You want to know what's worrying me most right now?

First placement is over. Had the Tutor Assessed Visit. Got the school report filed. Got most of the work done on the portfolio that I can. It's christmas. So what's to worry about?
I've got an assignment to write, that's what's worrying me. Here's why: the last time I wrote an actual essay (let alone a post-graduate assignment) was 1978. When I did English "O" level. Sure, since then I've done three "A" levels, picked up a degree and written hundreds upon thousands of words while working as a journalist and in business. But the "A" levels were in maths and physics and the degree was in engineering, none of which were big on essays, even in exams. None required extensive writing and references and stuff like that. So the highest academic level at which I have submitted an essay is "O" level. 30 years ago. There. Had to get that off my chest.
Only one way to find out if I can do it, I guess.

Back on November 10, I wrote that my S3 class was my most challenging. And they were challenging in various ways - too many of them for the room, one disruptive pupil who should have been in a lower ability class but had been seperated from his regular partners in crime, one bright lad who had decided to stop working (or even thinking at times), a couple of girls who missed more lessons through ill-health than they attended and they could all chat for Britain.
But overall, I came to enjoy teaching them most. They generally did cotton on eventually, they attempted theior homework (mostly), they did detention reasonably cheerfully when they hadn't done said homework bubt most of all they had some sense of fun. Yes, I had to quieten them down regularly. Frequently even. But it's hard to get cross and stay cross when the conversation goes like this (names changed to protect the guilty):
Me "Jason! Chantelle! What's all that noise? And what's so funny about frequency diagrams?"
Chantelle: "Nothing, sir (sic). Jason was just doing his Chewbacca impression."
In the end, I enjoyed being with them and I think they enjoyed being with me, which made the whole teaching/learning thing easier for all of us. After my last lesson I even got a high five from one of the boys I'd had to talk to a lot in the first few days.
So here's to classes with spirit. But maybe not tooooo much.
PS Here's the Chewie link on Wookieepedia. I couldn't resist that. Sorry.

Oh dear.... the follow up

Better lesson, better example. Most of them have got the concept of quartiles. I gave them one more short go at it this morning before letting thme loose on "Mr Schafer's Final Lesson of the Placement Stats Quiz", which was quite good fun. The final question was:
"My head is in the oven and my feet are in the freezer. My average body temperature is absolutely normal." What is wrong with this statement?
Got some interesting, imaginative and articulate responses to that one so I would have left the classroom feeling really good, except that I had to stay behind and supervise the three who hadn't done their homework and were going to do it in lunchtime.

Oh dear

Just when I thought I was neginning to get the hang of this teaching thing..... along comes the lesson from hell to elbow me out of my incipient complacency. S3 again, doing statistics. But the problem is not the pupils. It's me. Just me. The whole me and nothing but the me. I'd moved them rapidly on to cumulative frequency curves as they were doing so well with frequency tables. So I dished out the graph paper and went merry through a worked example.Eerything was going swimmingly - the data was on a spreadsheet projected onto the interactive board, I'd pre-prepared two stages of the curve on the whiteboard (that got a laugh - I didn't even have to supply the "Here's one I prepared earlier" line, one of the pupils did that for me). So explained the purpose, did the median and added the upper and lower quartiles, checking all the while they were with me. When I got to the end, I set them onto another question and a single hand went up: "I don't get this...."
So I asked if anyone else was having problems. No response. I thought, "OK, if it's just Jason (name changed to protect the innnocent), that's a result. I'll go and help him while the others get on with the question."
Off I go to help Jason out. The conversation went something like this:
"So, where did I lose you?" (He's copied the curve beautifully by the way)
"Um, right at the start."
Oh.
"OK then I'll go through it again with you."
"Can I listen in too?" says one of his neighbours.
"Mmmmm. Me too please?" says another.
"And me...?"
Now I have the whole table involved. And when I finish there, I have to do the same thing at the next table.... you can guess the rest. Dammit.
Gonna have to do it over again tomorrow, with a simpler example. I'm going to do the curve for them though to save some time.

Precisely who is in the classroom matters...

More news from the Eastern Front (i.e. Intermediate 1 Mathematics with a class where at least half have no interest in being in the room).
Sickness has decimated the group. Actually, no it hasn't. It's even worse than that - only half the group was in today. If you understand that, go straight to the next paragraph. If you didn't get it: decimate means "remove (kill) one in ten", despite common usage, which seems to suggest decimate means leaving only one in ten standing, or something like that. Put it this way, if you are ever captured by a James Bond villain and given the choice "Either choose half of your number to die or I'll decimate you", choose decimation. As long as you are confident the villain uses English precisely (or nicely, in its original meaning).
Anyway, pedantry aside, near half of my S5 class was off today. Funnily enough the group present was almost complementary to the bunch who appeared on Friday. So I had an easy lesson: repeat what I did on Friday...... and the notes and graphs I'd drawn were still on the board. So there's a good reason not to wipe the board clean after every lesson :)
More importantly, the chattering girls were all absent (not all the girls, just the ones with the biggest propensity to chatter and the biggest chips on their shoulders - one on each of course, perfectly balanced). So the ones who wanted to work could do so, while I concentrated on the two groups with some common members: those who really do need help all the way and those who simple like to avoid having to work.
Result? More learning, albeit by fewer pupils. How do I work that equation out? And should I be persuading them not to get 'flu jabs?

