Observations

This is a blog post I don’t know if I will actually post. It might be too self-indulgent, not something I actually want other people to know I’ve written through this process. It reminds me of doing the reflective writing as part of my PGCE. It’s that kind of mindset.

I’ve had two days off work sick, due to a cold I picked up last week. I know why I picked it up: I had an observation window on Thursday – Friday. Yes, an observation window. The whole process of observation is so nerve-wracking, and simply getting everything ready is incredibly stressful. Although observations are useful, and should be reflective of your everyday teaching, you put so much effort into your planning, you make sure all your books are marked up to date, you make sure your data is accurate and presentable, and you have to explain these to observers who come for 20 minutes. 20 minutes! And based on that, they make a judgement on you.

It’s not just me. I’ve seen my NQTs, who were nervous but not over-wrought for their first observation (when they knew the lesson I would be observing) become nervous wrecks at the thought of an observation window. Having just checked my school emails, many people were off sick. The atmosphere of pressure and stress is seriously getting to us. The way I see it, OFSTED come in every three years, for two days. My school is putting each individual teacher through an OFSTED every term!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the observation that bothers me. It’s the window. The two day window. Observations are fine, they are useful. It often takes a second or third pair of eyes to point out something that could make your teaching better. Observations make you reflect critically on your classes – when I was observed with my Year 8 class last year, it was my only non-exam class, and so they took a slight back seat. Being observed with them made me re-focus my efforts with them. Observations also boost your confidence – a good observer will point out your strengths and the pupils’ learning.

It’s the window that bothers me. 2 days of not knowing when the observers will come in to judge you. I can understand why schools might do a mock-OFSTED, and that’s why the unions have agreed to the two-day window, but the reality of a school using it three times a year is breaking us. Or pushing us out. I just hope – perhaps in vain – that SMT will take notice.

Learning Styles

I have to admit, I've never paid that much attention to Learning Styles, thinking more about Teaching Styles (i.e. my own!). But recently, I've found it coming up more and more, thinking about a class that I'm struggling with. I think they are probably mostly kinaesthetic learners, and I'm planning on spending some time on Monday finding out.

Learners can be categorise as mainly:

Visual - Approximately 29% of people have a visual learning preference.

Auditory - Approximately 34% of people have an auditory learning preference.

Kinaesthetic - Approximately 37% of people have a kinaesthetic learning preference.

Most people are a mixture of these. The problem with English is that we tend to teach in a very Auditory - Visual kind of way, and that might not be the best for our learners.

In addition, learners tend to process information in one of two ways:

Wholists - process information in wholes
Analysts - process information in parts.

In addition, there is the whole realm of Multiple Intelligences, a theory posited by Howard Garner. According to him, there are eight different intelligences:

Interpersonal - communicating with others
Intrapersonal - for self-discovery and analysis
Linguistic - for reading, writing and speech
Mathematical/logical - for maths, logic and systems
Visual/spatial - for visualisation and art
Bodily/kinaesthetic - for touch
Musical - for rhythm and music
Naturalist - for studying and classifying the natural world.

Finally, there is the Honey and Mumford Learning Styles questionnaire, which will help you work out if you are an Activist, Reflector, Theorist or Pragmatist.

Try some of these links for questionnaires to help you to work out your and your students' preferred learning styles.

http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire
http://www.brainboxx.co.uk/a2_learnstyles/pages/roughandready.htm
http://www.brainboxx.co.uk/a3_aspects/pages/VAK_quest.htm

Half Term Fun

I don't know whether it's the time of year, my new job, or that I'm just less organised this term, but I seem to have brought a lot of work home with me this half term. I've spent most of today either marking or planning, and I've still not done everything I need to do.

Today has obviously been the day to crack on with work - we've had a rest for a couple of days, we want a rest at the end of the week and... it's raining. My HOD thought so too, and has sent me 12 emails during the course of the day! So although a day slumped on the sofa with a good book and some Sky Plus was tempting, I knuckled down and made a list.

This is how the list read at 9.30am this morning:

Year 8 APP Marking
Monday Planning
Y11 Media Mock Marking
Media SOW Planning
Y10 Controlled Assessment Marking
Y11 Revision Day Planning
Sort out teaching file
Sort out handbag
Sort out Stanley
Y11 Coursework Folders

I've been good. I've not checked Facebook once. And apart from a long-ish lunch break, I've tried to stay away from distractions. Despite the fact that I hate marking at home, my to-do list now reads:

Y11 Coursework Folders - they only need the individual scores putting on, I haven't actually got any marking to do...
and Y10 Controlled Assessment marking. I just couldn't face it after all the other marking I had to do.

These jobs will have to be done on another rainy, miserable day. Probably Sunday afternoon, knowing me. But I've broken the back of it.

