Time is absolutely flying by. I can’t believe that I’m already half way through Summer Institute. When you’re on the brink of a five week training stint, it almost looms before you like the mouth of a dark cave. But as soon as you’ve taken the first steps, you take a moment to reflect and you’re already half the way through. And it’s no-where near as bad as you’d thought it might be.

This week included one Teach First Seminar (3 hours) and a Development Lead Call (1hour). I visited my new school, had a tour and met a host of new people there, and of course the continuous self-directed learning. I’ll run you through my thoughts on the online learning, then we’ll cover my school visit.

Self Directed Learning – Quality First Teaching

I spent a year as a Learning Support Assistant with SEND students. This was a fantastic experience and if you haven’t already you should check out some of the things I learnt there with my post: Three things I learnt as a TA. We spent a lot of time as a team providing strategies for teachers to help students with SEND. Simple things like providing checklists, or making instructions clear e.t.c.

I loved the notion of Quality First Teaching which is in the Department of Education’s guide to personalised learning.

Focussing on things like: Highly Focussed lesson design, high levels of interaction, an emphasis on learning through dialogue and regular use of encouragement and authentic praise are just a few markers of quality first teaching I was provided with.

I didn’t like the idea of individualising for one students, because I think that Quality First Teaching is not only useful for SEND students, but for all students. Every student can benefit from effective inclusion and appropriate teacher questioning.

It’s interesting, I did a bit of research on Quality First Teaching and there seems to be so many different ideas on what it means. This makes me ask the questions: Are students receiving different levels of quality because ‘quality’ has not been specifically marked out? At any rate, I like the idea of making sure your personal quality of teaching is exceptional to cater for all students not individualised to cater for one.

Self Directed Learning – Memory

I’m a big fan of learning – especially when it comes to piecing together the brain and how we learn. This week we explored how memory works and how students remember things. I have a relatively good memory recall for information – however if you asked me what went on in my day I couldn’t for the life of me tell you. Writing about it is therefore probably quite useful for me…I think memory is fascinating; we explored how the brain is perfectly adapted to provide you with the most current and needed information. To explain this better than I can I’ll link the video we watched by Robert Bjork talking about Storage Strength vs Retrieval Strength.

I’m sure there have been countless times you think you’ve taught something amazingly, and you go to check who understood and your students can’t even remember what you had spent the whole lesson talking about. We do it all the time. So we looked at Hermann Ebbinghaus, and his experiments that came up with ‘The Forgetting Curve’.

Ebbinghaus showed that the more opportunities you gave to revisit past knowledge the higher the chance of remembering the information. This is so useful to add into your planning, and something I’m going to put in. We looked at using spaced practice and retrieval practice, two very good techniques to ensure your students commit their knowledge to their long term memory.

Self Directed Learning – Modelling

Modelling in the classroom involves the teacher giving a clear explanation or demonstration of a skill. It’s funny, when we looked at modelling it basically seemed to me to be the essence of teaching. You explain a concept or skill and then give the student an opportunity to practice it.

I actually found the idea of modelling as an English teacher relatively tricky to put into practice. I thought of modelling exercises like writing an exemplary paragraph, analysing a quote, or giving a speech. We looked at the modelling model of ‘I do, We do, You do’. This enabled students to have a gradual release of responsibility.

Modelling is important because it sets the benchmark for excellence by providing an example of the quality they should be aiming for. It makes abstract concepts concrete, often just telling someone something doesn’t make sense, however, once you’ve seen what you need to do it can be easier to replicate. It also allows for processing time, it gives space to think, process and understand a concept.

I’ve covered a lot of learning this week, and hopefully have given you a glimpse into some of the subjects they’re teaching us. It’s fascinating, by dissecting the theory and research behind processes you can be extremely intentional in the classroom. I’m very much looking forward to putting all these techniques and systems into practice come September.

E-Safety and Social Media

Continuing on with the safeguarding content from last week. We had a look at E-safety for students and for ourselves as teachers. There were a few things that particularly stuck out to me from this section.

Firstly, it can be very easy to become lax with our own social media. Perhaps we accept people we don’t know as friends, or randomly message strangers. But we have to remember that there are people out there with insidious motives and we always have to be vigilant for the safety of our students. They’re vulnerable, and can be easy targets, either not understanding or being naive to the very present dangers that are there.

This links on to my second thought of just how wide and vast the internet is, and how easy it is for dangerous people to gain access to our young people. Teaching them how to stay safe online are skills they will take and use for the rest of their life.

I also thought about Social Media and whether it was a positive thing for our young people. I know personally, I can struggle with social media, either comparing myself to others, and feeling down. Or perhaps feeling like I’m disliked because people don’t like my content or don’t like me. As well as this, is it a positive way to spend time? I have decided to do a bit of research into the effects of social media on young people and whether it is or isn’t a positive part of life. My intuition tell’s me it isn’t.

Finally, I thought about my own e-safety. I know that students will do all they can to find information on you, as the mystique of the teacher intrigues them. A lot of teachers change their name on social media to protect themselves. I wanted to ask your thoughts on this? Is it something you have done? Do you think it’s a necessary precaution – let me know in the comments. I opted not too, I didn’t like any of my middle names enough and changing my name to a game username felt weird. I did ensure that my accounts were as privatised as they could be though.

My School Visit

My day started in relative panic, I’m a tall individual and finding suits is very difficult for me. Anyway, over the course of my year as a TA my suit pants had taken a beating and split multiple times at the seams (in rather awkward places). I’m not particularly fashion forward, and so I had a whole palaver trying to make myself look presentable that morning. I ended up wearing a shirt (no blazer) and black suit pants, with a tie of course.

I’m ecstatic that my commute is only about 15 minutes from home. Honestly, couldn’t be happier. The school is a relatively new build, and so the building itself looked really nice. I was given a tour through the various departments (all socially distanced of course). I met my Internal Teacher Trainee Lead, and my Head of Department as well as the Principal.

Everyone was so friendly, you know when you feel at home quite quickly, that’s the vibe I got from the school. They were passionate about the culture and the students, they prioritised the needs of the students instead of bureaucratic matters. It was very positive and they were passionate about welcoming me in, and being a part of the team.

The visit only lasted around 2 hours, but I met half the staff, saw the building and had all of my questions answered. I even had my ID photo taken (lucky I spent so much time getting ready). Overall, I’m feeling super positive about my placement school, I’m looking forward to being a part of the positive change, and I feel surrounded by an excellent cast of teachers and leaders. It’s going be a good year.

Summary

Week 3 overall, has felt like a chance to take a breath and step towards September. I know I have a crazy busy week coming up in Week 4. This week I’ve learnt a lot, I’ve practiced a variety of new techniques and skills. I’ve learnt about memory and I’ve met the team I’m soon to be a part of. It’s exciting times let me tell you.

The best thing is, that I’m really excited about the idea of work. You know, it can be quite easy to find yourself stuck in a job that doesn’t excite you. Where you aren’t passionate about the work and you feel that you’re not contributing towards society. The thing I love so far, is just how passionate I am to get to work and be a part of the team. I haven’t felt that before and it feels good.

If you’re looking to get into teaching check out my post on how to get into teaching here.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings, please leave your thoughts in the comments and I’ll see you next week.