Planning Lesson Planning

I talked before, in the Teaching Models post, about the importance of having a framework with which to structure lessons.  Today we looked at lesson plans, seeing how they help with the delivery of the lesson, but also increase the efficiency of what is taught, making each lesson a sleekly muscled racehorse, with every task directly linked with the achievement of the learning objectives, rather than the blousey wandering donkey of some of the lessons I have experienced in my career.  They might get you there eventually, but it'll be a slow, bumpy and uncomfortable experience.



I started trying to fill in the L.O's of my intended writing workshop.  It's going to be difficult.  Because I want the main outcome to be an increased emotional understanding (within the Emotional Literacy aspects of SEAL), it does not fall into the SMART bracket - it is neither specific, nor measurable, and because of the difficulties of the students I intend to work with (students excluded from or unable to engage with mainstream education) I'm not even sure if it will be attainable.



Though I've pinned my objectives down to a rough outline.... Engaging with the text, Involvement in Discussion, Expressing emotion through drawing and text.  I think my aims are vague and potentially unachievable.

Partly my problem is the group I wish to target.  Possibly, I've bitten off more than I can chew.  It might be that students in a PRU have too many issues, SEN, behavioural, emotional, to engage with a workshop of this kind, especially in the 6-11 year old bracket I was going to take the workshop too.  There are too many variables.

I might have to rethink, and go toward an older age group, and one with less specific issues. Though I was hoping to try something completely new and something valuable to the participants, I know realistically that PRU students have ingrained behaviours and to break through even to one pupil would be an outstanding achievement.  Perhaps I need to walk before I run, and conduct a safer workshop for observation and practise!

SEAL (social and emotional aspects of learning) are important skills in all students and accessing empathy, self awareness and emotional literacies (see diagram below) through creative writing could provide an effective workshop.

Teaching Practice Plans... Where to go and what to do.

Time to start thinking about putting down the pen and picking up the pointer, actually putting the ideas of teaching into practice. 

As usual, I have many ideas and have difficulty pinning them down.  It's always tricky and I know that a lack of particular focus in my studies and my life-plans and my acute descidophobia (yes, it's a real word), mean I'll flap around for a while distracting myself with new and interesting schemes to stop myself from settling too long on any one idea.  I think it stems from a fear of failure.  And perhaps a deep-seated lack of belief in myself to make the right choice.  I'm constantly second guessing myself.  Not that I'm moaning, or inviting you to pity me, I'm writing this because I'm watching myself from an outside perspective.  I know myself too well.  Feeling the flutterings of panic setting in, knowing that it is illogical, and damaging, but unable to affect it.  I find writing it down helps.  Sets the problems in stone, or at least in type.  Little manageable letters that don't squirm around like the eels of thought that invade our heads, but can be re-read, mocked, if necessary, and managed.

It is with this in mind that I find myself settling to one idea, (what's with all the butterfly metaphors?) one I know will be challenging, unsettling, unpredictable, but ultimately, most rewarding.

I am interested in running a creative writing workshop for children with either SEN or behavioural difficulties, focusing on David Almond's graphic novel-type book 'The Savage'.

 

I will try to use the workshop as writing therapy, allowing the students to release their 'inner savage' on the page.  As you can see, the style is striking, informal and messy, the writing is in the vernacular, paying no attention to spelling or grammar, which I believe will help to open up the act of writing to those students who struggle to engage in written English, encouraging them to tell their own story.

 

It really is a beautiful book, and the story is deeply moving.  A young boy, Blue, is struggling to cope.  His father has died and he is bullied at school.  In defiance of the impuissance he feels, he starts to write.  The character he creates is The Savage, a wild boy.  Blue writes about what he knows, he and his sister and Hopper the bully all make appearances in The Savage's world.  But soon The Savage crosses over into Blue's world, when he thinks that a chapter in which The Savage beats up Hopper has come true, Blue feels empowered by what he has created.  The Savage personifies the feelings he cannot express. 
 

The book tackles the issues of bereavement, bullying, abuse and has themes of love and grief, abandonment and helplessness, violence, compassion and acceptance.  I feel that David Almond writes well for young people, tackling issues they feel from a realistically childlike perspective.  Unlike his novels for young adults, The Savage is much shorter, set as a simple first person story-within-a-story presentation, that feels vvisceral, engaging and entertaining. 

