly anticipate next week when I hopefully get to meet my learner x.

Observation Versus Judgement

This will just be a brief note here, mainly to remind myself if I ever forget. Observations are what you actually see, judgement is what I think I see. For example, an observation would be that children have their heads down on their table, a judgement would be that these children are not engaged. Use the observations to back up judgments ad explicitly state what I have seen in my assignments – every judgement needs evidence!

First Impressions

Most excitingly this week we got to meet our personal tutors for our first placement, well I say personal tutor, in my case one of the deputy heads came to greet us due to unforeseen circumstances. It was honestly such a relief to be able to have a little chat before starting next Tuesday, and having a few trivial questions answered.

The school I will be working at has a ‘ready to learn’ behaviour management scheme in place, which is basically a zero tolerance method. I am grateful that all the behaviour management is in place for me to use already, as I feel like that is one less thing I need to worry about when I teach for the first time (scary how this is getting closer and closer!). It is also a Catholic school and I am excited to see how faith is integrated into the English curriculum.

Transferable Techniques

Working with a collapsed text: Using all the words of a poem (or any other text) put in alphabetical order and ask the students to create a piece of creative writing only using the words provided. Also, using a word wall – where all the words of a poem (or other text) are blanked out and words are revealed one by one (or however you want to do it).
The ‘popcorn method’ for class readers

Currently Reading:

The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry – Edited by George Walter

Back to the world war poetry again, I think I’m gonna alternate each week between this book and the contemporary poetry book. One poem that particularly stood out to me this week is August 1918 (In a French Village) by Maurice Baring. It is a short poem, only having 2 stanzas, but the contrast between the 2 stanzas was what really grabbed my interest. The first is a beautiful description of village life, and this is juxtaposed with distressing imagery of war and death.

The Tempest – William Shakespeare

I have just begun Act 2 of the Tempest, and I am further reminded of the interesting character of Caliban. I can remember having discussions at school whether he was evil or whether he was merely an innocent being that Prospero is abusing. I also can quite confidently say that I have no idea how the play is going to turn out! To be fair to myself, it has been over 10 years since I last studied the play. I am excited to remind myself about the play and to follow the characters into the unknown for the second time in my life. This just goes to show that rereading a text is never a bad idea!

Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

The more I read this novel the more I fall in love with it. Woolf is quite clearly an ingenious writer, to cover so much detail over a course of a day is astounding! The part I read this week focuses on Mrs Dalloway’s daughter Elizabeth and how she has her own independent mind. Her relationship with Mrs Kilman is a bit confusing, potentially because I have the bad habit of skim reading, or could be that way on purpose! I am still not sure if Mrs Kilman loves her or is jealous of her… or both! I am also waiting for the climax of the novel… I feel as if there is something building and Mrs Dalloway will be the cause of some great distress. Time will only tell if I am way off the mark or not!

Junk – Melvin Burgess

This book was harrowing. The book follows Gemma and Tar as they both run away from home and go live in squats and, not surprisingly due to the title of the book, become heroin addicts. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but the changes you see in the characters – particularly Tar – just emphasises how ‘junk’ can destroy someones life. There were moments where I was nearly brought to tears (probably would have been brought to tears if I wasn’t reading it on the bus!) and it really opened my eyes to how important safeguarding is within a school! (Definitely would have had a different reading if I read this as a teen!) If someone at their school noticed that Tar was being abused at home, would he have run away in the first place? How different would their lives have been?

This is definitely a book aimed at an older reader, with themes such as drug addiction, prostitution, abuse, rape, pregnancy and abortions, a heroin addicted baby, homelessness amongst other things found throughout the novel. I would definitely be reluctant to recommend it to students until I knew they were mature enough to handle these deep issues. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating read and I am intrigued to watch the BBC adaption in the near future!

Weeks One & Two: Primary School Placement

Introduction

I was lucky enough to have my first placement in a fantastic primary school, where I knew a few of the pupils already. I had been to the school the previous term to have a look around, and it was agreed that I would spend one week in year six, then the following week in year five along, as well as observing English lessons throughout the school. As I am going to teach Secondary English, the main intentions for this placement were to focus on where literacy fits in with the school day and primary-secondary transitions.

The whole school follows a relatively similar timetable. The day begins with ‘early morning maths’, a selection of age-appropriate, challenging maths questions, used to bring focus to the class as soon as they come in the classroom. Mornings are always dedicated to Maths and English, as these form the core of the curriculum, and afternoons are for topic-based work covered through a variety of subjects.

Literacy Experiences and Lessons

English is a crucial part of the Early Years, KS1 and KS2 curriculums, and is also the one thing that every subject has in common, therefore it is natural that primary school English teaching does not just fall into designated English lessons. Throughout the school day, standard English and grammar was emphasised, to an extent, and in some of the discussions that took place, I witnessed literacy development taking place. For example, in a year six RE lesson, extracts were read about creation vs. science and the children had a discussion about the differences between the two. Within this exercise, there was an encouragement of use of terminology, such as ‘genre’, reinforcing their literary knowledge alongside the main lesson.

ERIC (Everyone Reading In Class) is used as a starter throughout the majority of lessons, and each child has a reading log to ensure that they sustain their reading both in and out of school. I believe that one of the main battles for English teachers is getting students to enjoy reading regularly, and this helps to create a reading culture. Comprehension and spelling practice are also completed daily, as well as a focus on phonics in Early Years and KS1.

