Hi! I am new to blogging and thought that I have reached a great time to kick one off.
I have just reached the end of a rather arduous two years on the TeachFirst programme, and have been rewarded with fully qualified teacher status, a new role in the same school, a grounded core vision of what I want to achieve, and some excellent connections with the other fabulous TeachFirsters,
I teach in a comprehensive school in Yorkshire and can definitely say that I have not enjoyed every minute, I have had some really difficult times and challenges, but there is nowhere at this moment in time that I would rather be.
During the long summer I felt that my first blog should be reflecting on the year just gone, before moving on to looking at the year ahead. So, my main reflections, here goes!
1. Collaboration!
This may sound simple, but I think over my first two years at school I moved from being dependent on others, being reactive to the pupils, depending on my mentor for advice, towards being independent and seeking to make my own mark on the school. The next logical step was to be interdependent and work fruitfully and collaboratively with others, leading to more effective strategies and a deeper impact upon pupils and also colleagues. The idea of moving along this linear course is part of what Stephen R Covey talks about in his book The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People, and I have really found this to be meaningful in my own life.
One example is a competition we are running across the entire humanities department, with monthly prizes for entries from pupils. Just talking about the entries and getting the pupils enthusiastic and building competition between subjects has been really beneficial. This was only possible through getting all the team on board to deliver the competition in their lessons and on the corridor.
2. Fieldwork
Moving on to more specific areas I found that fieldwork has a hugely positive impact upon pupils and their learning, and on myself. From "outside the classroom" lessons like traffic counts and environmental quality surveys, to entire day field trips to the Yorkshire countryside, organising these learning experiences was invaluable to my professional development. The value of field trips can be seen as firstly purely academic; the pupils are able to recognise and interact with the abstract ideas they study in school. Secondly - relationships - what a great way to build them! Thirdly - enjoyment - the pupils should enjoy themselves and have a good day out, associating lessons and learning with enjoyment is also incredibly valuable. We used iPads to make news reports with pupils explaining what they were doing and describing geographical formations which went into the school's weekly news video, it looked incredible!
Something I would also like to mention here is Skype's lessons where pupils are able to engage in a range of lessons using Skype. We skyped a research scientist in Svalbard, the pupils asked questions ranging from human impact and global warming to snowball fights to a scientist stood against a backdrop of pure white Arctic glaciers. Pupils love doing something different.
3. Differentiation
What a challenge! I have found this to be a really difficult area to make meaningful steps in. Making a lesson challenging and rewarding to an EAL pupil who speaks no English, or pupils with a target grade of F with another pupil targeted an A grade can be really difficult. Differentiated resources actually offended pupils, as they checked around them to see if other pupils were given the same as them! Other strategies have yielded better results, but this is an extremely difficult area to adequately plan for. I mention this as I think this is an area that will really increase in importance with progress 8. This is an area I am really keen to work on, incorporating growth mindset language around my explanations of tasks and finding the best possible strategies. David Didau and making the implicit explicit has some great ideas on supporting pupil literacy too- such an important area. Using his ideas I stuck up phrases like "These processes combine to create..." and then I got the pupils to use it in their writing, it worked really well. We went from hydraulic action makes a wave cut notch, to "The processes of hydraulic action and abrasion combine to create the landform a wave cut..." lovely stuff!
4. Peer teaching
I'm lucky enough to work in a through school, and our school is trying to build links between the primary and secondary phase. Over the year I took a group of year tens down to the primary phase during a free period every week to take out groups of year 2's for a rain gauge study in the school grounds. I thought this was really beneficial to the pupils, both groups, through seeing role models and being a role model, growing in confidence and communication. Again building strong relationships too.
5. Time troubles
With the time constraints a teacher has to deal with, it can be hard to take a step back, and think strategically about lessons and create entirely new lesson plans, not just adapt existing ones. This was a key challenge last year and one that needs addressing. Every year we build our skills, knowledge and abilities. This needs to be reflected in our lessons, the core of what we do. I plan on asking myself before the lesson - is this the best possible way I could teach this?
Phew!
Here are just some highlights that came to mind when reflecting on the year. Numerous other things could be mentioned, engagement, behaviour, leadership, all fraught with pitfalls, challenges and promise. Hopefully this year will bring more successes and real positive change for my pupils.
In my next blog I will look at targets for the coming year.
All the best! Thanks for reading!! Any comments, please let me know!
