Week Four Summary

Do you ever find yourself at the beginning of a course or event, both nervous and excited? You’ve just started and the end is nowhere in sight? Four weeks ago, that’s exactly where I was. Today, however, I find myself past the highest hurdle and the finish line is just over the horizon.

Week Four was an exhausting experience. If I could sum it up in three words, it would be: Pedagogy, Pedagogy, Pedagogy. I know I’ve used the same word, but I need to use it three times to exemplify how much pedagogy we covered this week. It makes me laugh, Teach First cover cognitive overload, ensuring we know to avoid it when teaching, but they recognise it’s very much a do as we say and not as we do situation here. There was a lot of information covered, and I hope that it seeped and soaked in through osmosis.

My Week Four post will look at some of the pedagogy we covered, my experience of micro teaching and virtual learning, the importance of TALK and a look at equality and diversity within our education system.

Non- Fiction Writing Pedagogy

Monday and Tuesday consisted of writing pedagogy. The first day we looked at non-fiction writing and day two at creative writing. Being a creative writer – guess which was my favourite.

The non-fiction writing looked at writing for purpose. We looked at the different purposes of writing – are you writing to persuade, argue or inform. Within this we looked at how we would structure our writing based on Rose and Martins Gene Theory. Just like we looked at the Scaffolded Reading Experience for teaching reading lessons, this was what we were to base our writing lessons on.

It was really informative, we looked at the different genres we write in, and gave ourselves an overview of how they all fit within the entire schooling process. We analysed the assessment objectives that we use to assess writing, scoured various strategies we can deploy all to aid our teaching process. It’s funny how intentional teaching can become when you understand the foundation of research and why things are done the way they are.

I also had to review some of the knowledge myself to ensure I knew what I was teaching. This linked on further when we looked at Creative Writing the next day.

Creative Writing Pedagogy

We used the genre of Gothic Literature to base our Creative Writing Pedagogy. They introduce this really well, and of course a debate ensued about what was classically classed as Gothic Literature and how it had been watered down to include variations of horror. Heading back to pedagogy though… I found that my knowledge had begun to interlink here – especially when we focussed on how we can plan and teach a writing lesson. For example, I realised I could use DARTS (Directed Activities Related to Texts) when planning writing as well as in reading.

I guess one of the biggest questions we had as a class was how to scaffold writing activities. Our tutors were excellent and responded by providing us; throughout the session, various strategies, explained and modelled.

I think that students can often be afraid of writing. It seems arduous and it isn’t often required much outside of school, in the creative sense. However, giving students the opportunity to find their voice, and tell their story is such a powerful tool. I want to inspire my students to want to write, and give them the tools to do it well. Come September, I am so looking forward to teaching writing and getting to share my passion.

I would also love to hear if you have any top tips that you’ve found work really well? My main concern is that the curriculum won’t provide the space or time perhaps for students to really become invested in their stories, plots or characters. Or perhaps, allow them to see the value of their non-fiction writing.

Micro – Teaching

I love getting to practice our teaching. Coming from a performing arts background I’m well accustomed to putting myself outside of my comfort zone and going for it. So, in pairs we designed a writing lesson looking at teaching the opening to a gothic story. You can find my version below.

So I had 20 minutes to teach this lesson, and I went from the Do It Now section all the way through to just before the extended writing task. I dived head first into the role of the teacher and used a variety of all the Teach Like A Champion techniques we’ve been covering to enact it. Time seemed to fly, as I threw questions and encouragement in equal measure at my poor partner. I really enjoyed getting to put my plan into practice and see where I wasn’t clear on what I wanted, or where I could give them a bit more support to scaffold their understanding.

This was a great task and we got to input our various techniques, using the Gene theory, and the other techniques we’ve learnt from Teach First and UCL. Of course, I’m looking forward to my plans being far more refined as I get more experience. A consideration in this planning of course, was the context of doing this virtually with only another trainee as your class.

Online Learning & Virtual Teaching

I’m going to talk a little bit here about how it’s been doing online learning, and online teaching. I’m sure many of you have had the pleasure of spending all day sat behind your computer recently, on different video calls and what not. I have personally found online learning quite hard, I have a short attention span, and I can get distracted by the fact there isn’t a lot of accountability. I also find that the sheer amount of content that gets thrown at you, can be difficult to absorb when it’s virtual.

It’s also difficult to see the effects of what you’re doing and respond to other people. Zoom manners are a big thing, you can’t talk over each other so you often choose not to talk. You can’t read people’s body language either, and a lot of our communication stems from our body language.

I’ve also been observing and participating in a lot of online lessons as part of my role as a TA. It’s been so interesting seeing how the students respond, and how different teachers approach the online learning platform. I’m certain that the shorter, more concise and simple your lessons are, the better they are. If things are simple, well presented and the lesson doesn’t last long I think you’re helping your students achieve.

TALK

Our final session, was on the pedagogy of TALK. Now… I was blown away by the fact the DofE have basically said, this isn’t an important enough part of the curriculum to add to your English grade even thought they still want it as an assessment. It’s even more ironic, because one of the main tools you have as a politician is being able to communicate well. It’s your job to present your point through speeches and get people to agree and support you. I just found it mind boggling that this isn’t a bigger part of the English curriculum. Anyway…

This lesson was based on a group of videos from different schools across the UK. We studied two GCSE students giving their final presentations, we looked at primary children that learn through TALK and we looked at the effect it had on learning. We even had a gander at the different types of TALK, be it drama or presentation and how we would sequence our lessons for teaching TALK.

It was fascinating to look at the scaffolding of TALK – perhaps using sentence starters. How you can model and provide examples of successful presentations or conversations. It’s funny to think, that we learn to talk by watching other people; we are products of our environment.

We were then provided with excellent examples of activities you could do to encourage and facilitate TALK within the classroom. Finally, we looked at how we would assess talk. This actually proved to be a little controversial without our group, and it was interesting to see the other trainee’s opinions when we compared to different presentations.

Equality & Diversity

I know this has been a really big topic socially at the moment. What’s exciting is that as teachers we are provided with an incredible position that enables us to challenge our dated ideas and challenge prejudice through education.

We spent some time looking at the different policies provided by the government and what they require of us as teachers. Then we looked at specific ways we can adapt our teaching style so that we are providing a non-stereotyped and diverse educational experience. Some ideas could be using examples from different cultures, or making sure your pictures include both black and white people.

I know it seems simple, but it starts with the basics. If you look at old text books it’s really prevalent. I was looking at some of the resources as recent as 2006 and the stereotypical prejudice provided in the book were atrocious.

I think we have a duty as teachers to challenge discriminating behaviour in any form. Until we take the time to challenge the behaviours we want to stop, our young people don’t know any better.

Summary

Well… that’s a wrap on Week Four. It was a great week overall, and I’ve certainly been provided with everything I could need pedagogically.

On to Week Five – the final week of Summer Institute. I have two Teach First Seminars to look forward too as well as the Exit Ceremony.

I hope this has been useful, if you have any thoughts please leave me a comment. And, if you want to check out my story from the beginning you can start here.

Till next week! Adios.