First week teaching at SGS.

I have taught a number of year groups this week and obseved a few 6th form lessons, of which I will begin teaching partly next week.

My experience to date has been very different to The Langley Academy. Going into a grammar school, I though that a lot more material would be covered; this at times hasn't been the case but areas of study do tend to be looked at in greater depth. Although saying that, that is not the experience I have had with my year 10 class!

The first thing I have struggled with is learning all the new names! Knowing students names certainly helps behaviour management, I have found at times there has been some low level chatter and not knowing the student(s) name has certainly slowed down the process of rectifying this problem. Although on the whole, behaviour is generally very positive and students appear engaging and motivated the majority of the time.

In regards to lessons I have taught so far: The Year 7's were very impressive academically, they asked lots of questions and showed a real thirst for geographically knowledge.  This however sometimes hindered moving the lesson on but it is encouraging to see real passion. My first lesson with them went well but again there was some low level chatter and students were very keen to have discussions as a class but a bit more reluctant to get so much detail down on paper. In my next lesson with them I was much stricter with low level chatter and kept a few boys back to show them I wouldn't tolerate this. After receiving feedback I altered my style slightly and ensured my questioning had a stronger focus, attempting to build on prior answers. This is something that I see as a weakness of mine and am continuing to develop.

The year 8 lesson appeared to go quite well. The students enoyed the false/true starter I played with them but more thought could have been put into the order of the lesson. If I'd had a different order then the plenary activity would probably have been a bit tighter as a result. On the whole not a bad lesson with this bunch though.

I used a wide ranging style of activities with my  year 9 class. Again the students appeared to really engage in these tasks but I felt pace could have been improved in these lessons. I taught this class for the second time last thing on a Friday. The starter activity was really fun and helped drill home some key terms but I felt it should have had a more evident outcome. In response to this I used an on the board interactive quiz to gauge how much the students had taken and learnt from the starter. I got the feeling they learnt quite a bit but it could have been conducted in a more focused manner, as opposed to whole class calling out.The main activity I gave them definitely required more instructions and 'modelling'. However, I was attempting to promote independence amongst them. This in turn lead to confusion and a bit of a lethargic manner. Possibly more guidance is required for this last lesson of the week.

With regards to the Year 10's, a very quiet bunch, whom aren't overly keen on partcipating in a Q+A session and slow to get down to work. In fairness I am teaching them a topic that I, myself, am not overly confident on. This meant my questioning was not as focused or driven as it could/should have been. However, my mentor has assured me that they are like that with her too- I will have to try a different style/approach to get them more active.

In reflection, I need to improve on my questioning, especially to get immediate feedback to see how they are responding to the lesson. Secondly, I need to start learning students names asap to make real in-roads into dealing with petty behavioural issues.