Last week before the Christmas hols - but I've spent hours stressing over my one-hour lesson plan for Wednesday's Literacy lesson, and finding suitable resources on paper and online. I must have printed out several trees' worth of handouts. But I'll start at the begining.
Monday Surestart Literacy Class: Laura hadn't asked me to prepare anything in particular for this class - and she had said that some people would be sitting tests at college and there would have to be a fair amount of individual work. So I took part in the opening plenary sessions and then worked mainly one-to-one with Mark on an Entry Level activity while the others did their own L1 and L2 work. It became clear to me that Mark is not only dyslexic, but suffers from the same learning difficulty as my daughter - Auditory Processing Disorder. He can hear perfectly well enough to understand and reproduce spoken words, but when it comes to analysing sounds into letters, he can't differentiate between some vowels (eg a and e sounds) or discriminate combination consonants. So he might write "friends", for instance, as "fads" - because when he tries to write what he hears that's what it sounds like. My daughter does exactly the same, to the degree that her attempts to spell some words are so un-phonetic that they are impossible to even guess at. The other day she wrote "silver" as "seve" - neither I nor spellcheck got that one! In Mark's case the problem is exacerbated by his regional accent, so his attempts at writing phonetically are even more undermined. I'll be interested to see the results of his SpLD (Specific Learning Difficulty) test - and if there's any useful way of dealing with this.
I also spent some time with other members of the class, managing to clarify some grammatical areas and progress with relationships. Most said they would do homework over the break - they are a committed group.
Tuesday Numeracy class: Jo was away at a hospital appointment, but the rest of the class was in festive mood. Yasmin and I assisted Laura with plenary, group and indiviaul work for the first half of the session. We used packs of cards to do some work on odd and even numbers. I did some one-to-one with Gail, a Level 1 student, and found she had difficulty handling a pack of cards and sorting them into two piles (odd and even); evidence of chaotic thinking was that she was pulling cards from the middle of the pack, not off the top, and creating a third and unnecessary pile of "spares". Laura was interested by this observation - this is where my self help/psychology background comes into play.
When we moved up to the computer room after the break, Laura did an off-the-cuff plenary session, just using the whiteboard, on the theme of Christmas. It was inspired - engaging, simple, fun but including in the theme all the areas the class had been working on this term: weighing and measuring, decimals, number bonds, fractions, shape (menu-planning, cooking, buying, wrapping and and posting presents)... For half an hour the class were wrapt and having fun whilst a the same time recalling information, making connections and reinforcing the practical and relevant use of numeracy in real life. It will take me a long time to be able to pull off something as effective as that.
After that they paired up on PCs and played a competitive number bond ghost game, which kept everyone occupied and learning before breaking up for the festive season.
Yasmin has been offered a full-time but short-term job as a Learning Assistant at the college, and has a couple of other interviews lined up. Laura hopes she will continue to volunteer with this class as long as possible. These mixed ability classes in both Literacy and Numeracy, with students needing high levels of one-to-one support, are extremely hard to manage alone.
Wednesday Literacy class: Laura and I had reworked my initial lesson plan into something simpler and more manageable; I felt happy with the resources I'd brought along and had designed a brief Powerpoint to incorporate (simplified) Learning Objectives and some key points about Conjunctions and Commas (the lesson subject).
As everyone came in - about two minutes after Laura and I had got into the classroom - I became aware that my conscious incompetence was proving a huge barrier to my normally high ability to multi-task! I found it hard to greet people and continue writing the letter grid (my icebreaker/recap activity) on the whiteboard, so Laura ended up doing the greeting while I wrote. Having got them started on the activity, I logged into the PC and put up my PowerPoint, then rushed back to the whiteboard to take their feedback input about words containing the the requisite letter combinations. It went fine, but I probably let it run a little too long - perhaps because I found myself totally floundering on the transition from that activity to the next subject. Luckily Laura smoothed the moment, but it quite threw me.
I did then manage to lead the class through the recap on Conjunctions and differentiated worksheets; then segued into a plenary on Commas and individual worksheets on that. Sue, the learner with mobility problems and dyslexia, claimed she had never before heard of a comma and didn't know what I was talking about (Laura says she likes to be obstructive at times, but to use her basic queries to revisit info for the whole class). I felt she might have been thrown by the fact that it was me teaching rather than Laura, and responded positively to her. By the end of the class we had progressed quite well.
