A warm welcome back

This week marked the first time back at St Mary’s and for the next few months I will be working in Year 5 alongside a shared classroom. My aim is to improve on the targets set by my Second Placement mentor and build up to a Good if not Outstanding teacher by the end of July.

The first 4 days I spent getting to know the class and was fortunate enough to have taught many of the students during Maths from September to January, and coached both boys and girls in the school football teams. I've been given the progress ladders and mid-term planning overviews to look into and I made it a top priority.

In English, biographies is the unit choice and the students have been asked to research various well-known people, in order to create their own biography of them. It was very interesting to see obvious choices such as football players and TV or Music celebrities but what did strike me was the quality of note taking and after hearing 'ooo I didn't know that about this person' was great because it showed the students there is more to a person than meets the eye.

I am also excited for English because from the April 27th it will use the General Election as the stimulus and I am planning to teach the class how to write a persuasive speech based on the 7 political parties manifestos. By using the BBC Newsround site, it will enable the children to access politics on a low level but give them a chance to have a 'theoretical' say in how they want the country ran. This unit will include videos featuring children interviewing the party candidates, asking why a TV debate matters, what a General Election actually is, and the power of using persuasive language. 

In Science the teacher asked the students what they knew about the life-cycle of animals and reproduction cycle. This will inform us when planning future lessons to ensure the national curriculum is adhered to but taught according to the what the children already know. I already have some ideas about how to facilitate this and am thinking to split the class into research groups and feedback to their peers with written presentations.  It will be used as a Speaking and Listening assessment.

The Music unit is exciting because it's based around Holst's 'The Planets'. Due to Earth not being used as one of the planets (because at the time of composing, everyone thought the planets revolved around the Earth), their task will be to compose their own idea of what Earth sounds like. I am envisaging solo pieces at first then leading to a group ensemble for their peers to evaluate. This will help with marking and using Success Criteria to show progress.

 Next week will be spent team teaching and getting prepared for the big step up to 80% teaching. I am nervous especially as it's getting closer to the final assessment plus I now have a position at the school as a full-time teacher next year so don't want to make too many mistakes. A good piece of advice I was given is - use this time to make mistakes, as there won't be a lot of room for them once in charge of class by myself.

Planning, Planning, Planning

Wow what a relief that is over, are the first few words to spring to mind. Never before have I ever had to plan so much in my entire life and that is saying something.

Organising a staff rota, deciding who is going to play where on a football team, what directions to take when visiting a new place for the first time, even planning my own wedding – nothing can compare to 3 completely different Primary Subjects with two of them being the most important ones of the week.

My week started really well and I had the Year 4’s going rehearsing play scripts based on well-known fairy tales and adding their own adverbs and stage directions. The Pirate Points board was finally completed with all of their faces on Scuba Divers rising up to the top of the sea after finding treasure.  I team taught a guided reading session with the class TA in which we had 10 children using their Reading, Speaking and Listening skills to discuss a funny story about aliens who came to earth after accidentally receiving an invite to watch a film about aliens. This was useful because I can now gauge what comprehension lessons to plan and how to differentiate the learning.

The class behaviour for learning is dependent on incentives and although a lot of it is intrinsic, most of it is still extrinsic. They want to please and know that I am not an easy target- I have been using an App called ClassDojo that is a whole school approach and am not afraid to award negative feedback (which goes straight to parents), but at the same time reward with positive as well. I even brought some prizes for the class Treasure Chest and this has gone down well already.

It is now half way through the course with merely 3 half terms left and even I feel more composed than I did after last half term. My mentor has guided me through the start of my 60% teaching and we have been addressing the standards that I need to meet.

The lesson planning days at University were extremely useful and I took a lot away from each of them. The Maths and English in particular especially as I needed to improve my bibliography to include some extra columns for why and when I would use the books. The tutorial was very useful towards the end of the term and I had a lot to say given a recent CPD training I had only just attended on ‘Closing the Gap’.

I had planned a series of lessons on how to write an adventure story and originally wanted to use the Alex Rider series as a hook especially as the 23^rd February sees the start of a Literacy competition surrounding the character. I am not familiar with the stories and don’t think I could have done it justice- however it is always something to think about for the future. I did decided to use a booklet I found on TES which enables the class to follow a series of tasks that lead up to them writing a story. I adapted it for this year group and added in a twist in which TOP TRUMP’s cards can be made as well based on the hero and villain of the story.

Maths planning was based around the programme Abacus which the school follows and although I had a lot of the planning set for me, I still had to adapt it and find some extra resources to make it my own.

PE was the final subject I planned and I used knowledge from last year whilst I was based as a TA but took the learning of rounders with my class teacher observing. It was in the last Summer term so gave me confidence in teaching a whole class. I have picked out the main learning points of the sport and broken them down into weeks. An assessment will be made at the beginning and will form part of the ongoing progress each child makes. This will give them ownership of their own learning and something to improve on week by week.

Now with only 5 weeks to teach until the next holidays, I am relishing the fact that I am going to be the main class teacher most of the time and will really be able to see how much my time and effort goes into developing individual and class progress.  

