Friday

Reflection on 8y4 lesson

I am a little bit disappointed with the way this lesson went. I think that the LO should have included the word empathy as opposed to sympathy. When I am planning I need to think carefully about how the tasks link to the learning objective. With this particular group I am at the stage now where I need to think about medium term planning. On the first task of the main part of my lesson I should have rephrased the writing frame to ‘a journey’ as opposed to ‘the longest journey’ and if I teach this lesson again I will do that. In this instance I also missed an opportunity to embrace EAL (English as as Adiitional Language). I also need to make the students aware of the purpose of their writing and not just set them with writing tasks. Having said that, I have clearly created a safe learning environment with the students as they were all willing to read out loud and share their writing. Also, I feel that I made good use of praise in this lesson.

Reflection on 10y2 lesson

I thought that task one work very well as it engaged the students and got them working straight away. I am concerned about E and E’s behaviour and especially E D’s inappropriate conversations in lessons. I am also concerned about Em and Z (and to a lesser extent) as they do not seem to be completing much work. I looked through Z’s prep book when she came for a detention on Monday and there didn’t appear to be much in there. Also, I am worried about the progress of A. Rich did say that she was one of the weakest in this class, but today is the first evidence I have seen of this. I changed the second task slightly into are the words on the PowerPoint positive or negative and this seemed to have a far greater impact on the students. The lesson was very positive and I was pleased with the learning outcomes. I’m thinking that I might give the students with higher target grades the option of writing their controlled assessment on Curley’s wife.

12E 'cover' lesson

The Head of the Department (HOD) asked me to ‘cover’ a lesson whilst she did an observation. She had given the girls a poem each and asked them to create a power point about that poem. I was merely there to facilitate. On reflection I should have asked the girls to read the poems out instead of letting the class read the poems by themselves. Other than that I thought the lesson went fine.

Formal Observation 15th November 2011

What I said:

During the starter the students were asked to write one sentence about the impression they got from the first reading. Some students did this but when I ask for feedback they added to their sentences. A strategy for this is to make the students write the sentence on a post it note and/or give the students thinking time to formulate their ideas. I forgot to highlight the extrinsic information for the poem Easter Monday and I’m a bit frustrated because I noted this in the planning under task 3. I was a bit disappointed with the way the groups work, as when I observed them working last lesson they work really well. This lesson one group left all of the work down to one group member so weren’t very productive or inclusive. The observer, as many other observers have picked up on my verbal feedback and in particular my praise. For next lesson I need to justify why something is lovely and not just say it’s lovely!

What the formal observer said:

Subject/Topic:  English- Poetry, detailed planning provided along with reference materials to be shared with students

Relationship with Pupils

Joanne has a calm, professional manner with the students. She was well organised and made her expectations of behaviour clear. She gave her students the opportunity to give both individual and collaborative feedback. Student contributions were valued and were often used to develop learning further. Joanne is developing rapport with the groups as she begins to know the individual students better.

Teaching and Learning

Joanne’s subject knowledge was secure and she scaffolded the learning well by providing a number of useful resource materials which will support the students through the poetry unit. She responded well to the students’ questions and was able to clarify misunderstandings well. The content was relevant and well sequenced although more could have been done to provide extrinsic background information to support the theme of the poem. This would have provided more opportunities to review the poem in the light of its social, cultural and historical context. Sharing this information was noted in the planning document, but was not shared with the students. The idea of students summarising their responses to the poem in one sentence was a good one but, in the feedback, only a few students were able to do so. It may be valuable to give silent thinking time ahead of the feedback giving the students clear expectations of a succinct and specific response. Collaborative group work was used well although some groups were more inclusive and productive than others. There could be opportunities for focused observations of Assessment for Learning during group sessions.

Classroom

Classroom management and organisation was good and resources were purposeful and well prepared.

Areas of Strength Good subject knowledge Developing rapport with pupils Developing good timekeeping – plenary needed more time A range of strategies for managing behaviour Well-prepared lesson - use of IWB, well organised resources Good strategies for learning- range of strategies employed to support and develop learning Good routines, clear code of conduct.

