Well another week has gone by. It's really interesting reading other people's blogs and understanding the various problems we all seem to experience at this stage.
Like most I was really impressed with Penny's training session and likewise, the nature of it was quite depressing at times. It just goes to show how much can go on beyond the scenes that we may be completely unaware about and the implications it may be having on a student's education. I remember Ayoub and myself having a conversation with a Maths teacher after we had just observed one of the lower Year 8 Maths sets. We were quite shocked with their ability and levels and were sharing this. His response was in regards to thier home life, support (lack of), neglect etc. If your situation is that dire, then how important is Maths to you? Why would you be bothered? In those instances it's hardly a priority to be making progress when far more pressing matters are to be dealt with. I had never thought of it like that before and hearing some of the stories Penny shared emphaised this further.
Anyway, after this I returned to The Academy to partake in Year 10 parent's evening. I have done one last year so felt ok about speaking to parent's (something I have done over the phone a number of times also.) However, I really liked what Jane mentioned in an earlier blog about training and can see how benefitial that would be, particularly giving negatives a positive spin. This is something I will discuss with our school's GTP mentor.
The last period on Tuesday I teach a year 9 class. This particular lesson was based on natural causes of climate change. I used a lot of videos from youtube to support this. From previous experience of student note taking I was aware that they didn't always take relevant notes. To combat this I provided a bank of questions per video that I wanted answered. I also stopped the video so they had sufficient time to answer. We then reflected as a class on each video and the set questions which clearly appeared to be worthwhile! The only negative was that the HLTA mentionned that it was too video based for a particular student with hearing impairment. She suggested to possibly provide a transcript (there were 25minutes worth of videos in this 1hour 40 min lesson...This could take some time!!) This is something I must consider in the future, I also sort advice from another member of my department who recommended making story boards where he could draw pictures and fill in blanks. This is something I am going to have to put more thought and research into!
On the upside I teach the same class again on Wednesday (the following day.) At the start of most lessons I will re-cap key features of the previous lesson. This particular hearing impaired student was raising his hand and desperate to answer questions; of which he was providing correct answers, obviously something sank in BUT I'm sure this won't always be the case.
No comments:
Post a Comment