One weekend to go before I start my teacher training.

I am chomping at the bit to get started but know that this term up until Christmas is the longest and I should take  and use wisely) in all the non-teaching days I can gather. My fiancee starts her new job at a local Secondary School as English Teacher with responsibility of whole school Literacy. 

I have been swotting up on my English, Maths and History topic as well as reading up on what's going to be happening at Reading University from Sept 15th onward. I go there for the whole week and then at least once a week until February Half Term. 'Letts - Make It Easy' books have been of great use to me and contain a lot of bite-size topics, that have questions o each page with a set of tests at the end. Speaking of Bite-Size, the BBC website has been brilliant and provided me with some helpful hints plus a lot of information that I used in one of my blog pages. 

Making Science fun and interesting

With the start of a new science topic based on electricity and circuits, I wanted this week’s lesson to be engaging and informative. During half term I planned lesson for the first few weeks and wanted to slowly introduce how circuits are drawn, famous scientists and their strange experiments, how to use electricity safely and if possible finish the unit by making a model that can be taken home.

This I feel will give the students a better overall experience and a chance for them to not only learn about the theory but put it into practice and go into secondary school well equipped to plan, observe and evaluate a science experiment.

I had planned to use the IWB however as with all things technical it decided not to have sound at the precise moment I played a BBC Bitesize video. Not to be undone I read out the intended task (based on the video) and asked the students to note down any important information. The sound did eventually come on and this gave everyone a chance to see Dick and Dom from children’s TV, talking about Michael Faraday and showing how electricity can be used.

My only downfall was that everyone ended up hearing the information more times than planned, so when it came to filling in a worksheet (with key information missing) all of them managed to complete it sooner than expected and I hadn’t printed enough sheets for a extended task. In future I will print enough for the entire 2 classes.

I chose to copy something I had learnt at University, which was a KWL sheet. ‘What I know’, ‘What I want to Know’ and ‘What I have Learned’. I had split the class into 5 mixed ability groups and gave clear instruction for each student to take on a set role in their groups. The scribe was to write down ideas whilst the manager had to ensure everyone was listened to and stuck to their roles. Some wanted to take on everything and this caused a lot of arguments. Next week I will give laminated cards with each group members specific role printed; that way all is clear on who is doing what.

On Friday’s ‘catch up’ science lesson I asked our HLTA to get each group to write their KWL in their books. This will cement the learning from the main lesson and more information can be added to the LEARNED section.

As well as science, I also ventured out for two days to the local cinema. Years 4-6 watched ‘Earth to Echo’ whilst the Years 1-3 watched ‘Turbo’. There was a big difference in the management of the two sets of children, most notably I was given a set of 6 children to look after and sit with. This is a good idea because despite their being a more amount of adults, the younger children needed someone to count them in, escort to the lobby for toilets, and reassure them when scared from the dark. My important role when walking to town was to stand in the middle of the road and stop traffic. With over 250 children, this was no mean feat but the teacher leading the entire group was very organised and deployed adults in necessary places.