That's A Wrap - Film making in Year 6

Normally my blog reflects on many things in my trainee teaching process however today I want to shout out about how impressed I am yet again with my Yr 6's. 

As most of you who read this blog will know, last week I taught the two classes how to make a storyboard for a suspense film,, delegate tasks in their groups of 6 and then film footage in their chosen locations across the school. This week the editing teams have been hard at work learning how to use the ULead Video editing software, and from what I have seen so far has proven that despite any ability in the so-called academic subjects, there are a lot of children who have the technical and creative minds to use a computer and assemble a 2-3 min film that all professional film makers would be chuffed with.

The lesson was very different from the usual IT learning because it is a new programme for the pupils to use. I hadn’t used it before so had to research into it and ensure I was confident in my own learning.

This work was done in small groups and based around Suspense story films. At the end of the lesson they could edit film footage by selecting scenes to crop or cut, crop and paste scenes to make it flow chronologically,

I asked a series of questions based around the technical vocab used in the lesson starter. Most were able to respond accordingly whilst the others gave vague responses which were improved on during the lesson. All children were completely on task and engaged in their work.

This was an overall good lesson and one that I will remember for many reasons. I used lots of vocabulary and ensured it was only relevant to that particular lesson. The children used the terms appropriately and this is key because cut and crop are used for ‘delete and keep only the parts needed’.

I linked to other subjects and made links clear to the children so that they were able to see they were learning transferable skills. This is important because otherwise some children may feel – why bother.

Modelling was essential in this lesson because of the new programme being used although rather than patronise the children by showing them how to do it, I gave them a set of instructions that were easy to follow. Previous IT subject knowledge was used with the simple command keys.

For the next lesson I would refer to the LO at least 3x in the lesson and teach against the SC. Although I could tick off which ones the pupils has achieved, I didn’t explicitly talk about it and check with the children that they could do what was listed.

An assessment opportunity is to use more of the key vocabulary knowledge.

I can't wait to be invited back to the school (whilst on my second placement) to come and watch the final products at the Oscar's event. There is still some minor adjustments to do including the need to add sound effects but I am confident that even if this doesn't get completed until I leave the school, the children in each group can use their skills to finish the job.

Setting the scene: Using the children’s imagination to film suspense stories

Taking part in a filming unit is something I didn’t encounter until I was in College studying for my BTEC and even then I only used the Media Studies students to film a play that I directed. However over the next few weeks I will be teaching every year 6 student how to take a story of their own collaborative imagination, shoot it on school grounds, and edit it using software that is usually only brought in at GCSE or A-Level. This will certainly be a challenge to create 10 films but I am confident after this week’s filming schedule, that there will be 10 short films made that highlight the children’s wonderful work.

Last term the children were asked to work in selected groups of 6 and these were based on mixed ability and also how well they should be able to work together. Everyone had their say and this was managed by choosing one person to be the scribe, one to ensure everyone spoke and everyone’s ideas were written down for consideration.

During the lesson I took for English last week, I taught a lesson on how to put the film ideas on to a storyboard and this was to form the base of their filming. A director from each group was decided and at least one or two camera operators as well. The rest acted in the film.

This was a good opportunity to use my previous career subject knowledge from when I worked in the TV and film industry. I picked up tips and advice on; how to act in front of camera, where to stand for specific camera angles, ensure the continuity was the same when filming from a different angle but same scene, how to direct a scene and get the best out the location and props, which camera angles to choose for specific suspense purpose.

On top of this I introduced them to the correct terms; camera rolling, action, cut, 1^st positions, etc. By giving commands/instructions to the director and camera operators, it made filming a lot easier because the actors soon realised they could only commence acting when told to do so.

Over the 10 films I realised a few were starting to have the same start/ending, so I mentioned this to the groups and recommended they change some of the scenes. The main stories were based on someone going back to find something they left behind, being grabbed by a mysterious something/one, finding themselves locked inside a room with no way out. Although a few of the groups really wanted to stick to their original plans, I was able to highlight the reasons behind changing the story and explained that a different ending will be more suspenseful because the audience won’t see it coming.

During the week I saw a lot of natural talent in both the acting and directing. There were some good moments from those who are normally shy or don’t always have a chance to put their view across – yet in this situation they managed to speak up and show a lot of creativity. This is why this project is a great idea as it allows children from all abilities of learning to showcase different talents and develop new ones.

Hopefully I will be able to see this progress into the end of year production in which the whole year group put on a play that involves not just acting but singing and dancing. Teaching Math’s English and the other written subjects may be a big part of school life and I certainly kept up with doing my best until I went to University but there needs to be a change in emphasis on children only concentrating on these areas. Often getting the best out of a child isn’t through reading and writing but through the use of art. At our school we have an excellent arts programme and there are many workshops, clubs and other opportunities for the children to express themselves creatively.

Next week it is the turn of those who wanted to be film editors to turn the footage into a finished article with sound effects, cut and paste scenes into each other, and select other effects to make a truly suspenseful film.