2nd Teaching Day

Thursday 3rd September:

Today I taught Literacy to another small group of children, however I changed the activity. This lesson was worse than yesterdays, as the children who were in this group seemed to be talkative and much more disruptive. Additionally I don’t think I explained the activity well enough for them to grasp. It was not a disaster, but it did not go as well as I planned. I had to constantly use positive reinforcement, which at times seemed to backfire! The children who I acknowledged for positive behaviour viewed it as their opportunity to gloat! I had to stop numerous times using hand gestures for them to mimic in order to refocus their attention on me. I would change the way I explain the activity, and also the location of the lesson, as it was the same as yesterday.

I taught Mathematics in the mid-session, with the focus being on using the 100’s chart to teach counting forwards and backwards by tens. I really need to brush up on my maths, as it scares me that I need to teach children something that I had a lot of difficulty with at times. The lesson went ok, the children sometimes didn’t catch that I wanted them to count as a class, so we had to stop and I needed to make that clear.

The day was disrupted numerous times, and so I had to teach at an earlier time than I expected which made me nervous as I didn’t feel as prepared as I could have. I found that the activity of making a number pattern puzzle was challenging for them, which I think is a good thing, however I really needed to explain it better. Some children couldn’t grasp what they needed to do, which tells me that either I need to focus on explaining things more simply and concisely or that I need to set activities more at their level.

They did, however, love the number puzzle when they finished it and had fun swapping it with other children. I realised today that if you do not set proper early finishers tasks, then things can get out of hand! I didn’t think that some people finished incredibly fast, while others couldn’t finish in the time set out. Using the computers for Mathletics, as well as using the dice for creating their own number sums would have been a good idea for early finishers.

At times I realised I had forgotten to explain things, and I needed to get their attention by clapping patterns. The nature of the class is very inconsistent and calling out was a major issue, which needs to be addressed. Lots of learning happened today though!