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.
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