The dreaded “crit”

I hate the term “crit” by the way. Somehow it seems to diminish what was (or should be) an important episode in my teacher training. But it's difficult to avoid when everyone else is using it.

Anyway, I had my crit last week. It went pretty well and I was happy with the feedback I got. Just a few general comments about the process....

• a single visit to a single class is hardly representative of what a typical lesson with that teacher is like. I made no attempt to bribe or threaten my S3 class into co-operating for my crit (the lesson went much like most of my recent sessions with them) but they were clearly “playing the game” with a visitor in the class. I had forewarned them there would be a visitor who was there “to inspect the quality of teaching in the school” but no more than that. However, for the most part they were collaborating in the success of the lesson. I appreciate there are time/budget/resource constraints on tutor visits but the “single visit with three weeks' notice” approach is guaranteed to produce skewed results – and therefore not produce the most useful feedback to the student.

• Speaking of feedback with tongue in cheek... if there aren't any areas of development specifically mentioned on my feedback form, does that mean I'm perfect already? And if there are no areas for development, how can my performance be only “satisfactory”? When I used to appraise performance in a commercial setting I would *always* cite at least one area where someone could improve, even if their overall performance was terrific. Not very motivational not to, in my opinion.

• My soon-to-be erstwhile colleagues in the maths department were incredibly supportive in the run up to the crit. They offered more help and advice than I could possibly absorb in such a short time. Thanks loads!

I'm probably in a minority here...

..... but that's not a first.
I've been spending some time with my portfolio over the last few days - impelled towards it by the impending tutor visit (I'll come to that some other time). The phrase most commonly associated with the portfolio so far is "box-ticking", and that's not just at Jordanhill but also out there in teacherland among recent-ishly qualified teachers. And yes, there is a reasonable amount of box-ticking required, literally as well as figuratively. So far, I'm in the majority camp.
Where I suspect that I diverge from the majority is in the value of the tasks we're being asked to complete for the portfolio. Bearing in mind that the idea, I believe, is that teachers should be reflective practitioners and that they should adapt to the context in which they find themselves, I have found the portfolio tasks very helpful.
For instance, I found the primary school visit a real eye-opener. The levels of differentiation and the variety of work going on simultaneously in primary classes puts the secondary classes I observed (and taught) to shame. The responsibility handed to P3 children for there own learning was remarkable compared to that offered to S3 pupils. I know that there are reasons for this and could spout them back at you if required, I'm assuming that's not necessary. But in the context of the portfolio, having observed the difference, some weeks later I had to return to set out those comparisons in words. Which was a very useful exercise. I had to re-read my notes, recall the circumstances, synthesize the learning and spit it out in way that makes sense, to me at least.
Similarly, my placement is at my local, rural school. I've lived in the area for years and know lots about it. But had I ever really considered the implications for education in the area? No I hadn't. My own children go to a different school, for reasons too boring to go into, so maybe I would have thought more about it if they had gone to this school. So thinking about the catchment area in terms of employment prospects and the local economy was a useful exercise.
This isn't to say I've done a great job on the portfolio tasks - there's so little guidance about what's expected that it's difficult to be sure. However, I can be confident that I have at least thought through the issues raised and that I haven't treated it as simply a box-ticking exercise.
Note to self: should pass on some feedback about this I suppose, including .... why not allow/encourage people to complete portfolio tasks online? Via some sort of diary? Or blog maybe? I could have done the lot by now :)

