As I am relatively free now I thought I would blog a few things.
Monday saw the return of the full school. After introducing my tutor group back first thing and dealing with all the issues, planners, uniform etc. I had time to think ahead to lessons I was going to teach after lunch and meet up with my mentor. It was re-assuring to get some support and guidance and be given a bit of time to feel at ease with some of the classes before being critiqued and possibly knocking my confidence a bit?!
I took a year 8 class after lunch. I taught them last year so know them all very well, they certainly hadn't made any improvements in terms of behaviour.
I took the following points from the lesson. Good: Got my expectations of them out they way and had a good discussion about this. Secondly the class were very interactive once they had settled.
Bad: I hadn't created a seating plan so it took a long time for them to settle and certain individuals clearly are just incapable of working together. (I knew this before but thought the Summer break may have seen a change.) The pace of the lesson was quite slow, this relates back to behavioural issues I guess.
I also had another issue which I personally felt I didn't deal with as well as I could. If anyone has or does have a similar problem and finds a good resolution, please do share!... Any way I had given out sheets amongst the class and asked students to pick for themselves whether they wanted the higher or lower ability ones. Most students were fine with this and the majority wanted to challenge themselves. However, what arose was that one girl asked someone to pass her the higher ability sheets, what subsequently happened was that people around her allegedly said she wasn't clever enough (or in her words she was too stupid.) This resulted in her insisting she was stupid, that her peers thought she was and that I probably did too. I attempted to reassure her several times that this wasn't the case and that she should ignore others and do what work she felt best suited to. Everything I tried didn't work so in the end I just had her sit beside me whilst she continued to sulk and be unproductive (teenagers aye.) I have since looked further into her baseline expected grades and she has the highest in the class. Weird.
I have since made a proper seating plan and placed students with those I know they should be able to work with and amongst varying abilities so they can support one another, fingers crossed this should change the dynamics of the group.
After that I taught a year 7 class who were lovely, polite, respectful and so on. A joy in comparsion.
I have spent the remainder of the week teaching mostly year 9's. Most of them were little terrors last year. But, they have come back with a really refreshing and can do attitude. (There must be something about year 8's!) I had made seating plans for both the classes, bearing in mind my dealings with them last year, however, they begged and begged to sit where they want. I caved in and told them they would be moved for the slightest breach in expectations.
In the classes I have had with them they have been raising their hands, not speaking over me, asking for extension work etc. I even set them homework in their first lesson to see who wouldn't do it. To my amazement one class (23 students) all brought it in, some even tried giving it to me in the corridor way beforehand! The other class, again roughly the same size, all brought it in bar two. So far they have really impressed me, long may it continue.
That's about 4 days of blogging in one, sorry about the essay guys!
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