A new school...

Oh dear. It's been a while since I've written anything down, mainly because of the madness of moving house, gigs, a 2000-2500 word essay called an MCP and starting at a new school, all within a week! All of which have resulted in a slightly rotten cold... 'orrible germy children.

Not really. On Wednesday I started my 4-month placement at Norbury Manor Business and Enterprise College for Girls, and I have to say the pupils really are lovely. It reminds me quite a lot of my old school actually (Bexley Grammar School in Kent), with the exception that it's all girls (BGS's boys definitely made their presence known...) and that there is a much wider range of ability. In one day I observed a year 9 class who were already starting their GCSE work, to a Year 12 class who were having to resit their Maths GCSE and were still counting on their fingers.

I also made the error of coming into school in my nice grey suit and a blouse. True, it would have been worse were it the other way round (me coming into school in a tracksuit while the other teachers had on their tailored suits) but it was very odd seeing a Maths lesson taught by what looked like a PE teacher... at least now I know the appropriate dress code.

This is not it.

Thursday was pupil shadowing day. Meaning a volunteer Year 8 pupil (so tiny!) had agreed to take us around with them to all their lessons, just to get a better feel for the school and a better idea of a general school day for pupils. So yesterday I had ICT, Art, Maths (yay), Geography, Science and PE. Would have been quite a good day for me if I were back at school. Except for Maths.

You think I'm joking don't you...? I am really.

It was so lovely to see 'young ladies' (what we're supposed to call them) with such good manners. My shadowing pupil really made sure I felt looked after, assuring me she would take me to the staff room and pick me up again after lunch, and so on. I know the school's ethos works hard to promote this kind of behaviour, and that we must all lead by example as teachers. Therefore I must try and keep my South London voice under wraps at all times. I can see it now. "What do you mean 3 + -4 is 1? Shut it you shlaaaag..."

Once I get really stuck in next week I'll start doing some proper observations, rather than generic ramblings about the school. Although, one thing I was able to see yesterday was a pupil in a class with ADHD, and how she interacted with her learning assistant and others around her. At first I thought she had autism - in her Maths lesson, she seemed very calm and quiet, sitting doing a mid-term test, where everything was planned and structured. Then when it came to Science, is seemed there were a few things out of place, for example there being two student teachers (myself and my friend Lucy), a new teacher, and thus a different layout to the lesson.

I overheard some of her conversation with her learning support assistant at the back of the class.

"Miss where's Miss Crawford? I have to go and find her. She says her office is just next door to the staffroom. If I don't go and find her right now I have to go to West Croydon. Unless I can go and get her. NO I DON'T WANT TO SIT DOWN. I have to find Miss Crawford! If I don't find her I have to go and get the bus into West Croydon."

And so on. When she was finally coerced into sitting down, she became extremely disruptive, and started throwing pieces of paper around the classroom, shouting, and wandering around the room shouting at the others. It was shocking only because it was such a huge change from her Maths lesson two hours previously, in which we heard not a single peep from her. It just went to show how important having a well-structured lesson is, even more so when there are children with ADHD in your class. The picture above illustrates my worst nightmare as a teacher, but hopefully my lessons will be so good everyone will just want to get involved and not act up...

"So has everybody understood?" "...Yeah." "So what's the answer?" "... I don't know."

Every Wednesday at the IoE, we're given the chance to attend lectures from illustrious guest-speakers on areas of teaching which are relevant to all teachers, regardless of which subject you choose to teach. So far we've covered Teachers' Legal Obligations, Classroom Discipline, Voice Care, Special Educational Needs (SEN) and English as an Additional Language (EAL), the last two of which we have been told firmly are not related in any way. It's not surprising children with EAL struggle to learn and develop at the same rate as their English companions - have you ever been given part of a History lesson in rapid French and been expected to understand what was going on? 

We have. Even though I have a little grasp of French, I was so busy trying to translate what I'd just heard that I missed the next part of the lesson. That was a great way to help us empathise with EAL pupils, who are regularly considered slow learners and not very bright, and we received some very valuable information about how to help such pupils. 

So that was last week. Today we were given some incredibly helpful tips on assessing pupils' progress, from a man who you might recognise from BBC2's 'The Classroom Experiment', and is Deputy Director and Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at the IoE... *phew that was a mouthful*. Here is a picture.

Dr. Dylan William. He was actually pretty terrifying. Especially stalking the lecture hall rows with a big red microphone getting people to answer questions. Fortunately I had some kind of sixth sense today, which told me to sit in the middle of the row.

But there was plenty to think about, safe with twenty trainee teachers to the left and right of me. The importance of good questioning was touched on, where you plan your questions beforehand to ensure you get pupils thinking and also, curious! There was a really good example, more science/geography than maths but I loved it anyway.

Ask your pupils "why is it colder at the top of a mountain, when it's closer to the sun?" and watch them rack their brains coming up with an answer!

Even better, there followed a great maths question.

"Can you have a triangle with two 90 degree angles?"

This elicited some very intriguing answers.

1) "The triangle would have to be infinitely tall. Because parallel lines meet at infinity..."

Clearly this teacher had put some very strange ideas into this pupil's head. At this point you'd probably try and explain that parallel lines never meet. Not in 3 dimensions anyway... 

2) "Well, angles in a triangle add up to 180 degrees. So there's 90 + 90 already. Can you have an angle of 0 degrees?"

This went on to a discussion about a 0 degree angle, and plain straight lines and so on.

The final answer... quite simply, I hope I get a pupil as bright as this.

3) "Yes you can. What if you start at the North Pole, and put the other two points somewhere on the Equator?"

... To have a pupil naturally refer to non-Euclidean geometry, without prior knowledge of the subject, I believe is quite something. This is why I can't wait to get into the classroom; pupils will always surprise you with completely unique ways of thinking! I now just need to get the skills to help pupils from all walks of life, with different brains, different ways of thinking, develop their understanding. Without just doing it my way.