At this point the trainee was:                                              Well above the Standard  (1a) Exceeding the Standard  (1b)                       x Meeting the Standard (1c)                        x      Working towards the Standard  (2)                        Displaying significant weaknesses  (4)

1b awarded for planning, preparation and organisation, sound subject knowledge and the use of a range of teaching strategies to support learning. Targets for development: ·         Making verbal feedback more specific - if a student’s contribution is ‘lovely’ why has it been identified as such by the teacher? More analytical feedback would provide further learning opportunities. ·         Using collaborative group work as an assessment opportunity for the teacher.

Professional Standards observed Professional attributes: Q1, Q2, Q3b, Q4(part), Q5, Professional Knowledge and Understanding: Q10 (part), Q14(part), Q17(part), Professional Skills: Q22 (part), Q23 (part), Q24, Q25a (part), Q25b, Q25c (part), Q25d, Q30 (part).

10y2 Lesson 4

Once again I overestimated the amount of tasks in this lesson and we only got to task 6 of 8. This was because the students did not know much of the media terminology and spent a lot of time copying down the terms. In future I will give them a worksheet with the key terms on. The class discussion was good and but I had to pick on students to read the text as they would not volunteer. I maybe need to think about the learning environment I am creating in order to combat this. I set the students a lot of homework (again) and am starting to panic as the controlled assessment is approaching fast and I’m concerned that the students are not going to be ready for it. My behaviour management was good. For next lesson I need to work on pace and differentiation for K

10y2 Lesson 3

I had to incorporate a must, should, could learning objective in this lesson because I was being observed by a member of SLT and this is a departmental strategy for differentiation. I felt the starter worked really well and engaged the students straight away. Whilst planning this lesson I was struggling with timings and put too many activities into the lesson plan. Therefore, the plenary of the lesson changed to filling in their tables using the information that they had written about and for homework I put photos of the other groups work on the blog, and they were to complete their tables using that information. I am looking to stretch the students targeted with an A by putting questions relating to context onto the blog. From being formally observed by DT the previous day one of my targets was to assign roles of responsibility whilst doing group work. I put this into practice in this lesson and I felt it was very effective. The things I need to consider for next lesson are pace and differentiation.

10y2 Lesson 2

I found giving the students verbal feedback on the work I had read on the blog quite a difficult thing to do, and I feel this is something that I need to practice. I also struggled to verbally warn those students that hadn’t done the homework. I really like Rich’s technique of splitting the learning objective into a skill and the topic. This lesson gave me the opportunity to practice my modelling skills and I felt it went okay, but if I did it again I think I would use input from the class to write a PEE in front of them using the whiteboard. I had lots of questions about the worksheet that I had created for the students and this suggests to me that if I use this resource again it needs to be improved. I don’t think this lesson was as effective as it could have been and I let Ellie and Ellie sit next to each other which didn’t help with my behaviour management. All in all this was an okay lesson, but I still have lots to learn!

9y1 Lesson 4

I thought the lesson was very noisy and this concerned me as Henri couldn’t hear her group. The other thing was I realised that I was shouting down the radio aid. I thought the introduction worked well and the students gained a lot out of it. I thought my explanation of the debating structure was fine but I put too much information on the PowerPoint Presentation which put some of the students off the active listening task. I thought by letting the students choose one person that they wanted to work with was fair and the rest of their group was made up by chance. The students really struggle with working in silence and I said this is something that we will work on every lesson until they get the hang of it. The snowballing of ideas worked really well (individual, pairs, groups). However, I neglected to tell the students about timings and proposition, opposition, proposition, opposition structure. I need to do this next lesson. One student that was on report misbehaved during the lesson and I gave her a poor for working to the best of her ability. I think this was justified.

9y1 Lesson 2

This lesson is following directly on from last lesson. Tam’s feedback from last lesson suggested that I should implement a clear signal to control the noise level. I said listening and raised my hand – this seems to work but I still have to say listening twice. I was pleased with the planning of the lesson although I couldn’t teach the whole lesson as Tam had to do some housekeeping at the start of the lesson. I felt the lesson plan allowed the students to achieve the LO.