In the end, the two hour class turned into a jointly run session by me and Laura, rather than mine for the first hour and hers for the second. By the end, I was more confident, had done some effective one-to-one, as well as plenary, explanations with a number of the students and seen some lightbulb moments. But I still felt very inadequate as a teacher.
Laura's constructive and extremely generous feedback was:
Positives: Authoritative manner, good subject knowledge, strong eye contact and positive relationships with individuals. The class accepts me (she says), and respects me. I give clear explanations and write clearly for the whiteboard and smartboard.
Points for development: Get into the classroom earlier and set up whiteboard task, Powerpoint etc. Don't rely on small writing lesson plan for a lesson guide. Write a big and perhaps coloured progression to leave on the front desk to avoid floudering on transitions. Greet everyone individually. Give more directed, individual praise for responses early on. Maintain pace - don't stick too long on an activity, make sure everyone is engaged and notice when they're not - especially those at the top and bottom of the ability spectrum. Use every opportunity to include related learning (eg homophones in the initial word-making activities).
Thank goodness it's over - and there's a break before next term.
16 December 2009
Coursework
Back in class on Friday. Jen told us she is now our permanent tutor, and when questioned about the fact that she is on Maternity Leave Cover in our department only till the end of January, told us that she had made clear to the VP she was only interested in taking on the FT DTLLS class if it was until the end of the course - and that she believed that had been accepted. Didn't sound entirely certain to us.
Once again, our learning time was taken up with a recap on where unmarked assignments were at and how and when they were going to get marked. Our presentations (of a creative resource) were an issue: Mike and Scott's notes were apparently minimal so we had the choice of "self-assessment" or repeating the presentations. Jay, who had indeed done a very good presentation, was dying to reprise his, but Kelly and Sarah were adamant that they would neither self-assess nor repeat; this was the college's problem not the students' and they demanded to be assessed by the notes taken and grades given at the time. Others agreed with their point of view, though to make life easier for Jen said they would self assess.
Later in the day the VP returned as promised - though only after Jen had been asked several times when he was coming, and had been out to "check". He breezed in, clearly expecting a quick interchange confirming that we were happy with the changes. He certainly did not expect the 10-minute broadside he got from Beth!
She found it disgusting (repeated fortissimo, several times!) that he had come back to see us with no notes, no knowledge of whether the updates we had requested last time were in place; that teaching placement issues for several people were still unresolved; that he had given no decent response to or apology for the stress and anguish caused to most people due to administrative failures dating back to application and enrollment, let alone placement. The VP tried to sooth Beth by suggesting she met with him separately to iron out her problems. This was a mistake: she stressed (crescendo) that she was talking for the whole class, that it was not about the teaching - Mike and Jen had been excellent - but about the administration, the people who were "cogs behind the DTLLS course" who had been a complete failure... and ended up telling him that his visit to the class today had left her feeling "just a little bit worse - if that was possible"!
An impressive tirade, and one which left most of us unable to look the VP in the eye. It hadn't helped that Jen had inadvertently played us a clip from The Office minutes before the VP appeared, as a light-hearted example of poor communication style.
Later in the afternoon, Anna came in to talk to the class, and offered a far more fulsome and personal apology for the problems we had experienced. She handed out a list of timetable revisions and a schedule for assignment returns. Some of these had to be changed. She also told us that Jen now had a written agreement that she would be remaining as our tutor until the end of the course. A small victory for student power.
Once again, our learning time was taken up with a recap on where unmarked assignments were at and how and when they were going to get marked. Our presentations (of a creative resource) were an issue: Mike and Scott's notes were apparently minimal so we had the choice of "self-assessment" or repeating the presentations. Jay, who had indeed done a very good presentation, was dying to reprise his, but Kelly and Sarah were adamant that they would neither self-assess nor repeat; this was the college's problem not the students' and they demanded to be assessed by the notes taken and grades given at the time. Others agreed with their point of view, though to make life easier for Jen said they would self assess.
Later in the day the VP returned as promised - though only after Jen had been asked several times when he was coming, and had been out to "check". He breezed in, clearly expecting a quick interchange confirming that we were happy with the changes. He certainly did not expect the 10-minute broadside he got from Beth!
