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!