Some more reflections on the observations I've made...

·         Make an effort to get to know the students names.

·         Starter: Can anyone remind me of what we were learning about last lesson?

·         A really good starter game that I saw was in a drama situation. The students had to look at the floor and then look up at the same time and try to avoid making eye contact with anyone else. It broke tensions in the room.

·         To focus the student as they enter the room, it’s sometimes a really good idea to have a task on their desk already.

·         Variation of group work: individual, pair work, 3s, 4s, 5s. Creating groups by numbering the students 1-5 and making all the 1s stand up and look at each other, all the 2s stand up and look at each other ect. This takes the students out of their comfort zones and allows them to work with students that they don’t usually work with. This is a good way of creating ‘working’ groups. With group work you can group the students on ability; this allows for differentiation. In order to get all members of the group working give them roles of responsibility.

·         Another sort of group work I saw was dividing the room up and giving them different things to focus on. This can also work well for differentiation depending upon your seating plan.

·         Body language is really important. In formal situations it is important to be standing to assert authority, in less formal situation it is acceptable to be on the lower level (sitting on the desk, sitting next to a student you are helping).

·         An exercise that worked really well with lower ability groups was to read through the text and highlight any words that you don’t understand. The next exercise was to work together to look up the words using dictionaries and then re-reading the passage.

·         It is important to guide lower ability groups through the planning process. Encourage them to use mind maps or bullet points to get their initial ideas down (Topic Audience Purpose) and, then discuss structuring them.

·         For lower ability groups audio books can really help – this also frees the teacher up to check that the students are following the text.

·         It is sometimes helpful to discuss the AFs using pupil input and highlighting the key words.

·         To emphasise key points use emphasis and pause.

·         Depending upon the class counting down from 3 to 1 or 5 to 1 can gain the student’s attention.

·         Another way of getting the class’s attention – ‘ladies listening’, ‘pause’ or clapping. In Drama, use the expression ‘freeze’.

·         Hands down whilst another student is talking.

·         If you reward house points, threaten to take them away if the student misbehaves.

·         Reward extra house points for exceptional work.

·         Spelling test can be used as a starter.

·         Try and incorporate an activity in your lesson where you can hear from all students.

·         Ask the students if there are any questions before you set them on a task. If there is not, tell them that there is no excuse for them not to work.

·         If possible always try and relate the learning to the exam, controlled assessment or coursework.

·         Emphasise to the students that in a controlled assessment situation you do not have to write about the truth.

·         During class discussions it is important to encourage the students to talk to each other rather than to talk to the teacher.

·         When a student was distracting another student one teacher I observed asked them if they were ok and this prevented them from being disruptive again.

·         The Three Cs – Confidence, cooperation and concentration.

·         Keep up to date with housekeeping!

·         Emphasise the importance of literature as opposed to films, as reading allows you to use your imagination.

·         Be subject to change. If you are intending on your students working in groups but they’ve started the lesson badly, change the lesson and get the students working individually and in silence. This re-establishes the fact that in this lesson you are here to work.

·         When carrying out Speaking and Listening Assessments if you are running out of time, shorten the feedback. Also, make sure a round of applause is given at the end of a speaking and listening assessment lesson.

·         If the same students keep volunteering answers emphasis that listening is only the half of it!

·         For 6^th formers emphasis the cause for concern issue and advertise extra-curricular activities on the basis of something to include in your personal statement.

·         A good idea for filling a display board is to get the younger students to create book covers

·         If after having a bad start to a lesson the lesson improves, praise the students.

·         Creating a word bank of nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs is a brilliant idea for creative writing.

·         There is a massive emphasis on writing the answers to questions in full sentences, even to the extent of giving feedback in full sentences.

·         Encourage all students to keep blogs whether compulsory or not.

·         Do not let the students discuss other teachers when in your class.

·         In Drama a quick game of Splat can be a good starter or plenary.

·         Plenary – What Went Well, Even Better If

·         Another plenary I have seen used is an exit pass, where the teacher checks the students work before they leave the room.

