During the first three weeks of placement I have learnt how important it is to challenge pupils. One of the ways in which I have been working on challenging my class is through intelligent questioning in the plenary or during mini- plenary of the lessons as I have found that questioning is a good way to stretch the children’s knowledge and a good indicator of what to cover in the next lesson. Questioning identifies misconceptions and/ or gaps in knowledge. My AT (Tom Denton) has helped me with this as he has given me ideas of higher order questions that I can ask to individuals in order to challenge their knowledge.
“Effective teachers who obtain an outstanding grade from inspectors add value to lessons by using special approaches and features. These are usually on top of the normal good teaching approaches and may include … intelligent questioning involving every pupil.” (http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/outstanding-lesson-11943)
I aim to get in to the habit of intelligent questioning early on in my teaching career so that it becomes natural to me and my class and so that I can improve my questioning skills in order to challenge their knowledge.
I have realised how important it is to engage children during lessons and after numerous attempts of trying to engage pupils in different ways I came to the conclusion that the children like doing things with their hands. As a class they are mainly kinaesthetic learners and so I have been trying to plan more physical learning. I have been trying to begin all my lessons by giving the children something to do whether it be writing/ drawing on an individual whiteboard or holding an object or getting into order using numbers etc. I find that it helps them to concentrate more and and become more engaged with the teaching.
“Start with something from which children can have an immediate experience – something to DO.” (Moyles, 2007, Open University Press)
Making the lessons more hands on is also something that I have talked about with my AT, we have concluded that we should always have something in the children’s hands during the lesson introductions. At first we feared it would take their attention away from the learning and distract them but with more behaviour management and expectations being clearly laid out the children are learning to keep the items on the floor until they are told to touch them.
In addition, in the last 3 weeks I think I have struggled to make all lessons challenging for all pupils I have found that to do this I need to adapt my teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils and ensures that all children are able to access the learning. I have found that one way to make the learning accessible to all children is through differentiation. “Differentiation is an inclusive strategy that enables teachers to give each child appropriate access to the curriculum. In English this is done through: the use of differentiated questions during whole class lesson; the use of ability groups; the support of an adult; or by having different levels of difficulty in tasks.” (Boys and Spink, 2011,26)
Throughout my observations I have been told that I need to differentiate not only in the above ways but I also need to explicitly differentiate my success criteria so that that individual children know what is expected of them, this will help me when completing my assessment and monitoring as I will clearly be able to see if the children have met what is expected of them.
I have also found that it is vital to be able to deal with inappropriate behaviour. I had an incident in the classroom in which I was left very shaken up and wasn’t able to stop and think about what to do to resolve the situation. It is situations like this that I feel this placement is preparing me better for and helping to find ways to deal with these situations. This experience also left me feeling as though I didn’t want to be left alone with 30 children again, but when I did return the next morning I realised that every day is a new day with new challenges and it is important to leave behind any anxieties that might arise from yesterday and enter the classroom with a fresh start and the opportunity for the children to feel confident in my classroom.
“Effective teachers who obtain an outstanding grade from inspectors add value to lessons by using special approaches and features. These are usually on top of the normal good teaching approaches and may include … intelligent questioning involving every pupil.” (http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/outstanding-lesson-11943)
I aim to get in to the habit of intelligent questioning early on in my teaching career so that it becomes natural to me and my class and so that I can improve my questioning skills in order to challenge their knowledge.
I have realised how important it is to engage children during lessons and after numerous attempts of trying to engage pupils in different ways I came to the conclusion that the children like doing things with their hands. As a class they are mainly kinaesthetic learners and so I have been trying to plan more physical learning. I have been trying to begin all my lessons by giving the children something to do whether it be writing/ drawing on an individual whiteboard or holding an object or getting into order using numbers etc. I find that it helps them to concentrate more and and become more engaged with the teaching.
“Start with something from which children can have an immediate experience – something to DO.” (Moyles, 2007, Open University Press)
Making the lessons more hands on is also something that I have talked about with my AT, we have concluded that we should always have something in the children’s hands during the lesson introductions. At first we feared it would take their attention away from the learning and distract them but with more behaviour management and expectations being clearly laid out the children are learning to keep the items on the floor until they are told to touch them.
In addition, in the last 3 weeks I think I have struggled to make all lessons challenging for all pupils I have found that to do this I need to adapt my teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils and ensures that all children are able to access the learning. I have found that one way to make the learning accessible to all children is through differentiation. “Differentiation is an inclusive strategy that enables teachers to give each child appropriate access to the curriculum. In English this is done through: the use of differentiated questions during whole class lesson; the use of ability groups; the support of an adult; or by having different levels of difficulty in tasks.” (Boys and Spink, 2011,26)
Throughout my observations I have been told that I need to differentiate not only in the above ways but I also need to explicitly differentiate my success criteria so that that individual children know what is expected of them, this will help me when completing my assessment and monitoring as I will clearly be able to see if the children have met what is expected of them.
I have also found that it is vital to be able to deal with inappropriate behaviour. I had an incident in the classroom in which I was left very shaken up and wasn’t able to stop and think about what to do to resolve the situation. It is situations like this that I feel this placement is preparing me better for and helping to find ways to deal with these situations. This experience also left me feeling as though I didn’t want to be left alone with 30 children again, but when I did return the next morning I realised that every day is a new day with new challenges and it is important to leave behind any anxieties that might arise from yesterday and enter the classroom with a fresh start and the opportunity for the children to feel confident in my classroom.