I'm hoping to read the book, talk about it and invite the students to reflect on their own inner savages, what they feel like doing but can't, what they feel but can't say.  By exploring this, either as individuals or by doing a group story as an initial exercise, in the fictional world I hope to help them manifest their ideas about themselves, in drawing and writing.

I know that this is a somewhat dangerous idea.  I have experience  of working in schools and with SEN pupils.  I know how hard it is to get some students to engage with written tasks.  I also know that personal, productive writing may be very difficult for these young people to express.

There are no writing therapy books in the library, so I've ordered some online, I'll feel happier once I've read about some case studies and exercises.  Other things I need to think about include:

• Length of Workshop - talk to teachers about concentration levels and adapt accordingly.
• Varying engagement/literacy levels of students - have variety of exercises that can be adapted for different abilities.
• How much art to include - I'd like to involve more creativity.  Depends on school/time limits - I'll take their advice.
• Behaviour - as I'm thinking about doing this in a PRU behaviour may be a problem.  An engaging programme will help, but I'll also familiarise myself with school behaviour policies.

I'm looking forward to this, but I know it will be challenging.  Though I think that's why I chose it.  I need to find out much more about Therapeutic Writing, particularly with young people, and plan meticulously, allowing lots of adaptability for anything that arises on the day.  I know that I'm good at thinking on my feet, but because this hits sensitive subjects I want to be well prepared.

PGCE or GTP or SCITT... WTF?

WTF in this instance obviously means what the fiddlesticks are all these acronyms.  I was pretty clear when I entered into university that I would complete my teacher training in a GTP (graduate teaching program) school placement.  And then they canceled that program this year.  And then I find this in my local paper.....

 

Which seems to imply that I can do an in-school PGCE (post graduate cirtificate of education), only it's now called SCITT (or school centered initial teacher training).  My Brain hurts!

The good thing is I can apply to the MSC or Mid-Somerset Consortium for a place in 2013.  I wanted to do practical, school based learning, partly because I believe it's the best way to learn the many aspects of education that aren't tackled in textbooks, and partly because it's salaried.  Which makes a big difference.

There are also grants offered for teachers coming in that are dependent on your marks at graduation, £5000 I believe for a 2.1 rising to a possible £9000 for a first.  Wow.  That's an incentive.

The trouble is that I must now pick a subject.  I'm looking for an English/Drama placement but it's rare to find the two.  I know that once in school it is easier to move around subjects but it would be great to train in both. 

I worry a bit about the segmentaation of subjects in schools.  Whillst I was a pupil it seemed clear that the system doesn't really cater for those who span the art/science devide.

I feel quite passionately about it because it has impacted me personally; as a music scholorship student I was put on a reduced timetable to allow time for practice, this meant no history, drama, dt, art among others, which then impacted my GCSE choice (I was allowed only 7, and did one of those a year early)  and when I left that school to prevent the same thing happening at A-level I realised that I couldn't do both creative and scientific subjects if I wanted to be considered for any of the indepth scientific proffessions.. no point maths without physics....but then I can't do this or that etc..... a veritable dillema.

However, the current system demands that you focus your studies through the education system to what you 'want to do when you grow up'.  I understand why it does this, but I have never really seen how that works in the real world, where careers change, and experience and adaptability are prized.  I long for a slightly more cross-curricular approach in which history can be taught in the context of art, english or drama, science with food and english language with it's greek, latin and french roots. 

I suppose I like the challenge of many subjects too, and feel I could teach Science (to GCSE) with the same passion as English or Art.  I know that's not how it works, and I have thought about primary teaching, where class teachers teach many subjects, but I feel I would enjoy the challenges of secondary or higher education more.

I need to do more research of options within the system, I know that UWE offers a multi-subject secondary programme but I also know that for me, a schools based PGCE would work better. 

So, after all that, a SCITT is it.  And I'd better start working on an application. 

Reading Writers

I've been reading lots of fabulous books on writing....

Some are by authors about the art of authoring.....

