A Level English Literature

I don't teach A Level Lit, but my friend Carolyn does. Here a link to her blog:

http://cm-englitres.blogspot.com/

There's some fantastic stuff there!

Bell Work and Settling Starters

Teaching in 10 different classrooms this year has given me a lot of challenges. This is compounded by the fact that I am never teaching in the same classroom for consecutive lessons. This means that I often, particularly if the lesson is directly following on from another, arrive at the same time as the pupils.

This has meant it has been incredibly difficult to keep to a classroom routine. If you are lucky enough to have your own classroom, you can have the lesson on the board before the pupils come in, their books are always in the same place, and they know where to find resources they may need. Your computer will be up and running, and you should be able to have a smooth start to your lesson.

In my case, I often have to log on, wait for the computer to load up before I can put my lesson on the board, find my pupils books, which have often been moved, or, in the case of one class, I am continually carrying from classroom to classroom, furnish unprepared pupils with pens, rulers etc, and get the lesson started. We all know that the first ten minutes of the lesson can be make or break, so I've had to work on some strategies to deal with my situation.

One of the most crucial strategies I use is a bellwork task, or a settling starter, as I have also heard it called. The pupils line up outside the door, and I quickly nip in, find their books, log on to the computer, and grab theri starter. Because of the computer issue, it is always on paper. As they enter the room, each pupil receives their starter activity. Pupils without pens can then be quickly sorted out, and usually, by the time they are finishing this task, the computer has loaded and two helpful pupils have given the books out. The task can be glued into books, and we start off by saying that we have already completed one task.

So, what are the kind of things we do? We all know from looking at the Ofsted Criteria, that pupils have to be learning and making progress from the moment they come into the room, but I have to admit that sometimes that progress is being able to settle down quickly and quietly. The tasks are always linked to the content of the lesson, but that might not always be clear from the outset.

Ideas are:

• Punctuation activities
• Words to describe a person - you might have a character from a book, a photo of a celebrity etc. and pupils have to find vocabulary to describe them and write it on the sheet.
• Writing imagery to describe a setting
• Using keywords in a sentence
• Crack the code activities to find the learning objective
• Wordsearches and games for key words
• Quick quiz about prior learning
• A problem solving idea related to a novel. For example, when studying Lord of the Flies, pupils had to write a paragraph explaining what they would do if they found themselves marooned on a desert island.
• How many symbols can you identify? - From a picture list of 20
• Can you define key vocabulary?

Something I have found recently, with a very difficult class, is that pupils like these activities to be colour-coded. My Year 10s know they have to come in and immediately start completing the pink sheet. Their response has been a real eye-opener, and I will definitely be using more colour-coding in the future.

Aaah.... January!

....or should that be, "Aaarrrggghhhh!!!!! January!!!!!"

So we're back from the holidays. Just an INSET day today, a gentle way to ease us into term, but we're back into the full swing of it tomorrow. I must remember that I'll need to re-establish routines and seating plans with my classes, and to expect a bit of a battle as everyone gets into the January blues.

I'm teaching several novels this term - ambitiously, I'm going to attempt Lord of the Flies with my very able Year 8 class. And a novel called Wheels, which my weaker Year 8s should enjoy. Year 10 are starting with Romeo and Juliet, but I'm trialling a slightly different (more old-school) way of teaching them - more later. My Year 11s are anxiously awaiting their results from the November entry, and will be re-set following that, and finally my Year 13s are all preparing for re-sits next week. We'll be back in with a bang!

With that in mind, I'm going to set my self a few New Year's Teaching Resolutions:

• To follow up behaviour issues on the day, instead of waking up at 2am thinking about them;
• To develop my strategies for AFL;
• To start building my evidence for AST;
• To get my Promethean Level 2 Certificate;
• To quit moaning about teaching in 10 different classrooms and just get on with it!

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!