                I am trying to incorporate tasks for varying types of learning styles and I feel this lesson appealed to kinaesthetic and auditory learners. My behaviour management was consistent and fair and I felt like I maintained the noise control much better. However, there was a lot of doodling and sticking things in which I neglected to get on top of.

                I felt like my levels of praise are getting much better and I am able to respond to student views and evaluate them with instant feedback. My PowerPoint presentations support my own and the students verbal explanations. With a better grip on behaviour management I am able to support students that need my help or are off task.

                My targets for next lesson are: to incorporate a section for what the TA can do to support me, and to address the fact that some students are having an easy ride to prevent them from becoming lazy/coasting.

8y4 Lesson 8

Reflection on 8y4 lesson preparing the students for the writing assessment

The observer commented that I needed to focus more on differentiation whilst writing my lesson plan, as my lesson plan is not reflecting all of the differentiation I am incorporating into my lessons. I am beginning to feel comfortable teaching this Learning Support Group and I feel it is really helping me with my verbal communication as I’m really having to think about what I’m saying before I say it. With years seven and eight I am actively having to ask them to put their pens down and look at me, and by doing this I am improving my signal for attention. One thing I could experiment with this group is differentiation as I have three adults in the room. I feel my PowerPoint Presentations are very effective in this lesson as they are aimed at the right level. The students really enjoyed guessing each other’s animals and I will definitely use this task again in the future. For next lesson, I need to experiment with differentiation and use the TA effectively.

8y4 Lesson 6

Reflection on 8y4 lesson – first lesson on The Butterfly Lion

I was pleased with the start of this lesson as it was very calm. I was worried about starting this lesson because it was a lesson where the students had to put assessed work into folders, and I had observed my mentor teach this kind of lesson and she admitted it was difficult and it is chaotic. This is another class that needs an LO to focus their attention. Last lesson I felt that I let the students behaviour slip as they were calling out without putting their hands up. I feel that I challenged this well this lesson. I am beginning to find it easier to write resources for Learning Support Groups. I tried to appeal to visual learners by including a picture activity and I kept repeating the instructions for auditory learners. I was pleased that all of the students participated in the class discussions. I wrote key words up on the board to support the students in their verbal feedback. I had some time left over so I got the students to use adjectives to effectively describe chocolate and this work well as a plenary. A target for next lesson is to have a contingency task in case I run out of tasks.

7y1 Lesson 4 (My first 1A!)

Reflection on Second Lesson of A Question of Courage

I feel this lesson went very well and that the students responded well to having a date, title and LO. However, I didn’t anticipate that some of the students would have not have done their homework as the due date was for their next lesson with me. I felt that by writing the questions I want to ask on my lesson plan, my questioning skills have greatly improved because I am able to steer the students to create the answers that I want them too. I had a failure of technology which was a little unnerving. Fortunately the observer brought me in an ethernet cable and my technical issue was resolved. I changed the order of my original lesson plan and swapped task six and task seven around for fear of running out of time. I was pleased with the way Stella behaved this lesson, and have asked her form tutor to praise her for this, however, I had to speak to Caitlyn at the end of the lesson as I was concerned that she wasn’t very focused and was constantly whispering to the person next to her. She cried so I had to reassure that she was doing everything else right. I was extremely pleased that the observer marked me as well above the standard. With this particular class I need to choose the students that do not contribute to the class discussion and give them the opportunity to speak.

7y1 Lesson 3

At the start of the lesson the laptop that I was given to use didn’t work and my mentor observed that I handled this situation well. Although the students finished the initial task quite quickly I had to give them more time than they needed as I had to give myself time to sort out the failure of technology. Having said that I could have set them a task to discuss their expectations with the person sitting next to them.

