Nearly a month, I see, since I lasted "reflected" here - I'm supposed to be doing so at least once a week so might lose marks for this in some formative assessment! The fact is, I've been finding it increasingly hard to keep up with the demands of the DTLLS course.
The week after I last posted, my old life made a bit of a come back and I had a morning off co-presenting a radio show, an evening talk to a writers' group, a day in London judging a work-life balance competition - and it was my birthday. The week after that was half term - a good time to get assignments and extra studying done for most of my co-students, but for me impossible to do any work at all with children also on half term, visits to both sets of grandparents planned, another book talk to give and my eldset son to stay for the weekend. In some ways it was very healthy to step out of DTLLS-world for a time, and realise that the course is not the be all and end all of my existence.
Last week, though, when we came back to college after the break, it all seemed to close around me again and with an assignment which I hadn't even started to be handed in on Friday, I went into a bit of a meltdown. My mentor, Laura, suggested I might go part-time (it's possible to do the DTLLS course in two years rather than one, but you don't get the bursary for that, and the financial imperative of finding actual teaching work asap after finishing makes that a non starter for me); Scott was very sympathetic in my tutorial with him, ordered me to take some time out and asked whether I had ever been told how much work the course would involve - given that my only working times outside college are the Thursday we have off and after 9pm in the evening. The answer was no - nothing about the course was explicit until I was actually enrolled on it. Mike gave me a two week extension, but with that as a backstop position, I just worked long nights and got the "Assessment Strategy" and accompanying essay in on time - last Friday.
This week I've had little chance to recover from the exhaustion that produced as we all had to give another microteach on Wednesday. Working in groups of three, we had to research and prepare a 45-minute Functional Skills Numeracy lesson. I was working with Hugh and Sarah on "Fractions, Decimals and Percentages and Eequivalences Between Them", with my section being the introduction then Fractions and Decimals. It was a rush, but Hugh is great on creating Powerpoints, we came up with some good activities and it went ok, if no more than that. There was a lot of material to incorporate (normally that would have been covered in several sessions), so some of it was certainly a bit rushed.
Developmental Feedback from Scott was: not enough differentiation, more directed questions and time activities so learners focus and teachers can time-manage better. All quite fair enough and will be taken on board. Positives were good communication, eye contact, clarity of info - in Powerpoint and on the whiteboard, creative activities.
The minute that was over, I had to start working on the next assignment - a "Resource" for my adult literacy learners and a 15-minute presentation of same, which is to be given to tutors and the class next Wednesday. This means I have several more long nights before then looming, though I'm rather pleased with what I've put together - a simple writing template to combine cognitive and affective understanding (Bloom's Taxonomy) based on James W. Pennebaker's work on Expressive Writing - which can be used to consolidate/explore learning or to manage challenging behaviour or incidents. Very Vygotsky - not just his Zone of Proximal Learning stuff, but also his theories on how children learn language. I have the PowerPoint and structure of the presentation to put together before next Wednesday.
Then, before the end of term we have to prepare a 15-minute Professional Discussion (ie viva voce examination) on "Positive Behaviour, Communication and Barriers to Learning" - and start work on Module 7's assignment, a reasonably major piece of research: only 2,500 words for the report, but with demanding criteria.
Talking of criteria, we got our Module 1 assignments back at the beginning of this week. I got Merits for everything - microteach, reflection, essays.... I was quite happy with the grade and feedback for the teaching, but disappointed with the essay grades - and lack of constructive feedback about why I hadn't achieved a Distinction (which Mike had been quite clear I had on the drafts I submitted to him) or how I could do so in future. The fact is, as he too had succumbed to work-overload, Mike didn't mark our work and almost everyone was disappointed by their grades and feedback. As I got ticks, "good", "excellent" or other positive remarks on almost all paras, and notes consisted of a few minor quibbles about word choices, in the main, I - along with several others - have resubmitted mine for independent assessment or at least clarification. In one sense the grades don't matter, as the end result is either Pass or Fail - no grade for the DTLLS course - but the work all goes into your Professional Portfolio, and it was intensely demotivating to find I had the same grade as some people who don't write as well as me, or have the same academic background. Having helped Nat shape and structure her essays, I know for sure that mine were a grade above, at least. What use is it to know that I got a "strong" merit, when merits are not differentiated within the grading system?
