First Lesson

Wednesday 7th October
First Lesson Reflections

I've spent the previous week and half on my initial placement at a High School near Wigan. I've been observing and filling the role of teaching assistent where appropriate. Last Friday, I was asked if I could research Serif DrawPlus (in particular animation) so that I would be able to help on Wednesday. I spent Sunday creating a spaceship animation. On Monday I was given the choice to teach the lesson on Wednesday and I wanted the opportunity to teach.

The class is a bottom set Year 9 class which consisted of the most problematic students from Year 9. I started off by trying to stamp my authority on the class by making them line up outisde, but the teacher let the students in before they'd all lined up so took it out of my hands. The teacher also took the intro (as previously discussed and arranged). I then proceeded with the started which went pretty well. I maintained calm and waited for everyone to be quiet. I didn't have to resort to putting the timer on the screen and they responded well. The students then proceeded to draw a simple still frame and everyone seemed to have followed the instruction.
I then implemented a mini-plenary and got the students back around the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB). I was trying to then teach them some simple animation. Unfortunately, I was a little more impatient about trying to tell them what to do and didn't insist on silence (although made sure it was quiet). This was due to the fact that time was against me. However, it was soon clear that the students hadn't really listened as I had to explain the same instruction again and again (adding a new frame).
For my plenary I had got some students work to show on the IWB and managed to get everyone at the front but the bell went and I didn't really enforce the students to stay behind. This will cause problems in the future.

In the future, I will make sure I explain myself better. I will insist on silence during my teaching. I will start the plenary 10 minutes before the end and inform the students to save and log off and then lock their screens. At the end, I will enforce any time added on. When showing students work, I will get them to type in their username on the laptop and show it themselves to add more pride. I was pleased with how confident I seemed and hid my nerves well. I also changed tone well and really started with a bang. It was enjoyable overall.
I will start to put together a unit of work for this class.

First Presentations

13th September 2009

On Friday 11th September, we were asked to present our findings on websites regarding e-safety and how good they were as a resource to teaching e-safety to Key Stages 1&2 and 3&4. Each member of the class analysed a different site. We have been asked to reflect on what we thought was poor about some of the presentations (particularly presenting style) and what we thought worked. I had already planned to do this and paid particular attention to the presenting styles.
Firstly, I need to reflect on my own, personal presentation and what improvements I could make;

The website that I had to analyse was: www.thinkuknow.co.uk/cybercafe
This was for Key Stage 2 and was actually pretty good as a resource for children to use and a decent resource to know with a handy glossary which put complex terms into easy to use terminology for the younger generation. Our brief was a 2 minute presentation and this is what I tried to stick to. From watching prior presentations, it was clear that very few people stuck to the 2 minute brief.
Onto my critical analysis of myself.

• I felt that I tried too hard to stick to 2 minutes but in my rush, I ended up coming across poorly and unprepared. If I was to stick to the brief, I should of been more succinct and the 2 minute rule is no excuse to my poor performance.
• I tried to look around at several pupils but kept referring back to the board and then aimlessly looking around rather than a steady gaze at 3 or 4 seperate pupils around the room.
• I was far too static and remained at either side of the board depending on whether I was talking or demonstrating.
• My speech wasn't clear enough
• I didn't really give a point to the presentation such as the one I describe in this blog.

Things I did well;

• I was pleased that I had some interaction with the audience in getting them to shout out what may be a good answer to the quiz on the site.
• It was reasonably short.

Ideas if I were to repeat the identical presentation;

• I think I should have got a pupil (or a team-mate) to enter the information into the quiz as I wandered around the room asking for input to the quiz or simply asking the other students for their input to the quiz.
• Take more time in demo-ing the site and specific areas.
• Speak more clearly
• Face the audience much more.

Overall, I feel I did a poor job but think I could easily improve and I would normally have more time to prepare a presentation.

I will now critique the other presentations. Obviously, I will name no names;

• One presentation in particular had several grammatical and spelling mistakes. Nearly unforgivable!
• Some of the students were barely audible in parts of the presentation.
• Some presentations went on for far too long. In a classroom environment, we would need to stick much more closely to the time we would allocate/be allocated on our lesson plans?
• Poor design in one of the presentations with unnecessary effects on the slides. Simple slides work a whole lot better.
• Some people focused for too long on the web design rather than content, and, although it is important, it doesn't need to be the sole focus.
• When attempting to engage the audience or concentrate on people, some students focused solely on the teacher.
• Some students very rarely looked away from the screen.

- H

Introduction

09/09/2009

Hi,

Welcome to my blog. I will be making a blog of my year in study for a PGCE in ICT and will be sharing my thoughts and challenges faced during the year ahead.
This will include thoughts on how I could improve my teaching methods and references to guides that I have used to improve my performance.
Any (sensible) feedback is greatly appreciated!