Wednesday, December 07, 2005

One placement down........a life time of problems to come.

Phewwwwwww Glad that section of the placement is over (for this term at least). Today I had my last crit and I am so relieved that it is over.

I did not do as well as I hoped, but at least I passed which is the main thing. But it is really annoying and frustrating knowing that you could have done better. It was last period of the day, with a class that any teacher would have difficulty with. I am disapointed with my lesson content because I had spent ages on it and it did not go down as well as I had hoped. In actual fact, I thought it was utter crap and I am really disapointed with myself. On the positive side, my tutor did notice improvements in my behaviour management and ascertiveness, although they still need a lot of work. It is a good sign that I am showing improving, even although I never got any merits this time, it is always something to work on.

The things that I have learnt from this lesson are:

  • To be more explicit with my instructions. Even 13/14 year olds have difficulty following basic tasks, so make sure you keep things simple.
  • 13/14 year olds like competition.
  • Try not to incorporate too many things in one lesson. Stick to one context, because anything more just confuses them.
  • Keep them busy, idle minds makes chatty and distruptive children.
  • I NEED TO BE THE BOSS.
  • I AM THE TEACHER.

Another point today, my kids in a different class asked me my age. I lied and now have them thinking that I am a really young looking 29 year old. At least they think that I am much much older than them now. It really amused me.

4 comments:

Christine McIntosh said...

What did you do to deserve a last period slot for a Crit? Never mind - next time surely you'll have earned period 2 or some such and will be able to show off what you've learned.
Glad your tutor noted improvements - and I like your notes to self about being the teacher!

David said...

From Ewan via an email to me. (For reasons that will be obvious when you reach the end of his message :-)}

Can you get this to her?:

Love the self-motivation stuff: I AM THE TEACHER. I AM THE BOSS.

I stick them next to my mirror so that I see them every morning. (No, really, I don't, and wouldn't recommend it).

I love your blog. Going to get an RSS feed so that I can subscribe? Ask Uncle David for help - apparently it's simple, though. ;-)

She needs to toggle Blogger prefs so that I can comment, as a non Blogger user.

This is David again. The RSS feed thing is a peculiarity of Blogger. It provides an Atom feed which is a rival system to RSS (sort of) that does the same kind of thing. I subscribe to your blog through Bloglines but not all feed readers can cope with Atom. For this reason, I added an RSS feed to my blog with Feedburner. This isn't exactly "simple", but there's a fairly good guide on the Feedburner site. Give me a shout if you want help or a quick Feedburner tutorial.

Bob Hill said...

I am a retired computing teacher, so I was pleased to see that earlier on you have learnt the lesson not to incorporate too many things.

New teachers have a habit of telling a class everything they know on the topic. Only tell them what they need to know and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

Don't over prepare. You are a teacher, not a lecturer. Teaching should be interactive and go with the flow of the pupils'understanding.

David said...

Bob says: "Only tell them what they need to know and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)"

My emphasis in the above quote - but it looks like Bob knows Lesley. :-)

(Just kidding.. You can apply to me for a Fredo as compenstation if you have been psychologically damaged by this comment.)