Day 7

Tuesday 23 October 2007

Today I didn't have to teach any classes in school, so that gave me time to prepare for my lesson plans.

I am deciding to let my year 8 students watch The Gladiator for their topic, Ancient Rome, as it depicts the life of a gladiator (which is russell crowe in that movie) how he was a slave and then turned into a gladiator and then defeating the empire. So i had a chat with my mentor for the year 8 S&E. Pretty much went through what i need to do in the next 3 weeks of teaching to get through the unit of work, which is on Ancient Studies. I am on a learning journey (in terms of subject knowledge) in the same way as the students are.

Although I'm on a journey of learning why this method work and why that didn't work. For example... yesterday Year 8 double lesson ~ my methods of giving warnings might not be effective enough, as the students just kept mucking around and not doing any productive work until i decided that's it; i'm gonna give out detention if you keep up the noise. After a few minutes, the noise went up again and some boys are chucking paper at the girls and so on. I started writing names on the board, which had LUNHCTIME as a heading. Everyone became real quiet and i did not have to say anything.

Remembering names is a real difficulty, especially when you want to call out to them to quiet them up.

Anyways, now i notice why some teachers are really strict and routine and bitchy every lesson (eg yelling and shouting at the students), but the students hated that. On the other hand, i can see why it works for them as it gives students a concrete base to work from; copying stuff down.

I realise the Year 8s are still at the remembering stage and even with a little push and help in guiding them to think for themselves (i'm talking about work related stuff and not about their own lives), they get really lost. They need someone to tell them, this is what i exactly need u to do.