 I found that I had to clarify a lot of the vocabulary I had incorporated into my lesson, such as turn of the century, and my mentor praised me for doing this. As the issue has been raised that I let the discussion go on for too long I am now trying a technique to limit the number of hands up I have to three. My mentor praised me for coming up with some of my own phrases/sayings “let’s have some hands up”. However, I need to move the discussion on with questioning to get that I want out of them. My mentor has suggested that I need to include a section on my lesson plan to say at the end of each task what I want to get out of my students.

 In hindsight I needed to emphasise the fact that that women at the turn of the century women either became a wife or a governess/spinster, there was no other option. I feel that the content of my lessons are getting better. For example, I was pleased with the way that the media work. I neglected to correct the fact that some students had put their bags on the table. I have been told that I over praise students but I was pleased with the fact that my mentor praised me for picking up for a student’s lovely use of vocabulary “on the other hand”.

There is one student in the room who doesn’t put her hand up and both my mentor and I need to answer the question why? In the group work task, some words were more difficult than others, and I missed an opportunity for differentiation. However, when the students were feeding back their definitions I simplified them to meet the ability of the group. There were six words, which constituted two groups of three and I neglected to mention this.

One thing I need to do next lesson is set this group time limits and give them warnings in order to speed them up. For next lesson I am going to set them up with the date, title and learning objective, as I feel this particular group needs it.

Reflection on 9y1 Lesson 2

This lesson is following directly on from last lesson. T’s feedback from last lesson suggested that I should implement a clear signal to control the noise level. I said listening and raised my hand – this seems to work but I still have to say listening twice. I was pleased with the planning of the lesson although I couldn’t teach the whole lesson as T had to do some housekeeping at the start of the lesson. I felt the lesson plan allowed the students to achieve the LO.

                I am trying to incorporate tasks for varying types of learning styles and I feel this lesson appealed to kinaesthetic and auditory learners. My behaviour management was consistent and fair and I felt like I maintained the noise control much better. However, there was a lot of doodling and sticking things in which I neglected to get on top of.

                I felt like my levels of praise are getting much better and I am able to respond to student views and evaluate them with instant feedback. My PowerPoint presentations support my own and the students verbal explanations. With a better grip on behaviour management I am able to support students that need my help or are off task.

                My targets for next lesson are: to incorporate a section for what the TA can do to support me, and to address the fact that some students are having an easy ride to prevent them from becoming lazy/coasting.

Reflection on the introduction to A Question of Courage

At the start of the lesson the laptop that I was given to use didn’t work and my mentor observed that I handled this situation well. Although the students finished the initial task quite quickly I had to give them more time than they needed as I had to give myself time to sort out the failure of technology. Having said that I could have set them a task to discuss their expectations with the person sitting next to them.

 I found that I had to clarify a lot of the vocabulary I had incorporated into my lesson, such as turn of the century, and my mentor praised me for doing this. As the issue has been raised that I let the discussion go on for too long I am now trying a technique to limit the number of hands up I have to three. My mentor praised me for coming up with some of my own phrases/sayings “let’s have some hands up”. However, I need to move the discussion on with questioning to get that I want out of them. My mentor has suggested that I need to include a section on my lesson plan to say at the end of each task what I want to get out of my students.

 In hindsight I needed to emphasise the fact that that women at the turn of the century women either became a wife or a governess/spinster, there was no other option. I feel that the content of my lessons are getting better. For example, I was pleased with the way that the media work. I neglected to correct the fact that some students had put their bags on the table. I have been told that I over praise students but I was pleased with the fact that my mentor praised me for picking up for a student’s lovely use of vocabulary “on the other hand”.

There is one student in the room who doesn’t put her hand up and both my mentor and I need to answer the question why? In the group work task, some words were more difficult than others, and I missed an opportunity for differentiation. However, when the students were feeding back their definitions I simplified them to meet the ability of the group. There were six words, which constituted two groups of three and I neglected to mention this.

 One thing I need to do next lesson is set this group time limits and give them warnings in order to speed them up. For next lesson I am going to set them up with the date, title and learning objective, as I feel this particular group needs it.

