Monday was my first experience of really taking a class in terms of I had complete control with what I wanted to teach them and what I would like them to do. It was the last lesson of the year 8s pop up book project before they move onto textiles so for the first part of the lesson they were self-assessing their finished books and handing in all their work. I then did a short presentation recapping what they had learned from their project and then showed them a really short youtube clip of Wallace and Gromit at their best playing around with inventions. I explained that I would like the students to in groups design their own invention thinking about all the mechanism and motions they had learned over the past few weeks. They seemed to really enjoy this mini project and some of the results were great! Some students made card models and had thoroughly thought about each part of their invention. However one big issue from the lesson was I realised I really need to work on my behaviour management, they are a good class and got on well with their work but when it came to me talking to them and students presenting their work to each other I found it hard to keep the class silent. I spoke to my mentor about this, she gave me some good advice and I will try a few different methods when I get my new year 8s next week.
Tuesday I started with my year 7s and their wooden trinket boxes, I did a demo of how to paint their boxes to a quality finish then let them get on with it. I thought the lesson went really well and my time management is definitely getting better. That afternoon I had the year 9s and their children’s toy project. I did a demo of how to countersink screws which again like the year 7 class went well. I still think I talk to much when doing my demos which eats into the students practical time so will need to keep working on that. Other than that the lesson went well so I went home on Tuesday feeling quite pleased with myself.
Wednesday I was back with textiles. It was also their last lesson of their cushion project so they were finishing their products and self assessing. I am still not feeling too confident with the textiles classes so decided to just observe and help out again. Most of the student finished and actually looked really good. I was impressed with some of the effort students had gone to, above and beyond what was asked of them. I spoke to the textiles teacher about the lesson next week with the new class of year 8s. We decided I would take the second half of the 2 hours lesson and talk to them about inspiration and initial designs. That afternoon we had professional studies which was all about behaviour management, rather handy for me as that is what I have discovered I really need to work on this week. The two guys who came in to talk to us were great. They are teachers at a school down the road and gave us some great hints and tips and some brilliant stories from when they were training. It was great to get to talk to all the other trainee teachers about this and nice to know others were finding it hard also.
Thursday I took the other year 9 class also doing the children’s toy project. I did my countersinking demo again which was definiately my best demo so far. I felt really pleased with how it went. I was organised, prepared and managed to not talk and talk and talk to them taking up most of the lesson. It was precise and quick and they seemed to understand so that’s also a plus! Still a couple of things to work on but I feel like I am getting there. Later that day I gave a short presentation to a year 12 class about what the design world is like after school. I spoke about presenting to clients, dealing with harsh criticism, handling open briefs and various other things. This seemed to prove quite useful to some of the students, I spoke to a few of them one on one later that lesson and some of the things I had talked about they had started really thinking about and thought about how they could add various things to their coursework to step up the grades. I then had a meeting with my mentor after school. She looked at my lesson plans and gave me good advice on how to improve. I need to add in more specific terms about questioning and assessment, she also told me how to link my lesson plans to the curriculum, the schemes of work and my Qualified Teacher Status points.
Friday we were asked to get up bright and early and be at Goldsmiths for 7.15am. We all met up looking rather sleepy and not so enthusiastic and eventually boarded a coach heading to Birmingham. We were off to the NEC to visit the Design and Technology show. Due to a bit of a strange coach driver who had to ask for directions it took a long time to get there, so we arrived around 12. There were a lot of laser cutters and 3D printers and only really a few that were of any interest to me. I was particularly impressed with a company who had come up with a conductive paint along with educational packs you can use at schools. They had an example on their wall; paintings of instruments which when you touched them their sound was played. I was also really impressed with the Dyson stand and the educational pack they loan out to schools. I spoke to the Craft Council about knitting clubs, I have to teach textiles up to key stage 3 in schools but other than wool and knitting I don’t know much about textiles and don’t have much interest in teaching it. They don’t teach knitting in school but the Craft Council have come up with after school knitting club that are run by the WI and it sounds brilliant so will look into how to get that started if I can in my second school placement or if not then I will when I am in my first proper teaching job.
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