Before every child starts a new topic in English, they have to write a ‘cold task’ and finish with a ‘hot task’. This a visual way in which they can see how much they have learned and how it has improved their writing. The cold task is not assessed because usually it is not to the highest standard, and the teachers do not want to demoralise work. The students all knew that the hot task was to be their best work, and they all worked very hard to both meet their personal targets and also to impress their teacher.

Key Issues

Primary – Secondary transitions is inevitably going to be stressful for both the students and their parents. From what I have witnessed, and experienced for myself, this is the next biggest transition in a child’s life after starting school as a 4 year old. Primary schools are smaller, they have one teacher who oversees the majority of their lessons during the whole year, it is a less academic, more familial setting – the teachers’ roles as in loco parentis is significant in that the pupils are younger and have totally different needs – particularly in the lower years. I feel as if good communication between the schools, parents and the students themselves will help this transition to go as smoothly as can be.

Another issue that came up was that, as the primary curriculum has become exceedingly more challenging, the students are coming up to secondary already knowing a lot of things taught at KS3. Again, I feel as if communication between the two schools is vital here as how can a secondary teacher teach what is needed if they do not know what each child has already been taught? This school has begun to tackle this issue by inviting year 7 teachers at the feeder secondary school to observe lessons.

Conversely, after discussing Primary school placement with my new PGCE colleagues this week,

Transferable Techniques

Being at the start of the school year, the teachers are still working out the skill levels and the best techniques to use to ensure each child reaches their full potential. Year 5’s have realistic, personalised spelling targets that, if achieved, win them house points. This focus on personal achievement instead of getting full marks really struck me as a way to ensure that the lower ability children are properly motivated.

Another way they achieve personalised learning is through the labelling of their books; the labels are colour coded to represent SEND, underprivileged and forces children, and the position of the label corresponds with the pupil’s academic level in that subject. This allows any adult working with the child to be able to know exactly the needs they may have.

Instant feedback was also a big hit throughout the school, particularly in year 6. This seemed to work fantastically in maths – the students either marked their own work or the adults in the room marked as they went. It was a little harder to do this in English, but they had regular verbal feedback with either their teacher or peers. Obviously this would be harder to implement in secondary, but one thing the year 6 teacher said that really struck me was that the sooner they get feedback the more likely they are to actively engage with the feedback.

Another thing about the marking I liked was that the pupils have to respond to their marking. A few people did not like this idea as they said the pupils might just say what the teacher wants to hear. However, surely that is more useful than them not reading the marking at all? And also, when it comes to SPAG issues, they were asked to re-write out their mistakes correctly underneath rather than just passively read where they were going wrong.

A couple of techniques I particularly liked were:

Sentence Surgery – Where a sentence is put on the board with SPAG errors, differentiated to the abilities of the class, and the students are asked to rewrite the sentence grammatically correct. This is was useful in two ways. Firstly, it was a great, quick, engaging starter and just a different way to teach grammatical structures. As well as this, I noticed it was used later on in the English lesson, when the students were editing their work. The teacher would say to them to ‘make sure to do sentence surgery on your (or a peers) work’ and they would immediately know the sort of things to look for in their work.
‘Dot it don’t dodge it’ – The basis of this was to get the pupils to use more interesting words even if they were not sure of the spelling. They would write a word they weren’t sure how to spell down and dot underneath it. When they had finished their writing, they were encouraged to look up in a dictionary and ask a peer, the teacher or teaching assistant to find out the correct spelling. This I feel will be particularly useful with lower ability pupils in secondary.

Interestingly, coming in as an unfamiliar adult did not seem to affect the pupils in any way other than they were excited to have me in the class. By the end of the fortnight I had been put in a teacher’s role a few times; I assisted with marking, answered literary questions, had the children read to me and, by the end of the fortnight, assisted with the teaching input. The children I worked with engaged well with me and I felt as if I genuinely helped them create some outstanding pieces of work.

Currently Reading:

The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry – Edited by George Walter

Knowing that it is part of the curriculum, I have purchased this book in order to explore different First World War poems. A few that I have particularly enjoyed so far are In the Trenches – Richard Aldington, Bombed Last night – Soldier’s Song and Arms and the Boy – Wilfred Owen.

Blood Brothers – Willy Russell

I completely fell in love with this play. I am somewhat familiar with the story line, but have never read the play itself before. It is easy to follow, has an utterly gripping plot and the protagonists are interesting characters whom you easily empathise with. As it is a musical, I will definitely be on the look out for local performances to be able to fully comprehend what Russell was intending the play to be.

The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank

The Diary of a Young Girl has always been a novel I wanted to read, particular after visiting the annex they hid in in Amsterdam. I feel as if this is an extremely important text for young people to read, as it is fascinating to see a child’s perspective of the war. Being largely set in the annex itself, the reader is immersed in the family life and how isolating it must have been. The heart-wrenching ending really puts it into perspective and reminds the reader that this is actually a non-fiction text – this really happened to her family.

Uglies – Scott Westerfield

Another novel I had heard a lot about but never got round to reading. Uglies is a dystopian novel; everyone is an ‘ugly’ before their sixteenth birthday where they become a ‘pretty’. Tally, the protagonist, ends up leaving her society and going to ‘the smoke’, where a group of uglies live, in order to preserve the history that the government are trying to wipe out. It is an exciting novel with an ingenious plot, would be perfect for students interested in dystopian fiction, or just looking for a gripping novel… I am looking forward to reading the sequel at some point!