Monday Surestart Literacy - the snow was on the retreat and we had a more or less full complement of students plus one new female student. Laura had asked me to teach the main body of the plenary session (while she inducted the new student and did her diagnostic assessment) and provide the resources. I found a number of crossword games - with ible/able ent/ant ending-words and Laura had given me a "Dictionary Challenge" game to copy and use as the main part of the session.
Both exercises went well, with Mark taking part with his crossword clues scaffolded ....
Oh dear - I started that post about a month ago and never finished it. Nor have I managed to write or reflect on anything between then and now - except mentally, of course.
In fact, now I remember it, that lesson went rather well, with the crosswords holding attention and the Dictionary Challenge team game getting quite raucous as the two sides became competitive and I was trying to keep the scores reasonably even across the slightly mis-matched ability teams. It was a good way for me to work up a better relationship with this slightly reserved group, and Laura seemed happy enough with the way it had gone. I re-ran this lesson with the Wednesday Get On Literacy Class, which was also fine but completely different in tone and response. Perhaps because the class is not such a coherent group as the Surestarts, and because the ability range is more diverse, it wasn't such a sparky activity - but it still produced good learning outcomes and the class enjoyed the activity.
I didn't see it coming when the next week's Surestart Literacy lesson turned into a low point in my teaching placement. I'd prepared a pretty full lesson on word and sentence level activities, including more crosswords, homophone, homonym and synonym stuff which segued into word types. I'd followed a lesson plan and set of resources that Laura had sugegsted and I thought for at least the first hour that it was going well, differentiation was working, structure was tight. Laura was leaving me to it while working through the results of a test or diagnostic with an individual student.
I guess I was pushing them quite hard on word types - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs etc - but most were there, with the exception of a new student who had started the previous week and although fine with most aspects of the work, said she just didn't get nouns and verbs, had never understood them... And I could see Laura watching me handle this with what looked to me like an expression of great anxiety on her face. Before the end of the lesson, she came back in, took over, told the new student she'd bring her a special worksheet next week... and made me feel somewhat foolish and incompetent, unintentionally, I'm sure.
Her feedback after they'd left was a little terse (well, it must be incredibly frustrating as a mentor to see your class taken over by amateur incompetence and your students not getting the high level of teaching you yourself would have delivered) and about overloading students with too much information, too many intensive activities and not leaving enough processing time and "fun" activities. I felt it must have been a complete disaster, but Laura did say that the students had probably not felt there was a problem at all.
Still, when she went on to suggest subject matter, resources and activities for next week's lesson - including finding a range of newspaper and magazine ads, and laminating them... I fell apart. Ridiculous, but I've never laminated anything in my life, I didn't know where or how to do it -- suddenly it felt as if teaching was simply beyond me and I'd never make the grade. Poor Laura, she was already running late for her next class, but she sat down to try and put the pieces of me back together. It didn't entirely help when she said that her main worry was my commitment -- I'm committed alright, just more pressed for time than most other full time DTLLS students, with two small children and a household to run alongside a post-graduate diploma course and 150 hours of teaching practice!
It was probably the nearest I've got to pulling out of the whole course - which in fact is what Sarah has done, by the way. She finally complained to the Vice Principal about the fiasco of her placement and mentor and got some action, but then fell out with the mentor, who thought that she should be ready to take on teaching some small parts of the class after a couple of weeks observing. Well, that's was about the timescale within which everyone else started bits of teaching, but Sarah apparently refused and has now left for good. Shame, she was going to be a good teacher, and hopefully still will be.
Anyway, that was a diversion. By the next day I had pulled myself together and after the Tuesday numeracy lesson, went to Laura's office to learn how to laminate. A revelation: so simple - I loved it! I might even buy my own small laminator, apparently you can get them for about £25! And the ads I'd found look splendidly professional as resources for next week. If I can learn to laminate, I'm sure I'll get the hang of this teaching thing before too long.
Showing posts with label homophones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homophones. Show all posts
7 February 2010
16 December 2009
Teaching Placement - Week Three
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.
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.
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