At the end of this week we had a role play session on providing each other with a badly behaved class to see what sort of behaviour management we could achieve. My session came towards the end, by which time the group had become semi-hysterical with acting out pregnant chavs, violent teenagers, recalcitrant leaners, over-smart students and a range of other disruptive scenarios for each other. My class had two people smoking out of the window and one drawing rude pix on the whiteboard. I can't claim to have managed them remotely effectively, devolving instantly into "controlling parent" ego state (Transactional Analysis), yet failing to control. It wasn't very lifelike, but did make me think about my own habits: one of which is I never give of my best in fake situations, rehearsals, hypothetical scenarios - but reality and real people bring out the best in me and I can surprise myself by how effectively I can deal with difficult situations in real life. Also, I don't get much challenging behaviour when I'm teaching or chairing or managing groups, perhaps because I like and understand people and on the whole they like me.
The week after next, class work reduces to one day a week and teaching practice starts in earnest - 3 x 3-hour classes a week for me, probably two in Literacy and one in Numeracy - following the discussion about my placement and which Laura has been very helpful in sorting out. I'll be starting by observing all classes, then taking small sections with Laura present, then when I get to the stage of being in charge of an hour's worth of class, she'll leave me to it... then at some stage next term I shall be taking all three classes full time and madly writing lesson plans, finding resources, creating Powerpoints, understanding where everyone is in terms of assessment and learning outcomes.
In the mean time I'd better give myself some SMART(ish) objectives:
Teaching style: Don't: get freaked by outlandish, hypothetical situations; get competitive or undermined in class/group situations.
Do: ask direct questions for inclusion and to check learning; be clearer about instructions for activities; think about differentiation in all activities
Assignments: Don't: panic about time - it will all get done in the end and Merit is perfectly acceptable, given I have so much less time than most people to do the work.
Do: start work on the Professional Discussion as soon as Wednesday's presentation is over, and write at least the Proposal for the Research Project before the end of this term (check it with Mike).
Showing posts with label Formative Assessment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Formative Assessment. Show all posts
14 November 2009
27 September 2009
Reflective Journal: 1. Lesson Observation
My friend S (letter of the post before last) was quite right in saying a "Reflective Journal" was a learning tool. Not just a personal option, but a part of the assessment criteria of DiTLLS. I was going to write this blog just for me - and anyone else who happened upon it - but as I have to keep a similar log of the course anyway, and there's soooo much to do, I'm not going to write it twice. So from now on, this is my official Trainee Teacher Reflective Journal. It might not be as frank now as it would otherwise have been... but then again, why not?
So, official reflection No 1:
Last Wednesday I sat in on (not sure if technically this was "observing" or "shadowing") a Literacy class taught by my subject specialist mentor, Laura. As I said before, Laura's a delightful woman - calm, warm, humorous and cogent; her classroom style reflected all of these traits and made me wonder if I could ever emulate them. Especially the calmness!
There were eight learners; two women 30+, one younger Portugese woman (unusual, as she would normally be in an ESOL - English for Speakers of Other Languages - class), three young men, one of whom could have been at school and two in perhaps their very late teens. Then there was an older woman in a wheelchair, brought in by a member of college staff, and Sue, a woman on crutches (a permanent disability) who came in late having burned her hand trying to pour a cup of tea and been bandaged by the nurse. An older man, (Teaching Assistant?) sat near the boys and... assisted.
The subject of the class was Nouns - Common and Proper. Laura explained to me that one of her other objectives was to check out the abilities of some of the learners as she has recently taken over this class and is not convinced that all members have attained the Level 1 skills that they are supposed to have. She started the class with a word grid on the whiteboard, from which everyone was asked to make up words of 4 or more letters, always including an S. While they were working on this, Laura took the register and would have put up the Learning Objectives for the class on the Powerpoint screen - but it failed to work. She called a technician, who came, but all he could do was order a new bulb!