Reflection on observations

These are just some thoughts I've had about the observations I've been doing for the past couple of weeks:

Reflection on Observations

·       Having observed many teachers from my department one thing is clear. There is an immediate expectation of the students as soon as they enter the room. They are expected to stand up behind their chairs in silence, with their planners, prep books and pencil cases on the desk in anticipation for the teacher to say good morning/afternoon and give them permission to sit down.

·         A good way to get to know the students’ name is to make the students make name tags (including yourself) and display them on their desks.

·       One thing I noticed about teachers that taught ‘learning support groups’ is that there was a definite emphasis (particularly for GCSE groups) that we, as teachers, are here to get you, the student, the best grade possible, namely a C.

·        Lower ability groups need models and sentence starters whereas higher ability groups do not.

·       When teaching a higher ability class I have noticed that teachers give their students a lot of praise and continually question the students encouraging them to take responsibility for their own learning. Also by asking questions you can gain an idea of how much prior knowledge your students have and where your starting point is.

·       To keep year 10s on task class teachers made it clear that there is no time to mess around as 60% of their GCSE is completed this year through controlled assessment, with the first controlled assessment to be completed in the week beginning 3^rd October.

·      More often than not students were reluctant to volunteer answers, and when this happened one strategy I saw used was to give your own answer and make it personal in order to build relationships.

·       There is a massive emphasis on creating a safe environment within the classroom in order to enable the girls to share ideas and feel comfortable in doing so.

·       To avoid having no volunteers to answer questions choose students.

·       After talking to many teachers in the department it became clear that seating plans are not put in place until the teachers know the students well enough. Most teachers I spoke to will put seating plans in place during term 2.

·       Key words are written in the back of students prep books in order to help them build subject specific language and to prevent the students from continually asking the subject teacher what words mean.

·        In order to alert the teacher when to move on to the next topic, teachers asked their students to put their pens down and/or shut their books.

·       Assessment for Learning – pass the prep books three students along and that student is to mark the spelling and grammar, write one positive comment and one comment that includes something to improve. Repeat the process with the student not being allowed to write the same thing as the student before. By passing the prep book three students along, work is not being marked by friends and the work is marked anonymously so that the students can be entirely honest.

·       Context is really important when it comes to aiding the students understanding. If you can relate to a modern day situation then that is even better.

·       Teachers continually referred to the Assessment Objectives/Assessment Focuses but wrote them in ‘easy speak’ so that students could understand them.

·       Varied activities keep all types of learners (visual, kinaesthetic and auditory) interested.

·       It is important to remember to praise the students when they do something correct or something without you having to say anything.

·       Offer house points for volunteers or for prizes.

·       Make sure if you set homework, you check to see if it has been completed and if it has not a note must be written in the student’s planner, and a detention issued.

·         Take students out of their comfort zones.

·       Allowing learning time is essential, especially if the topic is heavy. This is something that I have seen witnessed in AS-Level and A-Level classes in particular. This learning time is like a mini plenary that is intermittent throughout the lesson. It allows consolidation of learning.

·       A plenary that is sometimes used is a reflection upon the LO and the question asked is have we met our LO or what have we learnt in today’s lesson.

·       At the end of the lesson the expectation is that the students have their jackets on and are standing silently behind their chairs waiting to be given permission to leave.

More to come, hopefully tomorrow...

Just when I thought a girl could have eveything she wanted!

It was my birthday on 19th September and my Mum and Dad brought me a Kindle. It's been tremendously helpful already and will save me a fortune in the long run as well as the environment! However, on Friday I received a present from two of my students at the Academy (where I used to work). It was a beautiful book, full of photographs and quotes from lots of different teachers and students. I was close to tears when I read it (my Mum was in actual tears). It made me realise that although I am really enjoying my new job, I also really miss my old job, especially the rowing side of it.

On another really exciting point I brought my first saxophone this week. It's a tenor and it looks a bit like this.

This will hopefully encourage me to get involved in the Music department at my new school, as they have such a fantastic one. I can't wait to play it :)



Woohoo! I've finished my assignment and I'm happy with it!