 

 Bird by Bird is a wonderful relation of the difficulties we face as writers, personable and revealing, Anne Lamott manages to describe all the pitfalls we place in front of us.
An experienced writing teacher, she hits on all the elements of writing, technical and psychological.  I thought that this book should have been essential reading for all us Creative Writing students, and there were chapters I know I could lift and use as the basis of lessons with creative writing students.  I felt she addressed the mental issues of writing (and we are all quite mental) very well, introducing ideas like Radio KFCD - the voice in your head, the importance of listening to your inner broccoli (intuition, I can't explain, just read it) and forgiving yourself for the shitty first draft - agonising but necessary.

 

 Though this book is about writing, it is also a memoir and a exploration of why we write and what on earth we think we are doing. It is not such an instructive piece as Bird by Bird, as in directly applicable to teaching creative writing, but Atwood's style and substance make it a worthwhile read anyway.










Some books are about the technical aspects of writing........


Mend Your English is subtitled 'What you should have been taught at primary school'.  I swear we weren't.  Grammar, punctuation, parts of speech.  Splitting the atom I understand, splitting a verb I did not.  Thanks to this book, I do now.  Alongside brain melting definitions, he also gives easier to understand examples of correct and incorrect usages, alongside lots of recommendations for further reading, breakdowns of the roots of words and handy hints.  I know that this book will be invaluable in tutoring situations when I need to explain a consistent mistake of language to a student. 

It's odd that we learn through experience, through reading and writing and listening to language, so that often I know something is wrong by the way it sounds, and yet I could not explain what is wrong.  I have come across instances of students writing in the vernacular, which sounds perfectly acceptable to them but is not correct written English.  In that instance I would have great difficulty explaining to them what the issue was.  This book I know will help.

Some books are about teaching.........


Friere's pedagogy is something I feel quite passionate about. Though his ideas on education (Iput a link to it in a previous post) are radical and designed to liberate the subjugated classes in south america; there is a lesson to be learnt for us too. Friere says “Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” If we continue to indoctrinate in the name of education the future of our society stagnates. I believe that creative and critical thinking is highly prized, but not often permitted in schools, controversial opinion I know, but student-lead critical thought means the acceptance of a degree of uncertainty, in which the educators can be challenged, which doesn't fit with results lead education. Friere says “If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed. Radical I know. Good further reading is We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change by Myles Horton and Paulo Friere.

One to One to One to Many. Tutoring as opossed to class teaching.

I do some one-to-one tutoring, and I'm never sure how successful I am at it, so this was an interesting lesson.  If only I had read Ryan and Zimmerelli before!

They identify a lot of the issues I was having, wanting to make a perfect piece of writing, but not wanting to lead the student, or write it for them, I sometimes felt that I was making the student more confused.  

For example, a student studying GCSE english had to write an essay on the Tempest.  Before she started we talked through the question and what the student thought she was going to write and I helped her form a structure, asking her identify her arguments and pick out quotes she thought would work with that.  I then asked her to do a draft of her essay for the following week so we could look at it.  I think as a tutor I talk too much, this pupil in particular is a 'smile and nod'er and, wanting to help and earn my wage, I fill the gaps too much, get too excited by an essay (which I think I forget that I'm NOT WRITING) and lead her to conclusions she might not make.  This is backed up by the bits of work she produced for me the following week where she had misused quotes, and confused the threads of her arguments.  I noticed that the phrasiology we had been using had cropped up, but that she had not understood it, or used it in the correct context.  I felt awful, in my egerness for a good essay I had been planting ideas which were not hers and left the essay, and the student, confused.


Subsequently I have focused not on content, but on form and structure.  Using the hamburger model which I had already taught her, I guided her through the construction of the paragraphs, but left her to fill in the body of the text in her own words.


The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors was an incredably useful read, as it helped me identify my faults, and accept them as being common problems, as well as giving me ways of working which left both me and the student getting more out of the sessions.

CVs - a necessary evil? Thoughts on LinkedIn - the future of career networking.

So.... a lesson about CVs.... this felt a little like well mapped ground, as they were covered in the core module last year, and I felt even then that the teaching was unsuprisingly aimed at students with little employment history which was a little irrelevent to the 'mature' students among us.  Yet another example of the pitfalls of structuring a lesson to the masses, rather than differentiating to the individual needs of the students.  Though I do understand why it needs to be done, and that the older students are in a minority.