S5, Intermediate 1, Friday afternoons and all that entails

First off, a disclaimer. Over half of my 14 strong S5 Intermediate 1 group don't want to be there. They are only there because they have to choose something from that particular column. All of them have studied maths in the past (funny that, what a coincidence) but they haven't studied any of the other subjects in that option column. So they are doing maths. About a third of them (you'll notice that I'm approximating here, I know that you cannot divide 14 into thirds, not with humans at least, seeing as how they are discrete objects) already have a General pass at Standard grade. So there's not much they can get out of the course unless they get a grade 1. And pass all their NABS of course. Five or six of the group at Christmas leavers. They can't wait to go by this stage.
I see the class three times a week. First thing on a Monday, when they are barely awake. Last thing on a Friday, when their minds are simply not in the same place as their bodies. And Thursdays, after break. So effectively, they have about 20 minutes of useful time on a Monday, maybe 35 on a Thursday and 20 (max) on a Friday - lessons are 55 minutes bell-to-bell but I'm talking about effective learning time here.
Class dynamics work something like this:
* the ones with General passes at Standard grade can cope with the subject pretty easily, certainly to get a pass at Int 1, if not the grade 1 they need to justify being in the room at all. So they aren't well motivated to work. Typical comments "I'm going to pass anyway, so why bother?" and "I'm 16 and I don't have to do it if I don't want to, you can't make me". Horse/water kind of problem. They like to chat.
* the Christmas leavers really can't be arsed to do very much at all, except write in ballpoint on each others' arms. What's that about? It's endemic at this school. They like a chat too.
* the boisterous boys just like making noise. Sheer poetry, no? Honestly, you'd think they were nine, not 15/16. They don't like to chat. They like to shout.
* the one who has had learning support up to S4 has more or less forgotten how to write (he always had a scribe in class with him through to the end of S4, now he's in S5 that doesn't happen) so he sits and stares. At the wall, the ceiling, the window, he's not fussy. But he is quiet.
* the three who want to work, to improve on the grade they got at Standard Grade, and who have the ability to do so, if they put the work in, well, they struggle along in the face of the scorn, pity, aggression and mockery of their peers. Quite sad really. Unfortunately, they are easily distracted and also like to chat.
So it's been an uphill struggle for me. 15 year old girls who have decided that non-cooperation is their raison d'etre don't make things any easier. They haven't actually erupted into all-out conflagration on me yet, though I suspect it has been close. Keeping the group on task (or at least sufficiently on task that those who do want to work can do so with minimal interruption) has been the goal most of the time. It's taken a mixture of persuasion, cajoling and (only to the right recipient) clear, explicit threat about what will happen if they try to spend all lesson flicking pens at each other). Very tiring and not very satisfying in any kind of meaningful educational way.
The top tips I got for dealing with classes like this are:
* be realistic. You are not going to get 55 minutes of work or concentration out of any of them, let alone all of them. Let them watch a DVD for the last 20 minutes of last lesson on Friday.
* they are much more likely to chatter if they don't understand what it is they are supposed to be doing. Beak everything down into tiny, tiny chunks. Assume nothing. Tell them explicitly to write down every line of every note. Tell them explicitly to show their working, every single time. Do not assume they have read the question thoroughly. Or that they have understood your explanation. Or even listened to it.
* negotiate. Yes, they are pupils, yes, you are the teacher and are nominally in control. But it pays to let them win occasionally: let them listen to the radio while they work if it cuts down the extraneous noise.
* come down to their level. Even more so than the younger children, the S5 pupils dislike someone looming over them. Kneel down to speak to them if they are sitting. I found this out almost by accident: one of them was clearly unwell during the lesson and was basically refusing to work, no matter what I tried by way of persuasion. I decided not to create a confrontation but to speak to her at the end of the lesson. Quietly. Which I did, squatting down in front of her desk and explaining in a soft voice that I could see she wasn't feeling well but that I felt it was unfair of her not to attempt to do any work, especially as the people she sits next to have much greater need for practice than she has. Bingo! Completely different attitude: eye-contact, acknowledgement of what I was saying, confrontational stance dropped. Gotta remember that one.
* use humour. Have some fun with them. They are nearly adults (despite appearances!). You can have a joke with them, though pick your ground carefully :)
Overall I probably learned more from S5 than they learned from me, but that's down to motivation as much as anything else.

One week to go

Which, yes, clearly illustrates that I've been ignoring this place for a wee while. Put it down to conflicting interests. However, I may not have *posted* anything but I have extensive notes of things I was *intending* to post. And still may in some form or another. The road to hell and all that.
Anyway, I have four more days in school before Recall Day and then party time. Sorry, did I say "party time"? I meant independent study week and assignment 1... I think I've got the evidence I need for that little project. I've even got a theme. If I told you it was based on a best-selling business book from the 20th century would that give you any clues? Chocolate will be available to the first person to make a correct guess... (Copyright 2008 David Muir).
So today's objectives are:
* plan three lessons for tomorrow - I only have three (yay!) but they are lessons 1, 2 and 3 which I think represents cruel and unusual punishment for a student teacher. The first one is with my S5 Int 1 group, which I last saw lesson 6 on Friday.... what a marvel of timetabling that was. Actually I'll write something about S5 Int 1 classes separately.
* create two worksheets, for S2 and S5. The S5 one is no big deal - they are doing speed, distance and time so this is a case of makign up a variety of questions. S2 however are really struggling with areas of composite shapes, which means I have to fight with OpenOffice to put together a worksheet with appropriate shapes looking approximately right. Sounds simple. Isn't.
* type up a couple more sections for my portfoliio. Rather stupidly, I'd dismissed this a few weeks ago as reasonably straightforward and put it to the back of my mind. I then became suddenly more focussed when I had a tutor visit looming and realised I had to get something down on paper and printed out. I am an obsessive note-taker (former journalist.... it's a hard habit to break) so it's not like I don't have the material. It's just not in a suitably structured form.
* walk the dogs, with my son. Beautiful crisp, cold day. Dry, yippee!

Halfway through. Already?

That's right, first placement is halfway done. I'm going to have a think and post something more lengthy tomorrow or over the weekend but for now..... it feels like I've only just arrived but I'm already halfway done. Or should that be half-baked?
A couple of things to reflect on for today:
- a potential disaster avoided with my 5th year - one of the more vocal girls was texting under the desk, everyoen else was on task and going well so I decided to leave it until the end of the lesson before speaking to her, rather than risk a set-to in the middle of class. Within minutes she was in floods of tears and had to be taken out by one of her friends. She was so upset one of the office staff volunteered to drive her home. I don't know what news she'd received that had that effect but I'm glad I didn't just put my size 10s in when I first saw she had her phone out. Of course, she shouldn't have had the phone out.... I know that, just saying I'm glad I thought about how to react rather than not.
- I stood behind the most chatty of the 3rd year group for pretty much all the time they were working independently, which sort of worked to keep them subdued. Not perfect, but better, though the downside is that it takes me away from some of the people who really do need more help and who don't ask for aid.

