30 days into SE1
B2.1
These are my reflections on just two of the six competencies, the other four will be reflected upon in following posts.
I wanted to write these up on here, as the format that is on the ADP is very limiting and very strangely formatted. Here it is much more clear to see everything laid out and I feel less restricted in how much I would like to reflect about each of these points.
Positive Relationships:
What are you learning?
To what degree do you understand…
1.1 - The importance of planning and teaching to support positive relationships with pupils, particularly in terms of planning lessons that are meaningful, engaging, appropriately pitched and structured and which build on prior learning?
1.2 - The intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence pupil motivation to engage and learn?
1.3 - Whole-school systems and how these support your own practice?
How is this understanding materialising in your teaching and pupils’ learning?
How far are you able to…
1.4 - Include and value students as individuals with diverse backgrounds, interests and learning needs, and model appropriate behaviour for/with them?
1.5 - Establish clear and consistent rules and routines, and respond effectively to poor behaviour and any incidences of bullying?
1.6 - Foster a safe, respectful and productive learning environment?
1.7 - Use a range of strategies to motivate pupils to learn in your subject – mixing rewards and sanctions, planning engaging and purposeful lessons and consciously building positive relationships?
1.8 - Engage with parents/carers and professional colleagues for support and insight into particular pupils, relationships or classes, as appropriate?
Reflections:
I have a year of experience working in a school, in a pastoral position, so I understand that building positive relationships is essential to make students feel comfortable within a school. These positive relationships can help to encourage productive and collaborative learning environments.
In this placement, I am learning that within the structure of a lesson, positive relationships can help to manage disregulated student behaviour.
My students understand that I have high expectations for them, and so I will not tolerate disruptive behaviours. After one student repeated the same disruptive behaviour, that I had warned them about multiple times, they screamed at me in frustration. I understood that the outburst was not directed at me and calmly explained to them the consequence of their behaviour.
I later, received the feedback from the student that they often feel targeted by other teachers, but that they felt that ‘Mr Kandiah’ is nice to them. Because of the positive relationship I had developed with the student, they understood that the sanction was fair and that I would be understanding to whatever they are feeling.
Whenever I am discussing a sanction within a classroom, I am always prefacing this discussion with 'What can I do to make you feel more comfortable in the classroom?'
This practices the restorative justice model that the school has in place and I am always impressed with how seriously students answer this question. Students understand that my classroom is a space for learning, and if there are minor issues that inhibit the learning of my students, I will find an appropriate resolution.
I am learning that fostering positive relationships doesn't come through encouragement alone, but thorugh managing relationships with students through both reward, discussion and sanction.
The thing that I have learned most from my time here at my SE1 school so far, is the importance of encouraging consistent engagement. I have developed my presence in the classroom and my own style of teaching in response to and through the application of the feedback from other teachers.
I structure almost all of my lessons, including the following elements, to apply the positive relationships that I have developed with each child.
Every lesson starts with students standing behind their desks and when they are all quiet, I allow them to sit, so we can begin the lesson. This is the established rhythm of the school.
Every lesson starts with an activity to queitly reflect on, on the board, while I complete the register. These tasks are designed to capture attention and encourage an active focus. Students are then given time after the register to discuss it with their partners, before feeding back to myself through a class discussion.
Depending on the class, this activity is commonly followed by a 'creative spark' task, which is similar, but requires students to draw on subject-specific langauge developed through prior learning.
I will then set out clear expectations of behaviour. This information is diluted each lesson, as the students become more familiar with my teaching practice, but I will still highlight my key phrases that I repeat in every lesson if students do not recall it themselves, such as: "Your voice is important in this lesson," and "
After the main activity is set, depending on attention in the class, I will gather everyone's focus again with a refocus activity. This is usually an activity that is a step removed from the lesson's topic, but opens the learning of the class up to a wider context.
For every lesson I also set stretch and challenge tasks for students that advance through the set work and aim to push themselves. Generally I encourage as many students to attempt this stretch and challenge work as I can, although in recent feedback I realised that in some lessons it may be appropriate to introduce this task for the whole class. While I have been using this element to balance the focus of students at different levels, I need to be more repsonsive to when whole classes respond well to the lesson.
By structuring the lesson in this way, I demonstrate and model active engagement with the lesson material, providing plenty of encouragement, relevance and excitement.
Part of having presence in the space of the classroom, is communicated through assuming ownership of spaces for learning. I have learned to encourage students to make artwork specifically to be erected on the walls of the class. Students responed well to this privelege and worked hard to create work that would be diplayed. I introduced this activity by saying 'You are my lovely year eight class, and none of your work is on our walls.' Using this as an opportunity to develop personal relationships with the class.
Another key thing I have learned, is to assume presence even when assisting the teaching of other staff members. While team-teaching with the head of department, I received valuable feedback on how to circulate classrooms even when students are happy getting on independently. Being able to confidently check in with each student, over and over is something tat felt really uncomfortable at first, but that I feel has become a huge part of my teaching style. making sure that each student can define what their next step is at any time, encouraging indepedent learning through purposeful questions and offering feedback and developmental ideas allowed students to take advantage of my expertise even if they present as if they don't want to be interrupted. This has encouraged me greatly to add valuable insight to each student's progression and it is greatly rewarding to see students take on board my 'unwelcome' suggestions and start writing notes as I'm discussing ideas with them.