It was useful to ask some questions, and to review my CV, which is always a laborious job.  I noted that I should be including some details like GCSE subjects depending on their relevence, and that I could update the format of my personal interest section, turning a block of prose into a more digestable list of points.

One ot the most interesting things to come up in our discussion was the relevence of the now slightly archaic CV, when so much of our lives are documented online.  linkedIn, a site which I had only vaguely heard about turns out to be the up and coming proffesional networking site, and it was argued that a good linkedIn profile can double as, and in some cases superceed the CV.

I have now made a LinkedIn profile... accesable here if anyone is interested

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=219904021&trk=tab_pro

........Though I still have a lot to add to it. 

So far it seems like an utterly good idea, though as I have a variety of interests and plural career possabilities, I'm not sure if I will be able to adapt it entirely to my needs.

My main problem with LinkedIn is that it's online
And public.

I know.  I'm living in the dark ages.

Even this Blog, which I know is a useful reflective exercise, petrifies me because it feels like a public platform, a soapbox if you will that I am encouraged to use to shout about my feelings and experiences to the world.  It's not like that.  I know this.  But it still makes me panic.

I wonder whether I am alone in this; as a writer, I am incredably protective of my drafts.  I hate to show them to people until I am moderately happy with them, and those are people I know and trust.  The idea of sharing my personal opinions with the whole of the internet is, frankly, mindboggling. It's been hard. To write this without fear of consiquence.  I use facebook, but I am as privite as I can be, I make few posts, comunicate via privite messages, I am always acutely aware of an audience.  It's a version, I suppose, of Alvin Toffler's future shock, technology advancing faster than I can comprehend, horizons broadening.  And yet, it's the way thay things are going.  It will be commonplace (if it isn't already) for employers to evaluate an applicant's internet profiles.  And the whole writing business works on interpersonal relationships.  Social networking is the future.  I've just got to give in to it.  LinkedIn, here I come!

This Blog is an important feat in my personal developmment, making me challenge my personal fears and get something out there - and proving that the internet is vast, and that not many people really read it!

To Observe, to be Observed. Does the act of observation change what you observe?

In yesterday's Blog post I meant to talk about observating and it's value in relation to Experiential Learning, but I got a little sidetracked.

Observation is obviously important to the way we critique and improve our teaching practice, fitting into the Experiential Learning cycle somewhere between Reflection and Theory (Abstract Conceptualisation).  It is near impossible to observe oneself without bias and having feedback from a third party can help identify practice that can be improved.  Good observation will also include discussion about HOW to change practice, making it a positive and improving experience.



The act of watching others teach can also be rewarding giving new ideas on what works, and what doesn't, to improve and inform our own practice. 

However, in particle physics.... there is such a thing as the observer effect, which notes that measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the systems.  It is also noted in psychology as the Observer-expectancy effect, where people change their behavior when aware of being watched but also how the researcher's cognitive bias causes them to unconsciously influence the participants of an experiment.

I've been witness to lesson observations, and OFSTED inspections in my role as a TA, and I know that an observed lesson is quite often considerably different to an unobserved one.  Not only does the teacher often change their lesson plan, but the students are also affected, which begs the question; Are lesson observations ever acurate?

In this article by the Guardian's 'secret teacher', he bucks the trend by not adapting his lesson to the demands of observation and is penalised for it. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/feb/02/observations-outstanding-lessons-secret-teacher?INTCMP=SRCH

By switching the seating plan of the class a few days before in order to better the learning of the class, he is observed while the class is still unsettled, and it shows in the observation.  If he had left them where they were until after the obsevation he would have perhaps been marked better, but the students learning on a larger scale would have suffered. 

And so here are the two main issues....

One..... Observation is isolated and microcosmic.  It is done in one class, on one day, and does not neccisarily represent the teaching as a whole.

Two.....With the rise of 'performance related pay' there is an incentive for teachers to engineer the results of observation, making it less about the improvement of general practice, and more like cramming for a test.

So... in general a useful, unavoidable but utterly corruptable part of education.

A question of Experiential Learning

"Experience in itself does not guarantee learning. In order to learn from experience,we must reflect on our experiences; try to relate them to theory; and then plan how we might do better next time."