The thing about working at home during the holidays is that you can do it if you guard yourself against distractions. I tend to find I'm fine as long as I don't start reading that book, or traipsing round the internet looking for 'resources' which I know will be quicker to make myself. If you're working in school, I find, you tend to want to leave, so get less distracted.

The problem is, that you're bringing work home. And that's never a good thing for your work-life balance. We all know how important work-life balance is: if you type 'Teaching' and 'Work-life balance' into Google, you come up with over 6 million hits. 6 million! There are books, courses, articles, advice...

These Top Tips come from Teaching Expertise, and although I don't agree with all of them ('me time'???), I totally agree with number 2.

1. Think of your day as 24 hours. Decide how much time you are going to spend sleeping, eating, being with family, working, leisure and time for 'me'. This isn't always easy, but try just 10 minutes for yourself at first, and build up.
2. If you take work home, set times when you will deal with this and be strict about it. Don't get distracted and then allow the work to drag on all night/weekend. Make sure you have a 'stop time' so that you can relax.
3. Once you've built up on 10 minutes 'for me', try to spend 30 minutes
   just doing nothing. If you can, let your mind drift.
4. Clear your desk every evening and be less hassled when you get in the next day.
5. Keep up to date with technological short cuts. Ask your IT department to advise.
6. Delegate more - be honest, is there anything you can pass to the school office, or the support assistants?
7. Ban sticky notes from your desk. You'll be distracted and react to them, rather than completing anything.
8. Refuse to argue over small things. It's a waste of time to bicker and causes more stress in the end.
9. Above all - strike a balance: work out when you have to give 100% and when just 70% will be OK.

Persistence with Behaviour

I have a Year 10 class who I'm really struggling with. They are a very weak class, but, of course, their target grades are all Cs or above for GCSE. Their confidence in English is very low. Their behaviour leaves a lot to be desired.

Every week, I have this class 4 times - twice on Monday, then once on Tuesday and Wednesday. At least one of those lessons will descend into total chaos, and I will end up feeling like I have never achieved anything with them, and that I am a terrible teacher.

I know I'm not a terrible teacher: my results and relationships with pupils and staff are testament to it. I'm not a super-teacher. But, as I keep telling this Year 10 class, I care about them hugely.

Yesterday afternoon, the behaviour in the lesson was terrible. Granted, we had to cope with a fire alarm going off when we had just started our controlled assessment. But from the moment the pupils came into the room, they were as high as kites, shouting across the room at each other, refusing to start their work and so on. Yes, I teach in a challenging school in a very deprived area. But each of those pupils know what is expected of them!

I stuck to the school guidelines - Choice, Warning, Detention, Removal. Fortunately, no-one got to the removal stage, and eventually they settled down. But this consistency has taken a long time to achieve. Here are my pointers:

• Meet the kids at the door and get them to sort out their uniform before they come into the room.
• Have something for them to be getting on with as soon as they come in - at least for the first few weeks. It's a pain but it does get them settled.
• Be strict - have high standards, and they will respect you for it.
• Make sure every detention is followed up and completed, even if you have to escort the child from their class to your detention.
• For any detention longer than 10 minutes, ring home. At the start of term, ring home as soon as anyone puts a foot out of line.
• Reward all the good pupils.
• Ring home to praise good pupils/good work etc. It makes you feel so much better!
• Follow up everything. If you have to have a pupil removed from your room, make sure they complete the sanction with you at the first available opportunity.
• Remember you catch more flies with honey than vinegar - be generous with your time and energy and you will reap the rewards.
• Think long term - if you keep going with your detentions and sanctions, you will reap the rewards. As soon as you let them get away with it, all your good work is gone!
• Get pupils to catch up on work they have missed - they will soon realise the benefit of doing it in the lesson.

Keep going, it gets better after Christmas!

Writing effective Schemes of Work

When I first started teaching, there seemed to be an expectation sold to me on my PGCE that all schools would have complete, intact, schemes of work which would provide you with instant lesson plans and many many resources. In reality, this was not the case. In reality, I am glad this was not the case. In reality, pre-packed schemes of work are not much use to the kids we teach.

English is a skill subject. This means that, while there are certain things you must cover, your job as a teacher is to improve the level of skill of your pupils. Take a class, any class. You know the kids in there. You know their needs and strengths, their levels and achievements. You know, because you have assessed them, what they need to know.

A one-size-fits-all scheme of work is not going to fit these pupils. Ready-written schemes of work, in all honesty, make us lazy teachers, and stop us teaching to the needs of your kids.

What I have found does work, however, is a kind of medium term plan, with adaptable ideas, and hopefully, eventually, a bank of adaptable resources.

Say you have your topic, e.g. Gothic Horror. You know which skills you need to focus on. You know what the assessments will be for that unit. A scheme of work typically lasts 6 weeks. Using your assessment focii, your knowledge of your pupils and your knowledge of the topic, the best thing to do is to put together a list, preferably ordered, of your ideas for teaching that unit.