Undeterred, Laura went back to the results of the word grid. Most had quite some difficulty with this and Laura negotiated her way through misspelt words, words which included letters other than those she had put up, and other issues. But clearly they all enjoyed and engaged with the exercise, and either learned or consolidated information. Laura continually asked gentle questions to ascertain that they had got it, and praised everyone for whatever she could. The ablest learner was one of the young men; the two disabled women possibly had the most difficulty grasping concepts.
Technology having failed, nouns were addressed on the whiteboard; what they were, how to identify them. Again, it took some time for most of the class to get to grips with this - but Laura found different ways to clarify and gave out handouts for one-to-one working - underline the nouns in sentences, basically. As Sue was having difficulty writing with her bandaged hand, I was tasked with helping her, which gave me a chance to understand what sort of ability she was working at. On the one hand, it seemed, she had neat writing and could spell reasonably well (especially words relating to football: David Beckham, Manchester United!); on the other her conceptual capacity was limited and she sometimes suggested adverbs or adjectives might be nouns. I think she gained some clarity from my explanations, and felt we struck up a bit of a rapport.
After this exercise, all the other learners went off to work on (differentiated, I assumed) tasks on the classroom PCs. They all seemed familiar with the technology and happy to use it. Laura asked me to keep working with Sue as she had to do a test which would normally involve listening to passages on a headset, but she thought it would work better if I read (and reread and reread) the necessary passages. It was interesting for me to find out what sort of Literacy was involved; I read short texts involving discussions (who said/thought what), descriptions (a car accident - put the events in order)), someone's work history (dates and time order - embedded numeracy!) and Sue had to answer multiple choice questions about the content. She got the first one right and when she was hesitant about the second one, I read it to her several more times (this was permitted!), but trying to emphasise what she needed to understand. I even started to give her a hint, but quickly realised that I was not supposed to be helping her learn, at this point. Her learning was being formally assessed and any help I gave would skew the results. I played it straight for the rest of the test; she got most of the answers wrong.
The class came together briefly at the end - Laura having been working with the others on their individual PC-based tasks while I'd been with Sue. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed it and feel they'd achieved something. They all wrote something at the end - possibly a summary of what they'd learned - and while doing so, Sue asked Laura what "that lady"'s name was (mine) - which felt like something of a compliment.
So what did I take away from my experience?
In terms of content, in a Literacy class of this level a little goes a long way (this applies to my Microteach, too - even with highly intelligent learners).
Patience is a virtue.
Always have a Plan B for technology
There's a difference between teaching and assessment. And perhaps my experience with Sue was an illustration between Formative (ongoing) Assessment and Summative (final) Assessment. Formative Assessment can include continued teaching, using feedback to understand what learners know and don't know, and filling gaps; Summative Assessment has to be a stand alone process that evaluates exactly what the learner does and doesn't know at this particular moment in time.
I liked Laura's teaching style, which was egalitarian, warm and sympathetic but with an underlying authority which I imagine would be quite unassailable in the face of disruptive behaviour. The wheelchair learner came the closest to being "difficult", and Laura dealt with her reasonably but firmly. It felt like it came from a depth of self-possession and a wealth of experience. Obviously I don't have the teaching experience, but can I draw on comparable resources? I guess my microteach is going to reveal some of the answer.
So, official reflection No 1:
Last Wednesday I sat in on (not sure if technically this was "observing" or "shadowing") a Literacy class taught by my subject specialist mentor, Laura. As I said before, Laura's a delightful woman - calm, warm, humorous and cogent; her classroom style reflected all of these traits and made me wonder if I could ever emulate them. Especially the calmness!
There were eight learners; two women 30+, one younger Portugese woman (unusual, as she would normally be in an ESOL - English for Speakers of Other Languages - class), three young men, one of whom could have been at school and two in perhaps their very late teens. Then there was an older woman in a wheelchair, brought in by a member of college staff, and Sue, a woman on crutches (a permanent disability) who came in late having burned her hand trying to pour a cup of tea and been bandaged by the nurse. An older man, (Teaching Assistant?) sat near the boys and... assisted.
