First taught lesson

This week, on Tuesday, I taught my first lesson: Colour theory to year sevens.

My colleague had to teach this lesson three times in one day and I had previously seen another colleague teach the same lesson last week. So I felt prepared to volunteer myself to teach this lesson, especially after the microteaching activity at Uni on Monday, which gave great confidence and advice. It was great practice for me to see this lesson being taught to three different groups before I tried my hand at it.

My focuses were on:

Engagement

Pace

Crowd control

First, my reflections on Engagement

One thing I noticed from watching my course-mates' microteachings is that those that focussed on engagement came across more naturally as teachers and the classroom that is more engaged is more focussed on the task.

I started by opening the class with a simple question. The subject of colour theory appears as quite an imposing subject, especially for year sevens, so I thought it would be a good idea to encourage them that they have the level of knowledge required to commence the lesson. This sets a baseline of understanding and as ideas are shared communally, it unites all the students.

Students were excited to show off the colours that they knew, creating instantly a positive environment. Students held their hand up nicely, and those that didn't were gently reminded that this is still a classroom.

Colour theory is a wide subject that covers a lot, but this lesson was an introduction to colour theory and so by identifying the understanding they already have, we can build upon and scaffold their learning better.

To avoid this lesson from being too didactic, I continued this engagement with every slide. Although I did struggle when describing how these principles applied to the artists work shown. in future I must find another way of engaging with pictures so that I don't resort to saying things that aren't productive to learning and so I can give myself some time to think about what to say.

My focus on engagement continued into the practical activity also.

During the demonstration I had continuously opened up the choices of the demonstration to the students. Asking which secondary colour to mix, asking whether to add more blue or more yellow to make the perfect orange. This is specifically something I saw being done differently between my two colleagues lessons. One teacher engaged really well with the class and they went through this example together. The other teacher asked students to raise their hand when they had completed the first step and the second was explained to them one-to-one. I tried to take both of these approaches and combine them, to take inspiration from each teacher, however it also had its issues. Students were engaged at the start, the lesson was quieter than any other and the students were focussed and well behaved, however the lesson was long and I no longer had any way to break up this activity and regain their focus. Students were also more confident in their ability to do the more complex levels of the task and some prioritised this instead of following through the task, step by step (some students had painted half their tertiary colours, and hadn't painted any of their primary colours).

Instead of breaking up their learning, as i reflect now as being more productive, I gave 'tips' on how to complete the task to develop their skills with the medium. 'Skilled artists only need to dip the tips of their brushes into the paint, this makes the brush easier to clean between colours.' & 'Remember to paint more slowly around the edges of your box, especially around the corners, this lets you be more free to paint the centre with more speed.' etc.

The reason why I decided not to break up their learning is because of how much fun I saw the students engage with the activity of mixing a colour as a group before, however this break plays an important role in the learning within the classroom and actually, the most successful classes were with the second teacher who would do this 1-1 or as a table.

Because students did not have this break, as the class continued to do the activity, their resolute focus dwindled and their work & learning suffered from this.

I am pleased with the feedback that I gave an engaging lesson, but I feel like I learned a lot in terms of engagement from this lesson.

Second, my reflections on Pace

From the feedback of my Microteaching, I was told that I should slow down the pace of my lesson. While its possible this was due to the assessment being only five minutes long, I admit that other STs gave really effective lessons without rushing. Part of this 'rushing' in my own performance was that I made the transitions between the slides/taught points feel longer because I was not comfortable with these pauses in-between my points. I am someone that will happily watch TEDx talks on double speed, so perhaps I need to be more aware of the power that confidence in a pause can give when presenting a talk or a lesson. We might often think that confidence is defined by the ability to present with presence, but I feel now that being uncomfortable with the silences and pauses in a presentation can undermine this feeling of presence.

As mentioned in the engagement reflection, at some points in this lesson, I did not give myself time to pause and think about the slides I was showing and instead I would 'fill the silences' with unhelpful phrases like 'the artist has used colour in a way that I think is really good.' If I was more aware of pace in this part of the presentation, then I would have thrown the responsibility of dissecting these images to the students, which would give me time to think.

Usually when I plan and prepare presentations I time myself with great accuracy and dissect my own time to practice a script until i can say it fast enough within a given time. However, this usually increases my nervousness tenfold and so recently I have experimented and found more success with meticulously planning the resources instead, so that I can present with the confidence of being well-prepared, rather than being well-rehearsed.

The class' usual teacher accompanied me in the classroom. She helped me to navigate using the projector, freezing the screen and accessing lesson resources. She also helped me to manage my time; I am not yet used to the structure of the school day and so it was useful to me to know when roughly to instruct students to pack away and when to finish tasks.

One piece of advise that this teacher gave that is really valuable to me, before the lesson, was to always have a plan for an additional activity up my sleeve. I have seen another teacher help to engage students also by telling them that the work they can do in the class is going to reduce the amount of homework they will have to do and so this is the task I instructed students should complete if they did finish a bit sooner than others.

Third, my reflections on Crowd Crowd control - End

Adapting to the rhythms and choreography of a school takes time, however I am also coming in as a professional with some working experience of working with students. So, in this lesson, especially considering that there were younger children (whom I have lots more experience with) I made a big effort to demonstrate how to control the class.

I asked students to have their hands up if they were engaged, and I would ask them to wave as the second level of showing their engagement if we were still waiting for students to participate. The students responded really well to this and it felt productive as an introduction/icebreaker to get to know the children better.

During the demonstrations, I gave more precise instruction as oppose to 'gather round', this encouraged each student to be focussed and not distract their peers, also it was easier for me t make sure every child had space to see the demonstration. I still held it up to present clearly and used big gestures throughout the day to illustrate points. Before I started the activity I made doubly sure that every child could see the demonstration also.

I used focus gainers inspired by sessions interviewing teachers at UCL's IOE, especially "Let's get ready to focus in 3. 2. 1. and... Focus".

Also I wanted to 'use silence to get silence' which is one of the pieces of advise given by those at the end of the course last year. I did this by asking students to copy my sibilant "Shhh".

Of course, my control dwindled with the attention span of the students, in future I want to structure the lesson to encourage good behaviour rather than become stricter and punish students for losing focus, which is something that it is my job to maintain.

[Images from lesson: Coming Soon]

Feedback from teacher:

[Coming Soon]