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!