Week 13, observations, textiles demonstrations and bioplastics...

 Monday was my first formal observation. My uni tutor came in to see my lesson with the year 8s and their pop-up books. I felt quite nervous but well prepared I had planned my lesson and readied my resources it was just the behaviour management I was worried about as this is a tough class. The lesson was probably my best lesson so far with that class but still I felt didn’t go great due to some of the student’s behaviour. My tutor spoke to me after the lesson and gave me a pretty good report. He suggested things that need working on and things I had missed. I was really annoyed at myself because one of the things he picked up on was that I don’t give clear timings for activities however this is something I am good at and almost always do, I guess I forgot due to nerves. Some of his suggestions I thought were good and I will take them on however my mentor gave me the good advice of ‘knowing your audience’. This class is a hard class to teach and I felt some of his suggestions just would not work with that class due to behavioural and SEN issues although they would work really well with some of my other classes so still really appreciated the advice.

Tuesday I had my year 7s and decided to take on some of my tutors advice by giving  the students something to do whilst I take the register so they are focused as soon as they walk through the door. I had 2 statements on the board of things I would like them to think about as they were settling and listening out for their name. I asked them to think about all the new skills they had learned and what they feel most proud of. After I took the register we had a bit of a group discussion about this as students put their hands up and gave their thoughts. I felt this worked well and will try more activities like these in lessons. The students then got on with finishing their boxes. Some of the higher ability students have finished already so I had planned some extension activities, the first being a self evaluation of the work, a form a self assessment really. Then I asked them to work on packaging for their products using manufacturing nets which also brought some numeracy to my lesson, brilliant! In the afternoon I had the year 9s who are carrying on making their toys, I handed out production journals for them to fill in throughout the lesson. The journals were for them to assign roles in the group, write about who has being doing what and at what level they are working and then deciding as a group how things can be improved, a bit of self assessment, peer assessment and literacy all in one a activity, I’m getting the hang if this! Last lesson I was with the year 10s and it was now my mentors turn to give me a formal lesson observation. They have just starting working on their new projects for their GCSE and are in the initial stages of coming up with an idea for their project as they have a fairly open brief. I used this lesson to go through the marking criteria so it was easier for them to understand how to get top marks then though a group discussion and a powerpoint presentation we talked about how to focus their ideas and then be able to write an appropriate brief, after this I let the students just get on with their work giving one to one help where needed. My mentor gave me some good feedback and will give me my observation form back next week.

Wednesday I had year 8 textiles again and I said I would take the second hour and demonstrate how to do appliqué, seen as I had only learned the technique last week I was feeling pretty nervous. Due to it being near the end of term and Christmas concert rehearsals pretty much taking over the timetable meant that my class was diminished down to a lovely size of about 8 students. The demo went fairly smoothly, I felt I had covered pretty much everything that needed to be covered, stressed health and safety and let the students talk me through how to set the machine up giving me the chance to check their understanding. As my class was so small I didn’t have to worry about the lack of machines as for once there were more machines than students so they were all able to get on and practice. I was really impressed with some of the skills in this class and their ideas so again left feeling quite sad that I won’t be able to see their finished products. The teacher gave me great feedback from this lesson and was impressed that I had taken on her advice from last time, to talk slowly and be clearer and more focused; she said she could see definite improvement…good news! That afternoon we had professional studies, all about getting literacy into lessons this time, I found it quite helpful and am finding I am getting better at including literacy and numeracy into my lessons. Finally last lesson the year 7s had a cover lesson, I said I would take them and plan their lesson. I got them to start their evaluations and then start working on their nets. A couple of students finished so I gave them a Christmassy activity, they designed and made little 3D Christmas trees out of paper.

Thursday I gave a short presentation about what the Design world is like after school. For those who are wanting to continue on to University I told them about how different it is to A level and explained about all the new techniques and technologies they will be able to work with. I then spoke to them a bit how a Design office works and also about how setting up your own Design business works. The students asked a few questions then just got on with their work, they seemed to be in a fairly sombre mood as they were all pretty far behind in their coursework and had a deadline the next day.

Friday at Goldsmiths we were back to our first subject specialism and learning about plastics. The first half of the day was alright, I know a fair bit about plastic already and didn’t really feel like I needed to play with the plastic to learn anymore although it was quite fun to heat and bend the acrylic. The afternoon however was brilliant, we were told all about bioplastics and were shown how to make our own out of various food ingrediants. A great cross curricular way to educate the students about plastics as it obviously covers materials and food but also biology. The cornstartch bioplastic I have seen before and seem to have started being used commercially but is still more expensive than other plastic so will be a while before it is wildly used. Because the bioplastics are technically just food we thought we would eat some and see what it tasted like, turns out it had no taste but I loved the thought of being able to get the students to make their own plastic and then eat it although I would hope this doesn’t lead them think that all plastics are edible!  Definitely the best workshop session we have had and I will be trying to make some of the plastics at home!

Week 12, losing the love...