She found it disgusting (repeated fortissimo, several times!) that he had come back to see us with no notes, no knowledge of whether the updates we had requested last time were in place; that teaching placement issues for several people were still unresolved; that he had given no decent response to or apology for the stress and anguish caused to most people due to administrative failures dating back to application and enrollment, let alone placement. The VP tried to sooth Beth by suggesting she met with him separately to iron out her problems. This was a mistake: she stressed (crescendo) that she was talking for the whole class, that it was not about the teaching - Mike and Jen had been excellent - but about the administration, the people who were "cogs behind the DTLLS course" who had been a complete failure... and ended up telling him that his visit to the class today had left her feeling "just a little bit worse - if that was possible"!
An impressive tirade, and one which left most of us unable to look the VP in the eye. It hadn't helped that Jen had inadvertently played us a clip from The Office minutes before the VP appeared, as a light-hearted example of poor communication style.
Later in the afternoon, Anna came in to talk to the class, and offered a far more fulsome and personal apology for the problems we had experienced. She handed out a list of timetable revisions and a schedule for assignment returns. Some of these had to be changed. She also told us that Jen now had a written agreement that she would be remaining as our tutor until the end of the course. A small victory for student power.
9 December 2009
Teaching Placement Week Two
Although I wrote this title last week, I'm actually into week three of teaching. Life - particularly in DTLLSworld, but also real life, has been so hectic that I haven't had much time to reflect.
So - last week:
Monday Surestart class: Laura had been held up so I opened the class with a letter chain exercise (How many words can you come up with containing the letters "str"?), which went down fine and took us through the ten minutes before Laura arrived. The Learning Room there does suffer from not having a whiteboard, let alone a smartboard or PCs - and even the flipchart paper has been well-used. I had also sourced some handouts and quizzes on Prepositions, which were used and went down quite well, later in the session
Shelley, the student who Laura had helped out last week, returned and thanked Laura for saving her. Her attendance had previously been so poor she was about to be written off, but Laura's intervention had the effect of renewing her interest and perhaps showing her that real support for her can be found here.
A very successful activity, which was highly inclusive of different levels of ability and allowed peer support and scaffolding, was a simple Murder Mystery game. Laura handed out a b&w picture of a "murder scene" in a cafe (including footprints, handprints, abandoned cups of tea, cigarettes smoking in ashtrays and the bills of the four last customers) and let the two groups work out from the clues what had happened and who had done what to whom. Inferring information from text and other sources is a major part of the Literacy Curriculum, so it worked well in that way, was highly engaging, provoked discussion and humour and brought the group together.
I did some one-to-one work with Mark - who is clearly dyslexic and having a SPLD assessment soon - and felt I was on the way to making relationships with most of the others.
Tuesday Numeracy: my contribution to this week's lesson was to produce some worksheets on Healthy Eating - for estimating, comparing and adding prices of the five-a-day fruit and veg we had worked with last week. I had made some colourful and clear handouts which did the job. I also did one-to-one work with Jo, the student in a wheelchair who usually looks disengaged and doesn't answer questions. As I worked with him, though, I realised he's not at all well and probably in pain. He has physical difficulty writing and clearly appreciated being helped. Interalia he asked me if I believed in reincarnation and spirits, and left a Christmas card for me with Laura.
The class moves to a computer room after the midway break, where Laura had found some excellent interactive games which they worked on in pairs.
Wednesday Literacy: I printed out a mountain of worksheets and activities on commas, compound words, compound sentences and conjunctions, most of which we didn't get round to using. But it was a very good and well-rounded session - as I've written up as part of an assignment ("Professional Discussion" as opposed to essay) on Communication and Supporting Students:
"In a literacy lesson that we jointly planned, my mentor and I were teaching Compound Words. She had explained the learners’ initial and diagnostic assessments to me, and also their individually negotiated learning targets – all of which are SMART (Specific, Manageable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based). These had been carried out by using Literacy and Numeracy entry level online tests, paper-based and/or online diagnostic tests, one-to-one tutorial sessions and observations.
"Based on these, we used the whiteboard, plenary discussion, then working in pairs and individually on handouts. After this all the students, in pairs, played two online games (sourced by me) which had varying levels of difficulty, promoting learning on the subject. This meant every student was able to take part in each activity, despite their different strengths, weaknesses and learning levels.