Some lessons, I will set personalised lesson tasks and resources for students that are not present, but require work through Alternative Learning Provisions (or ALPs). This allows me to adapt the learning to encourage students to engage with the lesson even in absence.
This school has reinforced my understanding of how important these positive relationships are especially for children with SEND needs. Creating encouraging environments, framed with positivity and reassurance for students that require additional support. This school does a lot for students with additional needs; one thing that I have been reflecting on recently is building more positive relationships with the TAs that help with these children. It is important that they feel supported within the classes that I lead, sot that they can effectively assist those students.
Forming and maintaining positive relationships with other staff members is also important to me. I look up to the teachers in my deparment tremendously, their knowledge and insight has really helped me develop my teaching practice and I am very grateful for their continued support.
I have also learned that positive relationships can be developed outside of the classroom. Greeting students between lessons, in extra-curricular activities such as year seven art-club which I run and informal discussions about work, especially for year 12 and 13s. Additionally, through online communications, praising students' work on Google Classroom, helping students with queries about completing homework tasks and rewarding students with housepoints for positive behaviours.
Knowledge and Curriculum:
What are you learning?
To what degree do you understand…
2.1 - Recent developments in your subject and how to consolidate and expand your subject knowledge?
2.2 - The relationship between factual knowledge, concepts and skills in your subject?
2.3 - How to develop a repertoire of strategies to successfully build pupil knowledge over time, including ways to build on prior learning?
2.4 - The potential preconceptions and misunderstandings that pupils might have in your subject?
2.5 - The difference and relations between working memory and long-term memory and why these are important?
How is this understanding materialising in your teaching and pupils’ learning?
How far are you able to…
2.6 - Inform your planning and teaching with secure subject knowledge to enable all pupils to progress well?
2.7 - Sequence and break down knowledge in order to build on prior learning and promote pupil progress, so students can build their own knowledge coherently?
2.8 - Reflect up-to-date subject developments in your planning and teaching?
2.9 - Support pupils in their knowledge-building and enable them to ask questions openly?
2.10 - Develop pupil literacy by a range of effective means (modelling, questioning, using predictions, summarising, promoting reading for pleasure)?
I have
Reflections:
I love that at this school I am given the freedom to develop my own Schemes of Work. It is really valuable to me to have this experience planning for classes and making my presentations as engaging as possible. If there is something I will discover as I develop my own knowledge about art, I will always look to apply this knowledge to the learning of my students. Recently I have set work using AI image generation, digital art 'games' from Tate kids and creating collages using the new 'remove background' function in Microsoft Office tools. I am constantly looking for developments in my field and I'm excited to share these exciting things with my classes.
I also help with the teaching of photography classes and have more intentionally began studying and practicing photography in my spare time so that I can apply this knowledge through teaching. While this is something I have had experience in taking part in before, I had never learned formally and so being more purposeful with my perosnal development and knowledge helps me to better communicate this knowledge to the students. I recently attended a year 12 lesson, where students were giving presentations about photographers they had researched. I was invited to sit in and encourage students to articulate their
I have little experience with some practices like clay and printing, however, as I will complete any activity myself, before I ask students to complete it, I spend time in the department learning through using these materials and processes. I am very lucky to have access to lots of materials, but also
there are three fantastic technicians in the school who are quick to help me with any concerns, and who have a wealth of invaluable experience that they generously share.
With KS3 & 4, I have learned a lot about and embraced this idea of scaffolding learning. Every time a new piece of knowledge is learned, it is reinforced throughout that project and new learning is built outwards from that foundational understanding. Somehting that my placement school does well is the encouragement of 'Brain, board, book, buddy, boss' which is the heirarchy of authority a student should refer to if they have a question. The encouragement of students towards independently utilising the resources around them allows students to take an active role in the scaffolding of their learning. I am working on facilitationg classes and phrasing quesitons in ways that compel students to refer to what is available to them beyond their memory recall. Perhaps doing this will allow us to approach more complex topics as students can use their own books and prior work to describe how they might approach new challenges.
I have two art degrees, one in Fine art and one in Research in the Arts, so I feel that I balance the weight and importance of both practical making and theoretical understanding evenly. I enjoy the opportunities that I get to teach sixth formers the most as I can encourage them to push themselves and explore much more advanced theoretical approaches and technical practices. Students respond well to the advice that I give, and it is extremely rewarding to see the advice that I give be considered and applied to their projects, creating interesting and expertly executed artworks.
I have a general rule which I tell to all of my students when having these higher level theoretical and practical conversations, and that is to encourage the student to get to the point where they say 'Sir, leave me alone, I've got loads of ideas now'. This is something I acitvely encourage as while I might be inspired by their work and could discuss the ideas with them for hours, they are given an agency to say when they feel prepared to take the next steps in their projects.
While I am confident in my subject knowledge and practice, some feedback I received from my recent Tutor visit is to look more actively to accomplish multiple goals with each activity. This is also reflected in the feedback from my Subject Mentor who is also expertly able to spot opportunities for this, such as using discussion about newly designed emojis to connect to encouraging students by describing real-life application of the lesson material to jobs in the art sector. I will try to be more aware when I create my lesson plans, to look out for more opportunities like this and accomplish more in less time.
Comments