 Monday I was back with the year 8s and decided to make this lesson the lesson I tested out my ‘handling collection’ for my PARPA assignment. I found out 2 new students had joined my class now making it much larger than it should be for a workshop and one of those students has been moved as his behaviour is so bad he can’t be around certain students. So I went into the lesson already feeling low in confidence but I also felt I had planned it well and was keen to try out new methods of behaviour management after advice from my mentor and from the professional studies. I started the lesson with a recap on what we had learned last time, this was for me as formative assessment to test their understanding but was also a chance for the students to tell the two new students about what we had learned so they could catch up. I had asked the students last time to bring in a mechanism from home, I was really impressed with some of them especially the student who brought in a door lock and handle. I placed a few mechanisms on each table and asked the students to discuss them in their groups. Find the mechanisms and figure out what is going on, I also asked them to think about if the mechanism could be used for something else. I gave them about 5 minutes per table then asked them to swap so everyone got a chance to see and play with all the mechanism. I then asked them to bring them all back to the front and organise them into piles of what they thought were complex and what they thought were simple with the intent of showing them that just because something looks complex doesn’t mean it is. The second half of the lesson I gave them a short design brief, I asked them to invent a device for waking someone up early in the morning. The devices must have at least one mechanism, I wanted to see if they could put their knowledge and understanding of mechanisms into their design ideas. I then asked them to present their ideas to the class. This class is a particularly hard class in terms of behaviour and other issues. I soon realised that the ‘handling collection’ was lost on them and I should have given them specific tasks, kept them focused and definitely not let them move around the classroom. Most of my mechanisms came back broken which I wouldn’t have minded if they were broken by exploration as that is kind of the point of the ‘hands on’ learning. However they were broken through sheer lack of respect, they were thrown around the class, ripped up and smashed. After speaking to my mentor we decided that I would try again with this class and next time get them to sit at their table and draw out the mechanisms, not the product, the mechanism to see if they can figure them out and how they work. I had a really bad day this Monday, the year 8 class didn’t really help but neither did being shouted at by one of the senior teachers twice for things that had nothing to do with me. I went home feeling really annoyed and needing reassurance as to why I had chosen to go into the teaching profession.

Tuesday, the year 7 class was a cover lesson but I went in to help out as I haven’t been with the year 7s for a while. They were unable to do practical so were given worksheets and asked to draw a manufacture plan for their boxes. So they had to think right back to the beginning when all they had were 4 pieces of wood and give a detailed account of how they got to where they are now naming tools and processes. Some of the students found this quite hard so I encouraged them to help each other out and the lesson went quite well in the end. I then had a year 10 class with my mentor. They are starting their GCSE project so my mentor spent the first half of the lesson explaining what briefs they allowed to choose and how they are assessed. I then gave a Powerpoint presentation about finding a need. GCSE students have a tendency to design something they want just want just because they want to make it without any real thought behind it so I wanted to explain to them about why it is important to find a need. If they want to make a chair that’s find but I want them to really think about how many chairs are out in the world already so what is the point of making another one? What makes theirs different? Why does their chair deserve to exist in the market? After talking to them about this I asked them to mindmap some first thoughts on a project and from looking at these thoughts I think what I had said made sense to them. Last lesson I had another cover lesson where I went in to help out. They were the year 9’s making a children’s toy. They were really disappointed about not being able to carry on with their practical so we tried to make sure that their cover work was fun and sort of relevant. We gave out worksheets with a games cover for a games console on the front and asked them to label parts eg. logo, rating etc. We then asked then to explain why a cover is so important, then gave them a brief to come up with 3 cover designs for a game they have made it, so they had to think about characters, stories and superpowers. If they finished this they were to design their own superhero along with costume and super powers. After the students initially complained about having to do a worksheet “that’s boring Miss”, once they got started they actually seemed to enjoy it and came up with some great ideas. 

Wednesday my school was closed due to the strike, judge me if you will for not taking part in the march to support the strike I decided to stay at home and get on with some work and actually had quite a productive day. 

Thursday, I had the 6th formers. Year 12 I just went in to give some one to one help with their initial coursework. I was really impressed with the amount of work they had produced and especially impressed with a girl who I gave some advice to last week and found that she had taken that advice and had done the activity I suggested she should do and got great results from in. This brought some of my love for teaching back. Year 13s were just getting on with their work so I just gave help to those who needed it. It is really nice to see how the students are getting on with their project, today made me quite sad that I won’t get to see the finished things.

 

Friday, back at Goldsmiths I had my first textiles workshop and I felt pretty lucky as the sewing machines we were using is the sewing I have at home, the one I bought a few years ago for £30 at a flee market and never really fully knew how to use. Rose told us what we were going to being doing in the workshop and I felt lucky again as we were making cushions and learning different types of embellishment including applique, my year 8s are designing and making cushions and learning how to do applique…handy! After a few test drives on the sewing machine we tried out a really cool technique, cut and slash which involves at least 3 pieces of materials, sewing a series of straight lines through then cutting in between the lines allowing the bottom materials to show through. As a group we loved this, it look great and had a really nice textural feel to it. We were then shown how to do applique which was fairly easy, then we were free to experiment. We were given dot and cross paper with measurements on for each part of our cushion and had complete freedom of what materials we could use so as indecisive as I am it took a good half an hour to select just one material and then decide on a colour. Once we had all of our pieces ready we started making our cushion’s but by this point it was the end of the day so we have to finish them at home.

Rubbish Penguin...

As it is the last week of term and also my last week at my first school placement I have decided to make my last year 7 lesson a Christmasy one. After a festive quiz I will supply each team with one bin bag, one metro newspaper, one piece of A4 white paper, one piece of A4 yellow paper, one black felt pen, some scissors and some sellotape. This is all they are allowed to use and with these materials they must make a penguin much like the one I made whilst testing out this idea, quite cute I think! The team with the best penguin will win some Christmasy chocolatey treats. I'm excited to see their creations, will post pictures of theirs later!

Lonely London Bike #2...

I'm using this as a test shot as well I think as I'm not sure that this classes as a lonely 'bike' due to the fact the it is only a wheel. I do however really like that the wheel is bent, it makes it look sort of slumped which adds the lonely/sad kind of emotion. Still, more to come...