 

So says Mister Petty in his book, Teaching Today illustating this with Kolb's cycle.  This really resonated with me, it is undeniably important, and I think we've all experienced the act of doing this.  I have been responsible in the past for the devising of lesson plans and enacting them, reflecting and modifying delevery and content, disscussing with other practitioners, gleaning new ideas and approaches, implementing them and starting the cycle again.  However, I had never before seen this cycle as theory, only as good practice.

 

I think that seeing this as a concrete structure and actively understanding and implementing it as theory, rather than implicit practice is important, but not only for educators, also for students.  So many of these theories are aimed at educators, not only for the improvement of their own practice, but also to embed in lesson structure to maximise the education value of what they are trying to teach.  What is explict for educators is implicit for students.  I'm not sure that this is best practice.  Should we not educate students in the understanding of their own learning? Learning to learn, and Teaching to be taught? 

 

So often in class the dominant question of the students is WHY? This is actively encouraged in relation to learning material, but discouraged in relation to the teaching practice.  "why are we doing this?" or more often "What is the point?" I think it would be advantageous for students, certainly by University level, possibly earlier, to understand the mechanics of their learning and the lessons they are engaged with. 

 

As I have learnt these theories I have reflected on my university course and seen in some instances where they have been applied, giving me those golden moments of understanding...."Oh, that was what I was supposed to be getting out of it!".... Unfortunately, this has often come too late, we see then the gulf we identified in the academic literacies model, between the student's and teacher's expectations.  The current vogue of using Learning Objectives, applied in primary and secondary education (though not very often in undergraduate study I have found - this module, of course, being an exception), is one step closer to bridging this devide, however it still does not tell the student how they will achieve the objectives stated.  There is an undercurrent of deminished expectation of learners, that they will not understand or appreciate this knowledge, but must be coerced or tricked with the skills of a teacher-magician into asimilating knowledge.

 

As a tutor I have found that students are often unaware of the way in which they learn.  As the education system weans them off into self-directed learning, around A-levels, I think that understanding themselves as learners is highly informative and relates directly to their achievement, through good note taking, efficient revision and effective personal study.

 

I would argue that certain theories such as: Learning Style - Kinesthetic/Auditory/Visual and Experiential Learning, should be actively taught to students, turning their implicitly understood learning practices into explicit ones that they can access and use to their own advantage. 

 

Micro Teaching Ideas

I've been thinking about what to cover in my Micro Teaching session.  It really is micro, only 15 minutes or so, so bevity is key, however I'd like to do something that is not only useful to my peers (my willing guinea pigs) but that is not covered in our general syllabus.

I think I'd like to look not at what we write, but how we apply ourselve to writing.  I think as creative writers (It can't just be me) we are absorbed in psychology of our characters, and of ourselves and I would like to conciously explore our own neuroses when it comes to the act of writing: the things that hold us back and prevent us from doing our best work. 

I've been reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and was relieved when she outlined all the ticks and mental twitches I had thought were uniquely and idiosyncratically mine. 

It's a powerful cathartic experience to name and shame our neuroses.  Like the story of Rumpelstiltskin, by naming the thing that fills us with fear, we gain some power of it; once it is named, we have the power to change.

Teaching Models

When planning lessons it is best to fit the tasks into a framework that you know works and fits your pupose.  As we discussed with the signiture pedagogies, it is important that lessons fit into a form that is recognisable and therefore safe for both studants and educators.  It also makes the act of planning much easier for teachers - in your first year you may have to produce a lesson plan for every lesson you take, this may take longer than it takes to teach.  You also have to produce any resourses or presentations to go with these lessons - it's a big job.  After a year you may start to repeat yourself, reviewing or unpdating plans, but the initial effort is huge.  Having frameworks, tried and tested to sculpt your lessons (a table based plan for example) makes life much simpler. 

In this class we discussed four models of structuring a lesson or work shop.

• Educare
• Double Decker
• CIA
• Divergent Thinking

Here you can see my notes:




Thought I'd share a food technology presentation with you using Prezi.  I used this for year 7 pupils to encourage them to think and write about food.



This followed the CIA model, and continued from a sensory activity I had done the previous week.