The subject of the class was Nouns - Common and Proper. Laura explained to me that one of her other objectives was to check out the abilities of some of the learners as she has recently taken over this class and is not convinced that all members have attained the Level 1 skills that they are supposed to have. She started the class with a word grid on the whiteboard, from which everyone was asked to make up words of 4 or more letters, always including an S. While they were working on this, Laura took the register and would have put up the Learning Objectives for the class on the Powerpoint screen - but it failed to work. She called a technician, who came, but all he could do was order a new bulb!
Undeterred, Laura went back to the results of the word grid. Most had quite some difficulty with this and Laura negotiated her way through misspelt words, words which included letters other than those she had put up, and other issues. But clearly they all enjoyed and engaged with the exercise, and either learned or consolidated information. Laura continually asked gentle questions to ascertain that they had got it, and praised everyone for whatever she could. The ablest learner was one of the young men; the two disabled women possibly had the most difficulty grasping concepts.
Technology having failed, nouns were addressed on the whiteboard; what they were, how to identify them. Again, it took some time for most of the class to get to grips with this - but Laura found different ways to clarify and gave out handouts for one-to-one working - underline the nouns in sentences, basically. As Sue was having difficulty writing with her bandaged hand, I was tasked with helping her, which gave me a chance to understand what sort of ability she was working at. On the one hand, it seemed, she had neat writing and could spell reasonably well (especially words relating to football: David Beckham, Manchester United!); on the other her conceptual capacity was limited and she sometimes suggested adverbs or adjectives might be nouns. I think she gained some clarity from my explanations, and felt we struck up a bit of a rapport.
After this exercise, all the other learners went off to work on (differentiated, I assumed) tasks on the classroom PCs. They all seemed familiar with the technology and happy to use it. Laura asked me to keep working with Sue as she had to do a test which would normally involve listening to passages on a headset, but she thought it would work better if I read (and reread and reread) the necessary passages. It was interesting for me to find out what sort of Literacy was involved; I read short texts involving discussions (who said/thought what), descriptions (a car accident - put the events in order)), someone's work history (dates and time order - embedded numeracy!) and Sue had to answer multiple choice questions about the content. She got the first one right and when she was hesitant about the second one, I read it to her several more times (this was permitted!), but trying to emphasise what she needed to understand. I even started to give her a hint, but quickly realised that I was not supposed to be helping her learn, at this point. Her learning was being formally assessed and any help I gave would skew the results. I played it straight for the rest of the test; she got most of the answers wrong.
The class came together briefly at the end - Laura having been working with the others on their individual PC-based tasks while I'd been with Sue. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed it and feel they'd achieved something. They all wrote something at the end - possibly a summary of what they'd learned - and while doing so, Sue asked Laura what "that lady"'s name was (mine) - which felt like something of a compliment.
So what did I take away from my experience?
In terms of content, in a Literacy class of this level a little goes a long way (this applies to my Microteach, too - even with highly intelligent learners).
Patience is a virtue.
Always have a Plan B for technology
There's a difference between teaching and assessment. And perhaps my experience with Sue was an illustration between Formative (ongoing) Assessment and Summative (final) Assessment. Formative Assessment can include continued teaching, using feedback to understand what learners know and don't know, and filling gaps; Summative Assessment has to be a stand alone process that evaluates exactly what the learner does and doesn't know at this particular moment in time.
I liked Laura's teaching style, which was egalitarian, warm and sympathetic but with an underlying authority which I imagine would be quite unassailable in the face of disruptive behaviour. The wheelchair learner came the closest to being "difficult", and Laura dealt with her reasonably but firmly. It felt like it came from a depth of self-possession and a wealth of experience. Obviously I don't have the teaching experience, but can I draw on comparable resources? I guess my microteach is going to reveal some of the answer.
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