Half term baby!

Only musing on on thing today... it's finally half term !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a few posts in the pipeline though, performance management update, SOLO plans, maybe some light 'flipping' with y11/12, can I learn enough Spanish in a year to teach y8 beginners?!

Happy holidays to all of us who have had to wait the extra week :)

Outstanding?......

Ok so this post is a bit different... it is something I often think about and so I thought it might help to get my thoughts down on 'paper'.

It concerns they who shalt not be named, (but whose name begins with O!) and lesson observations. My guilty secret: I have never been 'Ofstedded' personally - I have missed 3 by being on maternity leave or it happening on days I don't work, I have been present during one but wasn't observed. So quite frankly, I am disproportionately terrified of them!

I have obviously been observed by various people in school, and I have received 'outstanding' grades, but, BUT, I have only ever been seen with classes I feel I am my best with. Does that make sense? I don't know how to express it any other way. But you know the classes which are full of nutters, where it takes all year just to create a relationship in which learning can take place, where there are so many 'challenging' ones that to create a useful seating arrangement would mean an additional 15 classrooms, where despite your promises before every lesson not to let them get to you, one of them still manages it???? Am I ever outstanding with these children? I have no idea. I might be, occasionally. I certainly am not with one particular group when I see them p4, right before lunch, their worst time.

Clearly for my own professional development I should ask to have these ones observed shouldn't I?! I think I am being chicken... I think deep down I genuinely do care enough about the kind of teacher I want to be, to be able to handle the outcome. And I really would like to know how to teach them 'better'. But it is bloomin' scary on the surface!

Hmm...dilemma! I have a meeting with the head about Performance Management target setting this week (with him as I am applying belatedly for threshold - yet another thing maternity leave has got in the way of!). A little bit of me wants to set a target of going from whatever I am now to outstanding with my really tough group. Or am I just asking for trouble?!!! Should I go with my other option of forging ahead with new technologies in MFL? (We don't do much in the way of this at my school yet).

I know which is easier, and more appealing, but which will make me a better teacher? And do I have time/energy for this kind of commitment  at this time (lots else going on, not the least my two gorgeous small people at home!). As I said, dilemma. Any thoughts anyone?!

Using word clouds

Ah the lovely wordle/tagxedo etc... I have used these before with students, but more as a production tool, and to persuade reluctant writers to lay pen to paper...or finger to keyboard. This has been great. However reading more on t'internet recently I have been inspired to use them in different ways, so here is take one:

I will be using it with my AS french class tomorrow so fingers crossed. Now I just need to train myself not to waste 45 minutes of planning time making it look beautiful..................

A bit about plenaries...

One of my Performance Management targets over the past academic year has been to focus on developing effective plenaries. I think (although it was a long time ago now, returning to work in post-baby fug!) that I chose it intending on trying out a broader range, as I had previously got a bit stuck in a rut. I must admit that for a lot of the year I wasn't really concentrating on them, more on keeping my head above water and adjusting to being a (albeit part-time) working mum of 2.

And now of course I have my review coming up, and being queen-of-the-last-minute, I thought it might be a good idea to write down a few thoughts... and it'll look impressive and all reflective ;)

Anyway, I did some good ones, and some 'oh bother, we only have 3 mins before the bell, tell your partner 3 things you have learned today' type ones. Some of my favourites were:

Shrink-me/grow-me: Students have to say what non-essential elements can be taken out of a sentence, and then put in new ones to make it as whizzy as possible (whizzy: there is a whole new post in that!).

Same or different?: Put up groups or pairs of words, and students have to say in what ways they are the same and in what ways they are different, this could be meaning or grammatical points. E.g.

Connect 4: put 16 words from the lesson on the board, students have to put them into 4 groups of 4 words chosen by them (could be done by you but I like them to think more!). They must be able to explain their categories e.g. these four are all feminine. A variation on this is to give the students groups of vocab and they have to say what the category is, e.g. adverbs/past participles.

Set your own homework: Pairs or groups come up with what they think would be the most useful homework to consolidate their learning. They can either do their own, or we sometimes vote and all do the same thing. (I should mention I only had a KS5 class last year, not tried this with littlies...yet!)

What's that word?: put up definitions or similes of words from the lesson and students have to work out what they are.

What would they say?: Put up a provocative/inspiring image and students have to suggest what the people might be saying e.g.

 

Hmm, I really do love that ppt design! Time to master Prezi...

Anyway, while I was going through old stuff and digging these out, I got thinking (dangerous...!). These are all great, they involve some HOTS, they aren't just repeating bits of the lesson, they involve collaboration and reflection. But in the post a week or so ago I got a postcard I sent to myself from a TEEP course in July. It said:

METACOGNITION IS KEY: FOCUS ON THE HOW NOT THE WHAT. TEACH STUDENTS HOW TO LEARN! (All in caps, I must have wanted myself to take note!)

Bit of background in case anyone does ever read this: I did an MSc in Applied Linguistics & Second Language Acquisition and focused on learner strategies for my dissertation, it has always been super important to me not just to spoon feed. 

So one of my new aims (although maybe not a Perf. Man. one!) this year is going to be to try and focus more on this during plenaries, not every time but periodically. How did you work today? How did you learn those words? How did you work out what that meant? How did you adapt that example? How did you get to that answer? How did you feel when doing x/y/z? What could you have done differently? What were you thinking? I will be interested to see if it makes any difference!

So here I am... blogging!

It has taken me a long time to get round to doing this, for several reasons. Mainly self consciousness - I never was any good at writing a diary, I edited too much between brain and page. Also time... show me a teacher who has enough of that! And finally, I have been convinced for a long time that no-one would want to read it, that they would think I was arrogant for sharing my nothing-special ideas.

But I think I had it wrong on several counts...

Firstly, this is primarily for me, to record my ideas, to remind myself when work gets crazy of the things I am trying to achieve this year; so that I can see how far I have come, what has worked and what hasn't. Also,  there are LOTS of people out there documenting their ideas, and I love reading them. Some are really are amazing, some are useful, some I would never have thought of, some I do already, some I totally disagree with... and isn't that the point? We all need inspiration from somewhere.

So here goes, I think I will be kicking off in a few days with some thoughts on plenaries!