What modern children are brilliant at :

* Forgetting stuff. They can understand a concept one day, cope with all the examples given, work out questions independently. Next day: boom! It's all gone.
* Not listening. As in:
Teacher: “Now do questions 1 to 3 on page 140 in your class jotter, working independently.”
Within one minute...
Pupil 1: “What questions do we have to do?”
Pupil 2: “Which page?”
Pupil 3: “Is that homework?”
Pupil 4: “Do I do this in the back of my notes jotter?”
Pupil 5 “Are we doing this in groups?”
....the list goes on.
* Never bringing a pencil to class. Going to school today? Not expecting to have to write anything down then? No need for a writing implement....

Short term thinking

I've been planning a lesson at a time (well, occasionally thinking about the one after too) but hadn't been keeping an eye on the big picture. So I'm suddenly running out of time to finish a chapter with S3. In fact, I won't get it finished within the allotted time and am going to have to plan to fit the rest of it into a sensible time without rushing..... To be fair, the classroom teacher admitted she'd not been focussing on this either. But my lesson is to keep the overall timetable in sharper focus and plan a series of lessons, not just short term.
I did get some other very useful feedback though, which I'll try to put into practice: structuring notes, telling them how to draw things, working examples more thoroughly. Back to that tiny chunks thing.

Volume control

I raised my voice with S3 yesterday in order to get them to shut up. The result was suitably gratifying: instant attention and some startled/horrified looks. Mustn't do that too often though. I've also been working on silence when someone insists on talking when I want to. That's paying dividends also.

Questions, questions

Been re-reading “Towards Dialogic Teaching” (Alexander) and “Asking Better Questions” (Smith). I've been asking questions but only a very limited range:
Who knows the answer?
What is the answer?
Is that the right answer?
Who agrees with....?
So I'm going to try to use a wider range of questioning techniques from Monday onwards –
How do you know that's the answer?
Can you explain to me why that's the right answer?
Can you tell the class how X has come to that answer?

How do I handle a pupil who won't speak?

In my S2 class (along with the four boys who barely shut up), I have two girls, both of whom are very quiet. They will whisper between themselves occasionally and one will give an answer to a question if asked directly. The other, however, will not. When asked a direct question, she will stare back at me like a rabbit in the headlights and then look down and say nothing, even if I know she knows the answer (because I've seen her do the sum correctly in her jotter). I've tried silence but all that happens is that eventually one of her friends will provide the answer. I don't feel comfortable pressing her, as I suspect that might end in tears (literally). It's not just me apparently, she's like that with her regular maths teacher and also her English teacher. So..... two questions:
1)how should I go about getting her to contribute vocally? Nothing has worked so far, even asking simple questions along the lines of “What's the answer to question 4? You can just read it out from your homework”, even though I know the answer is there on the page and it is correct.
2)should I be demanding more of her at all? If speaking in class is so uncomfortable for her, why would trying to force the issue be a good thing? Might it even be a bad thing?
On top of that is the assessment issue: how can I know if she is learning when she won't speak to me? I can know that the answers she is writing are correct – I've watched her work through some of them – but it's possible she might be collaborating on homework outside of class (though I hasten to add I have no evidence of that). I can watch her working by standing beside her but if I try to intervene one-to-one, she simply clams up again.

Things that occur to me in the middle of the night

Things that occur to me in the middle of the night

It's funny how things come to you in the wee small hours. Funny in that I don't recall it happening that much in my previous existence. The question that floated into my mind just as I was going to sleep last night (and thus prevented sleep for some while after that) was: am I trying to avoid confrontation with pupils? And the answer is probably yes. So why? It's not like I haven't got experience of dealing with difficult issues with adults. I've been through the warning/discipline/sacking route in the past when it's been called for, so why am I not being sufficiently assertive with teenagers who haven't done their homework or are continuously misbehaving in class? I think there are two reasons, both of which I can work on:
with adults, none of these issues ever comes as a surprise – if the issue is performance-based then there would have been plenty of informal coaching/reminding/chivvying/questioning long before it ever became a formal issue. So usually the problem either improves or goes away (I.e. the person leaves) before it becomes a formal issue. And when it does become a formal issue, I would make sure I was properly prepared and had all the angles covered (even the pipeline welder with the iron bar was something we'd considered before I handed him his papers!). With pupils, incidents can be much more spontaneous (misbehaviour) and require an instant response. And a calm and measured response. I guess that's why they bang on about having a discipline plan at the ready...
with adults, I would know the person much better and have a pretty good idea of the emotional response I was likely to see – I would have worked with them and related to them as adults for some period before we reached this stage. With pupils I am not so sure about the likely response because (a) I don't l know them so well and (b) well, they are children and their emotional responses are more likely to be unpredictable.
What I have to bear in mind at all times is that I am an adult, I am in control and, by and large, the pupils know that – they will know that they haven't done their homework or that they are behaving badly -and that they can expect to get a row for it. It shouldn't be coming as a surprise to them....
So I decided I should put theory into practice with 3B. This had the potential to be a tricky lesson as the class teacher was absent and the cover wasn't familiar with the class. I was assertive, quietened down the whole class when necessary (they still make a reasonable amount of noise at the best of times but that's partly due to pure numbers) and dealt with the individuals. The only one who required a second warning was duly despatched to the corridor to wait while I gave him a row. Next lesson, he'll have to start with a clean sheet but I'm expecting better behaviour than today.
I also made a point of practising the art of silence. That worked well. Muwahahahahahaha!