A list has so many advantages over a sequence of lesson-by-lesson plans. It allows for creativity, for adaptability, and most importantly, allows you to teach to the needs of your class.

So, less of the one-size-fits-all; more of the lists!

Ideas for Working with Assessment Focuses

• Laminate each AF onto A3 and string them up on a hook in your classroom. Whichever one you are currently working on, hang it up.
• Make sure the pupils have copies of the AFs in their books for reference.
• Link your Learning Objective to the relevent AF.
• Print out each AF onto card. Give pupils the cards and get them to rank them in terms of difficulty - perhaps working towards a Diamond 9. This is great for the start of the GCSE course.
• Or, more simply, get pupils to card sort the AFs into Speaking and Listening, Reading and Writing. They find this harder than you might think!
• Use the AFs to structure a group learning activity - set up learning stations for target AFs around the room. Pupils have to know their targets to know where to go!

Assessment Focuses for GCSE - AQA New Spec

It's interesting to see how these have been changed to fit the demands and requirements of English from 2010.

Speak to communicate clearly and purposefully; structure and sustain talk, adapting it to different situations and audiences; use standard English and a variety of techniques as appropriate.

Listen and respond to speakers’ ideas, perspectives and how they construct and express their meanings.

Interact with others, shaping meanings through suggestions, comments and questions and drawing ideas together.

Create and sustain different roles.

Read and understand texts, selecting material appropriate to purpose, collating from different sources and making comparisons and cross-references as appropriate.

Develop and sustain interpretations of writers’ ideas and perspectives.

Explain and evaluate how writers use linguistic, grammatical, structural and presentational features to achieve effects and engage and influence the reader.

Understand texts in their social, cultural and historical contexts.

Write clearly, effectively and imaginatively, using and adapting forms and selecting vocabulary appropriate to task and purpose in ways that engage the reader.

Organise information and ideas into structured and sequenced sentences, paragraphs and whole texts, using a variety of linguistic and structural features to support cohesion and overall coherence.

Use a range of sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate punctuation and spelling.

Recall, select and communicate their knowledge and understanding of media products and the context in which they are produced and consumed.

Analyse and respond to media texts/topics using media key concepts and appropriate terminology.

Demonstrate research, planning and presentation skills.

Construct and evaluate their own products using creative and technical skills.

Assessment Focuses for GCSE - AQA Old Spec

Reading

(i) Read, with insight and engagement, making appropriate references to texts and developing and sustaining interpretations of them.

(ii) Distinguish between fact and opinion and evaluate how information is presented;

(iii) Follow an argument, identifying implications and recognizing inconsistencies;

(iv) Select material appropriate to their purpose, collate material from different sources, and make cross references;

(v) Understand and evaluate how writers use linguistic, structural and presentational devices to achieve their effects, and comment on ways language varies and changes.

Writing

(i) Communicate clearly and imaginatively, using and adapting forms for different readers and purposes;

(ii) Organise ideas into sentences, paragraphs and whole texts using a variety of linguistic and structural features;

(iii) Use a range of sentence structures effectively with accurate punctuation and spelling.

Key Stage 3 Assessment Focuses

Because I refer to them all the time...

Assessment Focuses for KS3

All your answers will be marked for these areas:

Reading

AF1: Uses a range of strategies, including accurate decoding of text, to read for meaning.

AF2: Understand, describe, select or retrieve information, events or ideas from texts and use quotation and reference to text.

AF3: Deduce, infer or interpret information, events or ideas from texts.

AF4: Identify and comment on the structure and organisation of texts, including grammatical and literary features at text level.

AF5: Explain and comment on writers’ uses of language, including grammatical and literary features at word and sentence level.

AF6: Identify and comment on writers’ purposes and viewpoints, and the effect of the text on the reader.

AF7: Relate texts to their social, cultural and historical traditions

Writing

AF1: Write imaginative, interesting and thoughtful texts.

AF2: Produce texts which are appropriate to task, reader and purpose.

AF3: Organise and present whole texts effectively.

AF4: Construct paragraphs and use cohesion within and between paragraphs.

AF5: Vary sentences for clarity, purpose and effect.

AF6: Write with technical accuracy of syntax and punctuation.

AF7: Select appropriate and effective vocabulary.

AF8: Use correct spelling.

Speaking and Listening

AF1: Talking to others - Talk in purposeful and imaginative ways to explore ideas and feelings, adapting and varying structure and vocabulary according to purpose, audience and content.

AF2: Talking with others – Listen and respond to others, including in pairs and groups, shaping meanings through suggestions, comments and questions.

AF3: Talking within role-play and drama - Create and sustain different roles and scenarios, adapting techniques in a range of dramatic activities to explore texts, ideas and issues.

AF4: Talking about talk – Understand the range and uses of spoken language, commenting on meaning and impact and draw on this when talking to others.