Year 7 parent's evening

Overall, I think the evening went very well. I had one situation that I don't know if I dealt with it in the best way possible. A parent asked me if about the consistency of teachers, as her daughter has had five different English teachers. I said that I can ensure consistency between now and the end of the year as I am teaching them full time between now and then. This student also has confidence issues and I have ensured her parent's that I will aid her encouragement. I also had a parent express concerns that that her daughter has an issue with hearing as she suffers with regular ear infections. I will keep an eye on her.

10y4 Thursday period 5 and Friday period 2

I am particularly nervous about teaching this group, so I need to observe the class teachers carefully.

Thursday period five - there had obviously been an altercation before the lesson had began. One of the students was not in the room and a student that had not been present on Thursdays was present today. The class teacher realised that this was happening/had happened and made allowances for it. She had prepared a PPT for the lesson and they were focusing on the longer writing task of the English GCSE exam (it is worth 24 marks). Students need to focus on form, language and purpose in order to answer the question. She also emphasised that you need to use 3 different types of punctuation in order to get a C (? . , - !) She is encouraging all of the students to strive for that C. It is clear that a lot of differentiation is necessary in order for these lessons to be successful. She actually said that her differentiation was not simplified enough and that if it was it would have probably engaged a student that eventually had to be removed. The main task was to improve a D grade answer into a C grade answer. She asked questions like how can it be improved in terms of the opening paragraph, complex sentences, spelling, rhetorical questions and final paragraph.

The students were asked to re-write the opening and they then shared their work with the rest of the class. Two students are now no longer to sit next to each other (CD and H). This is the first time I have been in a lesson where a student had been removed.

Friday period two - the girls were much much much better behaved. The first task that NG gave them was a simple task. When the students were reading they were silent and engaged. NG praised them by saying things like "all of you are capable of doing this", "this is a four mark question that all of you can can get full marks on". NG gave them an article about Peppa Pig, she said that this probably wasn't the best idea for M as she's her sister has just had a miscarriage. NG constantly repeats her instructions  and is using anecdotes to keep the students engaged. It is obvious to me that is CD is going to remain in a lesson it is essential that she receive4s encouragement all of the time, and I think when I take over this class, I will ask LH, SO or NG to work closely with her. The students were all engaged on the easier tasks and when NG asked them to complete a more difficult task on language devices they were more reluctant to do it. NG read the second article about Peppa Pig for them as she felt they were getting tired and it would help them to understand the article as it contained a lot of sarcasm. To end the lesson NG left them on a high by giving them another easy task of skimming and scanning.

I think having the students at the end of the day is going to require a lot more planning and the task are going to be shorter and hopefully more engaging.

Catching up with paperwork

For this week I am off timetable, so I am making the most of my time by keeping up to date with paperwork. I have now got four out of the six pieces of evidence for my 33 standards. I have to order them so that the standard with all of the signatures is at the front and the pieces of evidences are behind. I can see it spilling over into two a4 lever arch files. My NGS folders are up to date, as is my DMS folder. My Professional Development Portfolio is nearly there and that is the task that I have for today. As well as this I am creating medium term plans for all of the subjects I am teaching.

INSET DAY 16-04-12

Today was my first day back at NGS after spending term 4 at DMS. I felt like I was back in my induction period as the amount of information we received was phenomenal! There is a huge concern that we are going to get visited by Ofsted this term so our first session was all about that. We spoke about what they are looking for in terms of a good/outstanding department, and I have a lot of work to do. Therefore, for this term I need to focus on pace, student focused lessons/independent learning, progress, questioning, and effective use of TAs.

Out HOD gave us some very useful sheets from Osiris training on: a suggested model of learning to guide planning, criteria for the judging the quality of teaching, Socratic questioning (which was suggested that we not only use ourselves but give to the students to use), and features of Outstanding English Departments.

My mentor and I also met to discuss the plan for this term. I will be teaching year seven (but I'm not sure what I am going to be teaching them yet!), year eight about Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' for a reading assessment on AF5, 6 & 7; speaking and listening for AF1; creative writing covering all AFs; and morphographs, year nine exam prep for a reading exam; multi cultural poetry for a reading assessment testing AF5 and AF7, and year ten Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' focusing on relationships for a CA. Year 12 have four weeks to prepare for their exams and understandably teacher's are reluctant to give up their lessons. So after the exams have been completed and the students return I will take over the teaching. I am especially excited about teaching year 12 media as I will be teaching the conventions of a music video :)

For this week I will be observing and reintegrating myself back into school life and my focus from my mentor is to apply what I have learnt over the past four terms. Therefore, it is my responsibility to keep up with marking, folders, reports and parents evenings. The observations I receive will focus on small targets that I need to meet the following lessons.

Good lesson with Outstanding features

I was pleased with the start of the lesson and the students responded well to this. I was particularly pleased with the noise level and I feel as if I aided this by being consistent. For the starter I should have given the students that had finished the task a thinking task.

I was pleased with the pace of the lesson as this was something that I was focusing on. I kept the tasks short to keep the students engaged. Although the tasks worked well they might have worked even better if the students had been given a summary of the story.

Even though the students are in top set they still need to be told when to write notes down and this is something I have learnt from experience. When questioning the students I should have asked why, and the students would have been able to answer this if they'd had a plot summary.

At one point the room went silent whilst they girls were reading and I had to encourage them to start their paired discussion. At this point I should have reminded them of the question. I need to think carefully about the seating plan because two of the students were completely isolated during the discussion period.

I should have clarified what a theme is for task four. The plenary worked very well but I should have verbally brought it together. I will practise this in a lesson I am teaching this afternoon.

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.