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.
Showing posts with label Reflective journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reflective journal. Show all posts
9 December 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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