Another day, another dollar (not)

2R – yet another truncated lesson thanks to the Remembrance Day assembly, though given the subject of the assembly, perhaps I shouldn't complain too much. So in the half hour available, I did a quick recap of multiplying and dividing fractions and set them off on the remainder of the Topic in Nutshell questions. I took the view that's I'd already covered conversion of top heavy fractions in the previous three lessons and wasn't going to do it again for the whole class – so I put the explanation of the stages needed to do it up on the smartboard and told them to refer to that before asking me about it.
Some of them still don't get fractions or any part of them (ho, ho). Either I'm explaining everything badly (which the class teacher assures me is not the case) or they don't pay any attention (which is possible I suppose) or their minds are incapable of grasping even the tiniest element for longer than 30 seconds. How else can you explain a number of pupils asking “How do I do this?” about the first question, every single time? I'll be fascinated to see how they get on with their end of unit test on Friday. I reckon there's about six who will fly through it, five who will struggle to get anything much right and the rest somewhere in the middle.
On a positive note, the two serial disrupters were on very good behaviour (though they are both on behaviour cards for the week) even if they could have done more work.
Note to self: need to emphasise H&S issue with the laptop – someone tripped over the cable on the way out, parting it at the transformer. Should put the laptop on the back table before dismissing.
3B – a better effort. Kept it simple. Kept them at it. Kept in focus. Can't give the beggars an inch....
1C – effective enough I suppose, if lacking in imagination. They can all cope with it but some are quicker than others. I need to think of some ways to better stimulate them.

3B – this is undoubtedly my most challenging class. The classroom teacher left them with me at the beginning so I could get used to getting them to settle and set them off. They were restless and took a while to settle. I gave them a quick run through of areas of kite and rhombus and set them some questions, and set off round the class myself to check on the homework. Most had attempted the home work and had a reasonable stab at it but I still had to spend time with individuals explaining where they had gone wrong. This took too much time and took my attention away from the class for way too long: result was rising noise and too much chat. I only just got round to check all the homework (with the class teacher's help) and, frankly, most of them didn't get enough done during the lesson without me being on top of them. Those who hadn't done homework have to present it completed to me at start of lunch tomorrow or it's two lunchtimes in detention....
So, overall, the attempt to check on homework while they worked wasn't very successful. I will try it again, but not with that class – there are simply too many of them, the range of abilities is too wide, the tendency to talk is too high. Also I had to rush to get through all of them. On the plus side, as the teacher pointed out, they will be more aware that I might be checking homework. So her advice was to concentrate on those pupils who are most likely not to have done anything or to have struggled, rather than try to get round the whole class. That approach pre-supposes that I have learned something about the class and its pupils.... I don't think I've had that time yet (though I've now got a few pointers about who to concentrate my homework monitoring efforts on).
Need to be more organised (having names of pupils distributing folders ready right at start for instance), keep a better eye on time, know what times the bells go, talk more quietly (sometimes, to make sure they are listening). I thought I also ought to have spent a bit longer on the kite/rhombus stuff, though the teahcer was happy with what I did, pointing out that the class ought to be entirely comfortable with the idea of multiplying two numbers by each other and dividing by two. Yeah, I suppose they should. Don't spoonfeed, make them use their brains!
2R – revising addition and subtraction of fractions, including converting mixed numbers to top-heavy fractions. Again. They are getting it slowly. Minor (irritating) lack of concentration by the remaining two serial miscreants. Otherwise they mostly get on with it. More revision tomorrow (yet another truncated lesson due to Armistice Day) before test on Friday. 5E doing their NAB on Friday so I'll have them full-time from Monday... I'd better sort out what I'm going to do with them.
Key question: am I'm being critical enough (of myself)? I think so. I'm getting useful constructive feedback from classroom teachers as well but I think that mostly I'm aware of the shortcomings anyway. What I'm failing to do adequately is make the necessary change in mid-flow. For instance, I realised today with 3B that I was taking too long to get round the homework, but I felt I had to carry on and complete it, even though I was aware I wasn't spending enough effort on the whole of the class. I'd bitten off a big chunk and had to continue chewing it..... So, smaller chunks and more flexibility when required.
PS It looks like 3B is going to be the class for my crit... oh joy.

