Every teacher will be able to tell you of the first time
they feel they have truly succeeded in teaching a significant pupil or class.
Despite this being my third year of placement in a school, it was only this
week that I experienced that success. After a discouraging week of distracted
pupils and half-finished lessons, I finally realised that I needed to think ‘outside
the box’ when planning and delivering my lessons. With my lecturer visit coming
up this week, an excitable and unsettled class is every Stranmillis students’
worst nightmare.
From my lessons and teaching last week I have quickly come
to realise that the pupils in my class really struggle with concentration and
appear to have a short attention span. To try and get past this I started to
break the lesson down into different chunks, to keep the class interested and
doing something a bit different during the lesson. This appeared to really
improve their attention and I saw a dramatic improvement in their work and
their interest in the lesson. I soon realised that the best way to hold their
attention was to break the lesson down into smaller chunks, lasting only about
seven minutes each, and make up the lesson with about 5 of these chunks. Within
each chunk I had the children get involved in a different way, each time
reinforcing the learning points. I couldn’t believe the difference this made.
For the lesson my tutor was to assess, I had planned a
lesson on 3D shapes, and to keep them interested I brought in play dough to
allow them to create the shapes, identifying corners, edges and faces. I also
used a ‘feely bag’ which gave them another way to explore the properties of the
shapes, and I had them complete a short worksheet. The children’s attention and
participation was the best I have seen it and it was so rewarding to watch them
learn enthusiastically.
Identifying and applying successful strategies has taught me
a lot and I feel like I have grown in my understanding of ADHD – I can now
manage a class which consists of ten children with ADHD on my own with no other
adults in the world, something I never thought I would have to attempt to
accomplish. I have a new found appreciation for classroom assistants as I can
now see the true value of them, and I feel like if I have a class with any
children with ADHD, that I will be much more confident and capable of teaching
them.
I was delighted at how well my lecturer visit went, and I’ll
be honest and say that the requirements for the school based work file there were
somewhat lower than that in Northern Ireland, as their focus was more on the
lessons than lesson plans and evaluations which I enjoyed much more as sometimes
I feel like we get very caught up with paperwork at home. Something that they
did differently within the lesson plans which I thought was beneficial was a
section in which we had to include was ‘barriers to learning’, in which we had
to discuss potential barriers that will prevent the children learning and how
we could overcome them if they were to arise. This is something I feel I will benefit from including in my lesson
plans next year as they were very useful. The Lecturer was very encouraging and
relaxed during her assessment and it was clear that her main aim was to build me up as a teacher, rather than find fault in my lessons which was very
encouraging.
The is a significant emphasis on parental involvement within
this class, and it is good to see that the parents are expected to sign the
homework diary of their child every night and write any comments they have
about their child’s progress or work at home. I feel this had a lot to do with
the children’s respect for their teachers, which sometimes contrasts greatly
with some of the children I have worked with in Northern Ireland.
This week the children were cast into the school play of the
wizard of Oz and I was very impressed with the inclusive element of the play.
The characters and script had been written in a way that could include all
children despite their disability. This
was something really special to watch as the children were so excited to be a
part of it and it showed me that it is very possible to include children of all
abilities in a school play. I have grown very fond of the children and it will
be very difficult to say goodbye to them all next week!
This weekend we plan on heading to Plettenberg to spend our
final few days with our closest friends, and despite being seriously sad that
our time is almost over, I’m excited to spend these last few days with the
people that have quickly become like family to me.
Until next time
Lynsey
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