Sept 10th: Day 2 of teaching

A lot of my blog posts will be shorter than they have been recently. This is down to time constraints and the fact that I want certain ones to contain more information, especially if it includes my own teaching and or highlights across my training year.

With that in mind I will continue with my 2nd day at office (sounds a bit like being the President of The United States), and with the smart suits I am wearing, I certainly feel the part.

RISE AND SHINE
There was a paragraph from a book, up on the interactive board, with a series of punctuation missing. The class had to write the sentences in their R&S books and include all of the missing punctuation. This ranged from weve/we've, Ive/Ive, and were/we're, to speech without ''speech marks''. 

MATHS
After the morning registration had been completed, I led the students from my class and into maths. The teacher had been given Assessment Sheets from the Maths Subject Leader, and this was to be the focus of the week. I was given a high ability of students to sit with and monitor their progress, whilst they completed a few pages of printed test questions. The reason for this is to see what strategies they use, whether it be: trial and error, building on what they know, resources used, patterning etc. I noted down any questions that proved difficult, which way they worked a question out, and how they used the sheet of paper in front of them (did they work it out in their head or jot down calculations). I followed this with a series of questions, with the students using whiteboards to answer. This helped me to identify: their way of thinking, how they thought I had said a question, did they copy someone else's answer, and what they did to rectify a mistake. Whiteboards are great because as a teacher I can see a quick way of thinking, how much information is written down regardless of how much is given, and I can see lots of answers all together - which helps to assess if they need more time or can move on.

All of this information will be used to create the next few weeks worth of lessons, and gives the teacher and I, a chance to plan appropriately for the level our class our working at. 

ASSEMBLY
It was singing assembly today and although I am not required to be there, I decided to sit in and learn two songs I had not sung before.

BREAK
My day for being on duty and I have been asked to cover the KS2 area, which includes a lot of space.  I was required to roam around as much as possible and to keep my eyes peeled. 

LITERACY
To start, was a continuation of this mornings rise and shine. I spoke to a few students and explained through any mistakes they may have made plus some things they did correctly. The main part of the lesson was based on another paragraph from the same book, however for the most of it I asked small groups of students (4 at a time), to chose a book and read to me. This gave me a chance to gauge what level reading they are at, what made them chose the book, and whether it is suitable for their reading age or not.
There are two books for staff to write in; one to keep a record of what they are reading and when they got it from the library, and the other is going to be used for an adult to write about the way they are reading, any words mispronounced, and make suggestions as to what they should be reading.

SCIENCE
With the students on the carpet, the teacher asked the students what they know about light vocabulary. 4 pictures were up on the board, all representing some light. Two pictures created a debate surrounding which picture was of a sunrise and of a sunset. It was decided that the one with a red sky was sunset because it's similar to the evening sky. Similarly the other picture had blue sky in the background and this was decided to have shown an early morning setting.

Other pictures included a street lamp, light bulb and a lighthouse, and vocab included refraction, reflection, light source, natural and man-made, light years, rainbow, and electricity.

So much that came out this lesson. The students were asked to write down on different coloured pieces of paper- with each colour representing different levels of knowledge.
GREEN - Confident with knowing the fact on the piece of paper
ORANGE/YELLOW - Think they know the answer but not sure
RED- Would like to research the question on the piece of paper

The paper was on each table and after 5 mins discussing and filling them in, A person was chosen from each table to come up with their groups best choices of paper. Each of them presented their findings (skills learnt from yesterdays Literacy lesson) and the rest of the class fed-back on what they thought.

If GREEN - The class were asked to give thumbs up if agreed with statement
If ORANGE/YELLOW - The class were asked to help fill in some answers if possible
If RED- Most of the class agreed they would like to know the answers

Some statements included; How quick light travels, Who invented the light bulb, How an eclipse works, How does a shadow appear, and Why can we see the moon from space?. 

These were then put up on the Science Working Wall and the class have been asked to research the ORANGE and RED questions, and then fill in a GREEN piece of paper, to let the rest of the class know the answer.
This is a great teaching technique because the students have been asked to think independently and work as a team within the classroom.