In some more detail

I was idly reviewing some of the things that I've seen and done with S3 last night and thought I'd record my thoughts in more detail.
Overall noise level in the class. On Wednesday, this wasn't an issue while I was addressing the whole class but rapidly became one once they were (supposedly) working independently. The rapidity with which the noise level grew should have warned me that something was – they were making noise because they didn't understand how to do the problems. It took the class teacher to point this out..... Meanwhile, I'm trying to work with individuals and am not concentrating on (or even particularly aware of) the rest of the class. I have a pretty high tolerance of ambient noise when I'm focussed. So I didn't do anything about the noise levels, which grew and grew until the class teacher quietened them down. I was also unaware of some of the low level misbehaviour going on across the room and the class teacher had to deal with that.
After getting some useful feedback before Thursday's lesson, I changed my approach somewhat. If the class wasn't getting it, then what was I doing wrong? I needed to change my approach to something more suited to the circumstances. I had been trying to explain the topic by working on the whiteboard and asking the class what the next stage should be. However, I realised that this was allowing those pupils who didn't get it off the hook. I needed some way of ensuring they were all paying attention. So I reduced the proportion of questioning (on the basis that the only people likely to give me the right answer were those who already knew how to do it) and broke the worked examples I was doing into very, very small chunks and led them through the problems, being very specific about what I expected them to write down. Two worked examples later, I set them off to work independently again. There was some discussion going on but mostly about the task – because they knew much better what they were supposed to be doing. I also made a deliberate effort to track background noise and quietened the whole class before it became an issue: general shushing every now and then rather than letting it build until someone had to shout.
Behaviour management. I've also realised that even the low level, irritating-but-not-punishable-by-death type behaviour needs squashing before it breeds something more serious. Blindingly obvious really but in that Wednesday class my mindset was “I'll concentrate on the teaching right now unless they are behaving really badly.” In retrospect that was a mistake, so come Thursday's lesson, in addition to keeping an eye on class-wide noise levels, I also came down on individual behaviour and actions – off-topic chatter, failure to listen to instructions, simply not getting on with work, disrupting others. I spoke firmly to three boys and deployed the “teacher look” on a couple of other pupils... all of which had the desired effect and made the lesson much more pleasant for me, and probably for some of the better behaved pupils. It was also interesting not to react immediately and then bring it up later: I'd instructed the class to turn to page xxx and do question y. As I then walked to the back of the class, I heard one boy say “what are we meant to be doing?” to his neighbour. I filed that one away and then brought it back up five minutes later when he was chattering off-topic: “And another thing, you weren't listening to me...”. He hadn't realised I'd heard and his reaction was a picture. So behaviour management moves to front and centre in my thinking.
On to today's teaching:
1C – yet another truncated lesson due to another fire alarm and extended break. So I didn't get through very much but what I did do was done competently I think. PT's feedback (it's his class) was that he thought I seemed much more confident than the previous lesson (when I was thrown by being given an unexpected wrong answer).
2R – more on multiplication and division of fractions – lesson planned by class teacher, delivered by me. Test run for X's laptop – pupil is visually impaired and previous had to have everything produced for her is large font and she had to sit at front of class, which she hates (she frequently rejects help as it sets her apart from her classmates). Now everything on the teacher's PC screen or on the smartboard will be displayed directly in front of her, on the laptop. Even drawing or writing on the smartboard will show up. So she won't have to sit at the front of the class any more, as long as she has the laptop and focusses on it. They are gradually getting the fraction thing, though it's slow work.
Contact made last night by tutor who will be doing my crit... yikes!

A much much better day

S1 – introduction to areas, recapping counting squares, they know how to do this already (or at least I didn't find one who didn't).
Learning points (for me):
- keep an eye on time (the lesson was cut short due to a fund-raiser coffee morning, I didn't keep track of time and ran right up to the end. And indeed would have overshot had the class teacher not reminded me)
- need to know names (again)
- be ready when they come up with an answer which I'm not expecting. They'd happily been throwing the expected answers back at me all lesson – it was a recap after all – and I was then left flat-footed when someone came back with a wrong answer.
S3 – more on areas of composite shapes. I went through a couple of examples, line by line and told them explicitly what to right down and how to set it out. And it seemed to work. They really don't get through a great deal of work in a 55 minute lesson but I think most of them (if not all) got it by the end, even if some of them are still weak on which numbers they actually need to substitute into the formulae. I'm pleased with the progress they made though. We'll see whether I'm right to be so when they come in with their homework on Monday.....I was also much more on top of the discipline side of things: regular “shushing” kept the noise levels within bounds (it probably helped that they were all working harder) and I squashed firmly the three boys who decided they could do other than they had been instructed talking over me, disrupting other pupils and clearly not listening).
Overall I feel much more positive about today than yesterday..... but there's so damned much to try to keep on top of. Unlike say training adults, you have to be aware of and respond to all the behaviour and motivation issues...