I finished my first assignment yesterday and I'm as happy as I'll ever be to hand it in. The deadline is Friday 30th September 2011, so it does give me at least one more chance to proof read it before I submit it. I obviously won't be publishing it on my blog as it might be plagiarised, but I think it's still important to acknowledge that I met the deadline and in good time :)

RBWM training week 3

Child protection
I'll be honest, this was the session I was dreading the most. However, the speaker was really sensitive about the issue and attempted to make it as light hearted as possible, without undermining the seriousness of the issue. We discussed several scenarios. It was really interesting to hear different people's perceptions on situations that caused people concern and situations that didn't cause people concerns but should have done. The speaker was very knowledgeable about the subject and discussed the issues in terms of the law.

We looked at the very sad case of Lauren Wright (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1573910.stm) and discussed how the case has affected child protection law in England and Wales. We also looked at how to deal with a disclosure and the different types of abuse.

RBWM training week 2

Okay, so on 15th September 2011 we had a central training session on lesson planning. Central training sessions are where all of the GTP trainees are working together and are not at their separate schools. I didn't feel this session was particularly beneficial to me as being a Learning Support Assistant last year I have experience of writing lesson plans, even for OFSTED. The other issue was how under prepared the speaker was and how we discovered at our next central training session that the evaluation forms for his session had mysteriously gone missing! Oh dear! Here's what I did learn anyway:

What do I need to know before planning a lesson?

Learning Outcomes – Scheme of Work, what the students already know

Class information – age, Special Educational Needs, English as an Additional Language, attainment, organisation (seating plan)

Length – timing, starter, episodes

Rules

Health & Safety

Reflection time

Resources – learning styles

Learning Objective (LO): know that, understand how/why, be able to, be aware of, explore (include which Assessment Objective(AO)/Assessment Focus you are covering) Try making your LO a question, for example, how does Shakespeare create atmosphere in the opening scenes of Macbeth? If the student can answer the question they have met the LO. This also creates an automatic plenary.

For example: LO: To introduce verb varieties and begin to comment on their effects in texts (AO1).

Examples of a bad learning objective: To create a Christmas decoration for a front door. This describes the activity rather than what the student will learn.

WALT- we are learning to

WILF – what I’m looking for

Learning outcomes: class discussion

Episodes

Starters – begin the students learning straight away, short activity that is drawing on a skill that is already learnt. Recap what the students have done the previous lesson.

If too much of the lesson is teacher talking the students will disengage.

If the class gets restless, stop and ask them to discuss with a partner what they have learnt, write a sentence about what you’re talking about or create some bullet points.

Avoid tasks that ask students to copy information.

DARTs – directed activities related to texts.

Plenary – has to engage the whole class. For example, use post-it notes to find out what the students have learnt.

A lesson should consist of a number of episodes because it is constantly allowing the students to review what they have learnt and it keeps the students engaged.

Three strategies I will use are making a LO a question, having regular plenaries during lessons and varied DARTs.

Analysis of a filmed lesson:

+ plus	-          Minus	Interesting
Demonstrated how the students analyse an image independently. Made mistakes on purpose and let the students correct him. Interactive and tailored to get the less confident people to participate. Used the term ‘I’ to relate to the students.	Addition of teacher knowledge.	Teacher led learning rather than student led learning (structured learning).

Auditory learning: hear and repeat, just a minute, guess my word, word bingo.

Discussion on group work:

K – What do I know?	W – What do I want to know?	L – What have I learnt?
A group consists of two people and more than two people working together. Group work can be used to differentiate a topic. Group work promotes independent learning. It helps with communication skills. A competition element can be added to group work. Student led learning as opposed to teacher led learning.	Teaching strategies for group work.	Ways to set up groups – jigsaw and envoy.

Planning lessons for low attainers – incorporate literacy and numeracy skills, select relevant key words, make up memory aids, starters and plenaries are vital, diagrammatic representation for key points, lessons should be dynamic and unusual, and include thinking time.

WWW – what went well?

NTIW – Now/Next (time) I will...

EBI – Even better if...

In observing during the past few weeks I have watched some of these techniques used very effectively in lessons. However, whilst at the training we discussed modelling. Modelling is where a teacher demonstrates what he or she wants his/her students to achieve. This is fine for a short task, but when it's for an essay, like it was in the example we were shown, it is just not possible. You will never seen me modelling writing an essay in one of my classrooms. This is going against the best piece of advice I've had so far "never become the teacher you hated when you were at school."