Reflection on 9y1 lesson

The observer asked me if including a teacher and student column on my lesson plan helped and I think it has helped me massively, but I still think there are improvements that need to be made. The observer praised me for the lesson plan saying that it was very secure and was greatly improved from the last lesson that she had seen me teach.

                I feel the starter worked very well as it got the students moving around and it is a kinaesthetic activity. I made the mistake of giving instructions over low level chit chat and I should have made my boundaries more clear. I tried to use humour with the group which initially didn’t go down to well. Once they became familiar with me it worked brilliantly and I think it help create good relationships with the students. Where noise levels are concerned I try to intervene and target individuals. This is very effective.

                I have been criticised for not explicitly stating what type of work I am expecting from the students (individual, pairs, groups). In this lesson I was praised for saying what type of work I was expecting from the students. Now I have to start thinking about timings and how these would help me tighten up the lessons, particularly with a top set as they work very quickly through some tasks and don’t need as much time as I am giving them.

                I was very pleased that the different parts of the lesson flowed very well from one part to another as this is something that I have been picked up on in the past. The students gave me some lovely responses during the teacher led discussion and I felt as if I praised them appropriately.

                For the next lesson I need to have a signal to make them realise that this is the time when they need to listen to me. In the next lesson I will use a hands up signal.

Reflection on 8y4 lessons - morphographs and speaking and listening assessment

Morphographs lesson (2^nd November 2011)

Lesson 52 – Spelling Review: I lead the spelling exercises. I begin by saying the letters of a word and ask the students to say the word as a whole back to me. Then I asked the students to say each letter of a word out.

Y-Rule Discrimination – changing the y to i within a word.

Homonyms – right and write.

I feel the lesson went well. It’s very hard to be enthusiastic about a topic when you’re reading a script. I struggled to explain the y to i rule, because I don’t explicitly use the rule. The girls responded well and completed all of the work. We marked the work together. We finished the lesson by playing two games relating to speaking and listening (count in a circle, and if I were Prime Minister for the day I would...)

Speaking and Listening assessment lesson (4^th November 2011)

The observer and I let the girls revise and discuss what they were going to say within the assessment whilst we discussed how we were going to assess the students. The observer gave me three students to assess:.

Student 1 – good clear answers with solid vocabulary.

Student 2 – repetitive but good justification whilst building on previous ideas. She brought in new points.

Student 3 – “I agree with what A said” – really good response. Alternative punishment presented using relevant day to day examples.

We also used the preparation time to revise the success criteria (what do I need to do to be successful).

To finish the lesson we watched the end of Oliver Twist.

I felt the lesson went well but I am disillusioned that we cannot give isolated levels to the students. When levelling students we have to look at the previous levels they have achieved as not to level the students to high or to low, and show a clear sense of progression within the levels achieved.

Reflection on introduction to the character study of George and Lennie within part one of Of Mice and Men

I struggled with the lesson plan for this lesson. I sent my first draft of the lesson plan to the observer of this lesson and asked his thoughts. He sent the lesson plan back with suggestions for me to think about. I totally agreed with his thoughts and changed my lesson plan to incorporate his thoughts.

I was anticipating having to go in and lay down my expectations, but I didn’t have to do this. I waited for all of the students to enter the room and they were standing in silence waiting for me to speak. I was pleased with the way I held the room. Unfortunately when I asked the students to repeat enthusiastically “Good morning Miss Warner”, it wasn’t very enthusiastic! This suggests that although this technique works with year 7, 8 and 9, it shouldn’t be used beyond year 9.

In the first visual activity I should have allowed the students more time to look at the images. I could have done this by playing the images whilst I asked them to think of an adjective to describe either George or Lennie. I neglected to notice that some students were without books. Next time I will bring some spare copies with me to the lesson and lend them to the students who have forgotten their copies. K should have sat towards the front of the room and I should have gone to her and checked her understanding at some point during the lesson. Also, next time I should consider the resources I give to her and how they are differentiated to meet her needs. With my resources I also need to think about how the more able students can be restricted.

As verbal feedback and questioning has been mentioned as something that I need to improve on, I was pleased to be praised by the observer as using good questioning to elicit a better explanation. I asked the students to compare the first example of PEE with the second example of PEE. Next time I should consider having both of the examples on the board at the same time, instead of flicking between the two. Also, Flicking between the two also caused me a technical issue – my laptop became disconnected from the projector. One of the students made a good point and I recognised this and suitably praised it. This is something else I was pleased with as another observer picked up on the fact that I over praise students.

When doing a PEE rotating task I should maybe next time use smaller groupings as I don’t feel as if every was fully involved in the group work. I linked the activities by asking the students to pick the best idea from their mind maps and make it into a point. Although time ran out, I took this as a positive thing as it demonstrated the effective learning through the lesson and this is the first time I have run out of time. However, I issued homework after the bell went. Next time I will stop the activity 5 minutes earlier and finish the lesson formally.

Reflection on 'To My Brother' lesson

·         I had to make changes to my lesson objective, as it was far to board – I changed it to: to begin to understand the position of women during WW1.

·         I need to relook at my proposed homework question as including the term industrial could confuse the students.

·         The students knew less than I thought they did about the position of women during WW1.

·         I felt that I didn’t explain the rotation of images task very well.

·         The main part of the lesson worked well, but I was left feeling like I had nothing to do.

·         The small tasks kept the students engaged.

·         The use of the rotating images task was particularly appealing to visual learners.

·         I have got to learn to use verbal feedback effectively. I must only use the word brilliant, when something is truly brilliant.

·         The group work got the students moving around.

·         The observer and I have decided to introduce the poetry framework for the lesson I am being formally observed in, as this will structure independent learning.

·         The links to Journey’s End and Birdsong allowed the students to see a link between the drama, novel and the poetry.

·         For next lesson I need to make closer links between the lesson objectives and the lesson outcomes.

Reflection on 'cover' lesson

The class teacher was absent so I allowed the girls to watch the rest of Oliver Twist. I could not complete the speaking and listening assessment with them because I had no one else to moderate it with me. Part way through the lesson the girls became very restless so I got them up off their seats made them walk around the room and asked them to sit back down on a seat that they had not sat in before. As a plenary we went around the room and discussed one thing that we would be doing over half term. It was not allowed to be the same thing as the person sitting next to them. This gave me the opportunity to know them a bit better and for them to know me a bit better. This was the first lesson I have taught unaccompanied and I felt it went really well.

Reflection on Preparation for Speaking and Listening Assessment

·         I used humour to try and establish a safe environment. This was successful as it created an excellent working atmosphere where the students were happy to ask for help and support.

·         I have already tried to remember their names and this proves that I care about them as individuals.

·         As I have been observing this particular group since the start of term, and they have accepted me immediately and have started working hard for me. This is very positive.

·         Whilst writing the self assessment sheet I closely looked at the national curriculum for speaking and listening. The observer also commented that this self assessment sheet is an excellent AFL (assessment for learning) resource for the students to evaluate their own performance.

·         I had to simplify the language I used within this lesson so they students could access the information I was giving them.

·         The person observing me commented that I had secure planning and the tasks that I had planned allowed students to meet learning objectives. However, she suggested that I include a learning outcomes section on my lesson plan.

·         She liked my idea of speaking and listening rule cards, and to be honest I thought this was very successful also. I will definitely use this resource again.

·         I circulated to support all of the students and I noticed that one student really struggled with the reading task.

·         I attempted to share the learning outcomes at the start of the lesson.

·         The observer liked my use of praise.

·         The observer commented that I gave clear instructions but questioned whether giving the girls a choice is good thing – I agree.

·         My targets are: to consider my use of voice (how can I adapt my voice according to the effect I would like to have to help me meet the standard Q25c and try splitting my lesson plan into two columns, one for teacher and one for pupil, in order to help me be clear on what I will do as the facilitator and what I want the learner to do. Also, I could put how the learner will work – independently, in pairs, groups...