Time for a micro-rant

It's 2245. Since I got home I've cooked two meals for a total of four people, done some ironing, exchanged a few words with the members of my family who have fewer responsibilities than me right now (I'm not bitter, they'll catch up) and since then I've been trying to find a way of drawing composite shapes (such as squares with semicircles on the top or rectangles with a quadrant on one side). Because I think my S3 class (well, let's be clear about this - about 60% of them) need to practice splitting composite shapes up into their components so they can calculate the area or perimeter. And I need to be able to display it to them in class. Sounds easy?
I digress. My reason for needing this is irrelevant. I'm working on my laptop at home. Using OpenOffice. I do not have access to the school network yet (though that has been promised to me since the induction block). The school computer's behave *very* strangely when you try to import anything from a flashdrive. The school computers use Microsoft Office. There are compatibility issues, which vary from machine to machine within the school (they don't have a standard set-up, for the very good reason that not all the machines are capable of running the latest versions...). And people are understandably a bit sensitive about allowing someone else to access "their" computer in "their" room using "their" login. Gods, I spent years telling people to do just that, it's basic computer hygiene: don't let anyone use your PC with your login, don't let anyone import files without your say so.... blah di blah di blah. *I* know I'm OK but ..... I digress again.
I'm not technology illiterate, despite my age. I was peddling online data before the WWW was invented. But I'm expected to do a lesson at 9.00am tomorrow which involves using the ICT resources available. And I simply do not know whether what I have done will work. If I had access to the school's network and software resources, I would be in a much stronger position. But apparently I can't get access to the school network until I'm authorised by the senior depute. Funnily enough, my access to the network is not his top priority.
Questions (for discussion):
- most (probably all) commercial organisations can create a network login for a new employee (even a temporary one) within 24 hours. Why can't a school do that?
- few organisations would require the authorisation of the second-in-command to create a new user on a network. Why would schools lumber the senior depute with a sign-off job that would be better suited to the level of (say) a Principal Teacher?
- and why should it take more than a day between authorisation and creation?
Meanwhile, I'm stuck trying to create presentations which I can only hope will work once I've created them with OpenOffice, saved them in a compatible MS format, transferred them to a flashdrive, plugged that into a school PC and which I'm then sincerely hoping will be accessible without trashing any hardware.
If you have doubts about that last point.... I have a nice-looking 1GB flashdrive which I was given by the nice people at the SSTA. So far, so good. In order, presumably, to assist in my brainwashing there are two partitions formatted onto this flashdrive. One is available for data, the other is spoofed to appear as a CD-ROM drive which autoplays when inserted into a USB port, bringing up some useful information for n00b teachers and about the SSTA in general. Some computers only recognise this spoofed CD-ROM drive, rendering the data partition useless. Others see the autorun feature of the spoofed CD-ROM drive as a dangerous self-installing, mad, dangerous and potentially viral nasty, so they refuse to accept it. I have tried everything I know to delete this partition but because the machines read it as an undeletable CD, I have failed to do so. This flashdrive has crashed one computer at my placement school already when inserted. Thanks SSTA. I don't think you thought that one through very well. If you have speakers attached to your computer, turn them down. The next thing you hear will be the sound of that flashdrive being crushed under my heel. I think I'll join the EIS. And buy myself a flashdrive that works as a portable medium. Damn. Gonna cost me money.
But only if I need to: I want to use ICT, I'm happy to use ICT but if I don't have access to ICT, I'll just use the whiteboard.

Ugh

Not my greatest day today. Felt thoroughly deflated by lunchtime, courtesy of a pretty poor lesson with the third year. It's a big group (32) with a wide range of ability. Right now, it appears to me that the range of ability splits neatly into two: those who get it and those who don't. What was really demoralising was that after the lesson, the same number of pupils seemed not to get it as at the start. Plus I didn't handle some of the classroom issues very well: I let the noise level climb too high while I was helping individuals and was too soft on the pupils who had not done their homework.
The second one of those is more easily remedied - I'll just have to make them do it in lunchtimes...
The first is issue is a bit more complicated. For one thing, I've been accustomed to working in noisy environments (try working in a newsroom in the days of manual typewriters...) so I wasn't really aware that the noise level was rising. But the main issue, which the class teacher made me aware of as it hadn't impinged on me, was that they were making a lot of noise because they really didn't get it (perimeters and areas of compound shapes) and the conversation that starts with one pupil asking the neighbouring one "How do I do this?" slides swiftly through "I don't know either" to something entirely irrelevant. So tomorrow it's back to the drawing board to get them back to a level at which they can achieve something. Because they need to be moving on to the next stage pretty soon - volumes of prisms. Three dimensions sounds like fun when they can't cope with two...
On a slightly more positive note, I ended up teaching 2R again because their regular teacher wasn't feeling very well - still in the room but asked me to lead. I thought I did OK in the circumstances as I hadn't done the lesson plan and didn't know what the slides said. One pupil got sent out but that was his problem not mine - I warned him as they were coming into the room (not at random, he deserved it), he continued to misbehave, so I took him out and gave him a final warning and he still carried on so the class teacher sent him to the PT.... he'll be out of that class for two weeks now, working solo in the PT's room. The rest of them managed to get the hang of dividing fractions pretty well.

