Teaching Placement - Week One

Monday, 9.30am was the first day and class of my teaching practice. An adult literacy class offsite at a local Surestart centre. I arrived before Laura and was let into the "learning room" - a basic room with tables and chairs, a sofa one end and a flipchart. Nothing to assist with the ICT functional skills or emerging technology we're supposed to pack into every session to hit  all the criteria of a top teacher.
Laura arrived after a couple of the students;we pulled the tables into a central block and six students settled themselves around it. The five women and one man were all thirties and upwards, a couple of women working towards Level 2, the man just Level 1 and the rest in between. A nice and hard-working group, who Laura had just got started on a recap/warm-up about prepositions when a seventh class member turned up. This woman had a poor attendance rate - in fact should have received a letter telling her she was no longer on the course, but Laura welcomed her and included her in the work.
Laura  used the flipchart and handouts, directed questioning and discussion to good effect - in fact in the literacy classes I've observed so far, the more basic teaching aids seem more appropriate than using hi tec ICT - although in college they all work on individual PCs for a large proportion of the class. At Surestart, the same work is simply done on paper. 
At break time Laura took the latecomer aside and chatted to her on the sofa. After the break was over, she left me in charge of the rest of the group and took the woman out, returning alone after 10 minutes. It transpired later that Laura had noticed the student had refused a cup of tea (which costs 20p) and putting this together with various other signs, realised something was wrong. This woman is a mother of two small children and had £10 to last her for the rest of the week and no credit on her phone, so Laura had given her some advice about accessing emergency funds and taken her to the main Surestart office to make some phone calls. It was difficult call, she said, but with small children involved and me there to cover briefly, it seemed the best option in an emergency situation.
When Laura returned she set the other women individual tasks, set up tests for a couple of them to do at college next week and I worked with Mark, the student who had joined most recently. It was an enjoyable lesson with an interesting anc committed group and I look forward to working with them further.
I went over to  the college after this to meet Jay. As the two DTLLS class reps, we went up to the departmental office to see if we could talk to Anna - Mike's line manager and the FT DTLLS manager, to see if she would talk to us about the situation with him. As it turned out she was off sick, probably for the whole week, and though she looked distinctly uncomfortable, Pearl couldn't suggest any other course of action than seeing her when she returned. Not satisfactory.

Tuesday was Numeracy - 9am to 12pm onsite at college. Yasmin, who did the FT DTLLS course with a Literacy placement last year, is helping Laura with this class as a voluntary teaching assistant to help her get paid work. There are six students, one of whom is deaf and has a signer, one has brittle bone disease and is in a wheelchair, and another speaks unclearly and has learning difficuties.  Laura did a recap exercise on the whiteboard on number bonds, which raised a number of other issues. The class collectively has poor memory for concepts.
Yasmin had prepared a section on Healthy Eating, involving weighing and estimating the weight of portions of five-a-day fruit and vegetables. Although she got an aspect of fractions wrong which Laura had to correct, the class loved the Noughts and Crosses team game around which she framed some intital questions about weight values, and enjoyed weighing the portions of real fruit and veg she had brought with her. I worked with a pair of students during this exercise, which I was happy with.
After the break the whole class moved rooms to a computer lab where they all did individual tests and online work sheets. I worked with one student on a test, which went well enough. Then while they were working alone, Laura, Yasmin and I discussed next week's class and activities. I volunteered to create some worksheets around estimating prices, actual prices and adding more of the five-a-day portions. It was agreed that I'd need to include pictures to help the wheelchair student who has poor literacy skills.
In the break, Yasmin told me that last year's FT DTLLS course had been run by four tutors for two classes, but they had many problems, especially around mentors and placements - which have certainly not been solved this year. It seems that all four tutors took voluntary severance after being off long-term sick (stress) at various points during year. Mike was dismissed but appealed and was reinstated - to end up running the full time course more or less single-handed. I went up to the departmental office after class and had the conversation with Scott, as reported below.

Wednesday 12 - 3pm: the Literacy class I've observed a couple of times already. The normal room was having the ITC equipment upgraded so we all, me pushing the wheelchair student, decamped to a less than pleasant classroom in another block without the suite of PCs these students are used to. After a group ice-breaker/recap, Laura set the class differentiated tasks on handouts; I worked with the more advanced group on Active and Passive voices, rewriting sentences from one to the other. I enjoyed working with them, though even amongst three there was a mix of abilities and I wasn't sure I kept the least able learner focused and completely understanding the concept. When I checked his learning with directed questions, though, he seemed to have taken the concept on board.
Normally the second half of the class would have been individual working at PCs, but as this was not possible, Laura asked the class to visit the Information Store (library) and borrow a book or DVD to bring and talk about in class next week. She asked me to find some handouts for next week on commas and clauses, simple and complex sentences.

During this first week of teaching practice, although I didn't take any class on my own for any time, I was reassured that I would in time, with Laura's support, be able to do so, starting with small time periods and working upwards. I felt I related well to the students I did work with, and started to get a feel for their learning styles and abilities. 
My biggest area for development remains directed questioning, and asking questions that properly check learning and promote attention and confidence. I also don't think I would have had the experience to note the signs and deal with the problems of the learner in the Monday Surestart class.