"The final part of the lesson introduced them to the concept of evaluation. In a plenary session they listed the positives and negatives of all the teaching methods we had used and rated how much they had learned from each. This inclusive approach had the benefits of valuing each student’s contribution and differing opinions; and demonstrating to us as teachers the immensely varied ways in which they all learned best (and worst). Scoring the resources added an element of numeracy and the online games increased their ICT skills.
"This approach to equality and inclusivity also ticked all aspects of Keller’s ARCS model: the students’ attention was held throughout; the content and resources were relevant to their lives and needs; and their confidence and satisfaction increased as they became more adept in using the different media to increase their literacy skills."
The scary bit is that Laura wants me to take the first hour of next week's lesson on my own, which means a full lesson plan, resources, back up etc... My first proper solo flight, as it were.
So - last week:
Monday Surestart class: Laura had been held up so I opened the class with a letter chain exercise (How many words can you come up with containing the letters "str"?), which went down fine and took us through the ten minutes before Laura arrived. The Learning Room there does suffer from not having a whiteboard, let alone a smartboard or PCs - and even the flipchart paper has been well-used. I had also sourced some handouts and quizzes on Prepositions, which were used and went down quite well, later in the session
Shelley, the student who Laura had helped out last week, returned and thanked Laura for saving her. Her attendance had previously been so poor she was about to be written off, but Laura's intervention had the effect of renewing her interest and perhaps showing her that real support for her can be found here.
A very successful activity, which was highly inclusive of different levels of ability and allowed peer support and scaffolding, was a simple Murder Mystery game. Laura handed out a b&w picture of a "murder scene" in a cafe (including footprints, handprints, abandoned cups of tea, cigarettes smoking in ashtrays and the bills of the four last customers) and let the two groups work out from the clues what had happened and who had done what to whom. Inferring information from text and other sources is a major part of the Literacy Curriculum, so it worked well in that way, was highly engaging, provoked discussion and humour and brought the group together.
I did some one-to-one work with Mark - who is clearly dyslexic and having a SPLD assessment soon - and felt I was on the way to making relationships with most of the others.
Tuesday Numeracy: my contribution to this week's lesson was to produce some worksheets on Healthy Eating - for estimating, comparing and adding prices of the five-a-day fruit and veg we had worked with last week. I had made some colourful and clear handouts which did the job. I also did one-to-one work with Jo, the student in a wheelchair who usually looks disengaged and doesn't answer questions. As I worked with him, though, I realised he's not at all well and probably in pain. He has physical difficulty writing and clearly appreciated being helped. Interalia he asked me if I believed in reincarnation and spirits, and left a Christmas card for me with Laura.
The class moves to a computer room after the midway break, where Laura had found some excellent interactive games which they worked on in pairs.
Wednesday Literacy: I printed out a mountain of worksheets and activities on commas, compound words, compound sentences and conjunctions, most of which we didn't get round to using. But it was a very good and well-rounded session - as I've written up as part of an assignment ("Professional Discussion" as opposed to essay) on Communication and Supporting Students:
"In a literacy lesson that we jointly planned, my mentor and I were teaching Compound Words. She had explained the learners’ initial and diagnostic assessments to me, and also their individually negotiated learning targets – all of which are SMART (Specific, Manageable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based). These had been carried out by using Literacy and Numeracy entry level online tests, paper-based and/or online diagnostic tests, one-to-one tutorial sessions and observations.
"Based on these, we used the whiteboard, plenary discussion, then working in pairs and individually on handouts. After this all the students, in pairs, played two online games (sourced by me) which had varying levels of difficulty, promoting learning on the subject. This meant every student was able to take part in each activity, despite their different strengths, weaknesses and learning levels.
"The final part of the lesson introduced them to the concept of evaluation. In a plenary session they listed the positives and negatives of all the teaching methods we had used and rated how much they had learned from each. This inclusive approach had the benefits of valuing each student’s contribution and differing opinions; and demonstrating to us as teachers the immensely varied ways in which they all learned best (and worst). Scoring the resources added an element of numeracy and the online games increased their ICT skills.
"This approach to equality and inclusivity also ticked all aspects of Keller’s ARCS model: the students’ attention was held throughout; the content and resources were relevant to their lives and needs; and their confidence and satisfaction increased as they became more adept in using the different media to increase their literacy skills."
The scary bit is that Laura wants me to take the first hour of next week's lesson on my own, which means a full lesson plan, resources, back up etc... My first proper solo flight, as it were.
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