Day two... bit more work

A little more "meat" to reflect on today, if that makes any sense.
I "covered" 2R doing multiplication of fractions, including conversion of mixed numbers into "top heavy" fractions (I'm sure that wasn't the phrase we used when I learned this stuff, but no matter). I did a short reminder of how to convert mixed numbers into top heavy fractions (which the absent class teacher had asked me to do) and then set them off on the work she had set for them. Behaviour of the class was nigh on perfect, even the four notorious boys were on task and well behaved: I made a point of praising them for what I gather was uncharacteristic behaviour. However, I can't claim the credit for this - as it was a covered lesson, the principal teacher of maths was in the room and he has a sobering effect on all the potential miscreants. Someone should bottle whatever it is he has, you could make a fortune selling it to student teachers, probationers and probably some more experienced teachers too.
Learning points:
- a large proportion of kids find fractions difficult
- a smaller but significant proportion of kids won't listen to you when you explain something at the board
- not one will stick their hand up and say they don't understand something (so I really ought to stop asking "Is everyone OK with that?" and "Does everyone follow me?" right now)
- it's hard to pick up a topic in the middle when someone else has started it - I was worrying that I was trying to teach different techniques to the ones their regular teacher had used. Which might not sound like a bad thing but (and I refer back to the first learning point) I don't want to confuse them any further
- real life examples are useful, I should have used them more - for instance, when trying to explain why 2 1/3 = 7/3. Pizza slices would have come in handy at that point. However, it was only several hours later that I had a flash of the blindingly obvious and realised that the way to illustrate multiplication of fractions could be through asking how many pizzas someone could eat in a given length of time: if Greedy Graham can eat 1 1/3 pizzas in an hour, how many pizzas could he eat in 2 1/2 hours. That example might need amendment for realism.
I taught 3B myself, to my own plan, introducing them to a new topic about areas and volumes by reminding them about the areas and perimeters of rectangles, triangles and circles. I'll cover the issues I picked up first and then get onto the feedback from the class teacher:
- 32 is a lot of children to keep an eye on and keep on task
- even though they have covered rectangles, triangles and circles several times before, throw all those shapes at them at once tends to flummox them. As a result, we got through what felt like very little during the lesson
- but see also the learning points from 2R: some kids won't listen when you go through examples and won't admit they don't understand until you set them a question to do - and then they immediately need help
- setting out working clearly and consistently is a good thing. I have to get down to their (mathematical) level and not skip the steps I think of as obvious. It's going to take practice, writing out every stage of working and doing it in a consistent fashion every time
- knowing pupils' names is a good thing. It would help me a lot (and make me feel like I'm acting in a fairer manner) if I knew everyone's names - it's too easy to pick people to answer who (a) have their arm up and (b) whose name you know. But this rapidly reduces to a small number of pupils.....
My patient observer added a few other comments (if this appears blunt, it is my fault, the feedback was given in a positive and diplomatic manner; I'm the one reducing it to many fewer words):
- I could have done a better job of establishing what they knew at the start of the lesson instead of jumping straight into revision and maybe getting the level wrong. It also means I means an opportunity for more probing questions rather than the simple "What's the answer to this?" and "Is he/she right?" which I did find myself employing
- I could have used real life examples better and in a more discursive manner. I had intended to but rather messed up by running on too quickly and then having to haul myself back to talking about examples......
- showing working, demonstrating you know all the stages of a calculation, being able to set things out in a consistent manner matters. Not just for the teaching... but also for examinations. Also, I don't tell them exactly when and exactly what I expect them to take notes about. And they need telling, otherwise all they will copy will be my inadequate workings (not inadequate because they are wrong but because I contract two or three steps into one because that's the way I see them). They need to show workings to pick up marks....
Overall the plan for 3B is back to the drawing board... the didn't cover anything like as much as I'd hoped/expected them to so I'm going to have to re-plan tomorrow's lesson.

One day down.

So out of my first six week placement I am left with 27 days of kiddie-contact. How so? Well, the last Friday is a recall day so it's back to Jordanhill for structured reflection, a game of five-a-side football and maybe a wee Christmas drink to celebrate our survival.
Meanwhile, I had a pleasant and reasonably easy day today - my PT andtemporary colleagues are very relaxed and keen to ease me in gently. So I spent three lessons observing (and helping out) some of the classes I am going to teach over the next few weeks. These are:
* 5E (intermediate 1), who are significantly quieter first thing on a Monday than they are last lesson on a Friday, when I last saw them during the induction block. A good chunk of this lot will be leaving at Christmas and maintaining their attention might be an issue come December. Otherwise, they have all the hallmarks of 15 and 16 year olds.... chips on shoulders, attitudes you could beat with a stick and a desire to question every instruction. Should be fun.
* 2B which is a mid-level year 2 group with one pupil with a specific vision problem (which requires forethought in preparing lessons and resources) and four boys with non-specific disruptive problems. I suspect that dealing with these four is going to be the biggest challenge with this class. They normally have someone from Behaviour Support in the room to help with these four
* 3R, another middle band class with 32 in it (the biggest group I'll have). The diagnosis of the class teacher is that they are potentially noisy, but not nasty. But with 32 in the room, as soon as you try to concentrate on one pupil, they all just start chatting. There's one pupil who is significantly behind the others and is only in with this group for behavioural reasons (to keep him away from the set with lots of like-minded pupils in it) so he'll need particular attention.
I spent the rest of the day (and what will probably turn into a large chunk of this evening) preparing for teaching tomorrow. I've got 3R and 2B and will be meeting up again with 1C, though their regular teeacher is going to finish off their current topic before I get let loose on them.
It looks like I'm, going to be teaching areas and volumes to three out of the four classes in the next three weeks, which will probably either make me an expert in the field or drive me mental.

Teaching practice starts on Monday.....

..... gulp!

Welcome

As the first post... this is pretty much just a placeholder. However, the intention is that this blog will expand into an online journal and reflection on my experiences as a student teacher. I'll post up some more about my background later which may help to explain a little about where I'm coming from (I'm at the mature end of the continuum of student teachers, to put it euphemistically).
The idea is that this blog will be a reflective companion to this one, which I will use to build up both a record of the lessons I have taught and links to handy resources. This is also intended as a resource and reference point for the classes which I will attempt to teach - hence the separation of this reflective bit from the classroom-focussed blog.