Saturated!

Argh! Today was horrendous! I have received so much information I don't know whether I'm coming or going!

Paperwork - I received a trainee handbook, transfer record book, a headteacher handbook, mentor handbook, preparing for the second school placement, RBWM Grading trainees' attainment on the Ofsted 4-point scale, monitoring and assessment handbook, and standards for the award of qualified teacher status (qts). That's about one trees worth of paperwork! Oh and also a book called The Bristol Guide which I've got to annotate and highlight

We also discussed the many portfolios we have to create, and fortunately this blog can go into my professional development folder as my learning/reflective log :)
I met loads of really interesting people from all sorts of backgrounds, and had to discuss with the person next to me: what makes a good trainee (?) and the key features of an outstanding trainee. Here's what we came up with:

What makes a good trainee?

·         Organised with good time management

·         Focused

·         Open to criticism

·         Confident in your own ability

·         Able to form successful relationships with learners

·         Motivated and enthusiastic

·         Cooperative and be collaborative

·         Professional

·         Team player and individual learner

·         Willing to share experience

Key features of an outstanding trainee

·         Goes above and beyond

·         Willing to try new things

·         Resilient

·         Passionate about what they want to achieve

·         Approachable as a subject teacher and pastorally

·         The ability to be inclusive and provide stability (including all learning styles)

·         Continually evaluating their own teaching

·         The ability to relate theory to practice

·         Flexible

Oh and just reading back through my notes, I have two more assignments, I'm going to be observed every term, and the external assessor is looking for outstanding, so no pressure then!

Yesterday was my first day!

So yesterday was my first day at my first placement. I feel it went well and I feel like I'm already learning. It was your typical teachers training day. I met the whole of my department, and there's so many of us (ten of us). We have a brand new office and  even have my own desk. Most importantly of all I found out that the lady that was supposed to be my mentor had passed me on to the head of the English department and another lady who has just returned from maternity leave. I think I'm going to learn a lot from them both. After coffee and croissants we went into a whole school meeting where the headmistress was introduced to us, she discussed priorities for the year. She made a point that was particularly poignant to me and to my first assignment. She said that our girls are scared of failure and don't really know how to pick themselves back up from it. This is something that was true of me whilst I was at school, and I never really failed at anything until I failed my first driving test! I wish one of my teachers had taught me to be a little bit resilient, as failure is something I have had to face a lot of since leaving school and I've had to learn to deal with it in the best way possible. One thing I will endeavour to do in my own teaching, is teach my students to have bouncebackability!

Interestingly when one of the Assistant Headteachers started to discuss the exam results, the school that I'm going to be working at has the best exam results (GCSE and aLevel) in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. This has really boosted my confidence and I now believe all of those people that have said to me, you are very lucky to be working at Newlands as it is a very good School.

One thing that I think The Langley Academy (the School that I previously worked at) did have right was the house system and the house point system. This is something that the current Coalition Government are particularly keen on, as it is a move back in time to traditional systems of praise and reward. Newlands have just created a House Point system, which I think will take many of the staff including myself some time to get used to. The housepoints are rewarded for different things including: attendance, participation, reward and academic. Newlands also have the Newlands Awards where there are three levels of achievement bronze, silver and gold, and teachers have to write a detailed nomination form of why a student deserves a Newlands Award. 5 awards gets you bronze, 10 awards from 3 of the 5 categories gets you silver and 15 over the 5 categories gets you gold. Wow, it has just dawned on me how much I have to remember!

After break we had our first Curriculum Development meeting of the new academic year as a department. We discussed the set up of  'rough books' as opposed to exercise books. This means that these books are not marked. The only pieces of work that are marked are the pieces in a separate folder. I guess that is good news for me, as there won't be as much marking as I was expecting! The department has a curriculum map, which I think is a fantastic idea. This means that everyone is following the same curriculum at the same time but they're allowed to do it in their own way.

So lots learnt today and lots to remember for the future, but I'm happy to say I'm looking forward to going back into school on Friday. Tomorrow and Thursday are training days with the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead...