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.