LALOR

REFLECTION Just after the long weekend (11/12th June) I went to see the school my friend works at (Lalor or L). It was eye opening but not in the ways I was expecting. General stuff The Principal was lovely, and said it was a shame I couldn't come and observe one of her classes. The school has periods of 49 minutes, and works on a 2 week timetable. The kids mostly use ICT to look at social media, youtube and tumblr and don;t know much beyond these. Have real trouble knowing how to research information. No team teaching. Boys =/= Evil! While walking through playground I heard a loud, 'hands off policy miss!' as 2 boys sprung back from each other! Must give off the air of a teacher. Science Year 7 Science building like the Gilmore space but slightly different arrangement, more pictures posters up. The science teachers office is in this building (where Gilmore keeps the photocopier). I was warned about the teacher by the principal who called her a 'bit of a battle axe!'. I did not like the teacher AT ALL and aim to be the complete opposite of her. She started by telling off a student for wearing a scarf while wearing the biggest fluffiest scarf and jumper I have ever seen. The students were starting work on seasons, and the earth, moon and sun a topic I'm teaching in placement. The kids had done some homework looking at different parts of the earth and their seasons. After getting them to answer some questions about the different seasons, while appearing to not really listen to the answer and correcting the answer without letting the student think about it. She moved onto looking at a model of the earth, moon and sun. She asked if anyone knew the tilt of the the earth, lots guessed but one boys arm was dropping off trying to get her attention, She ignored him completely and he looked really pissed off! I asked him later and he knew (23.4 degrees) and in another class (geo) he sought me out to show me some work he had done.

While looking at the model the kids had some great questions, but the teacher replied with lots of you'll find out or we'll come to that later. I think any of the online models would have been much better that the live model as you can see a lot more detail. Lots of use of textbooks, which they all had. homework was a page in the student book. Year 8 Egg experiment to look at membranes. Didn't seem well linked to the topic they were studying, bit random. Lots of the students we're away the time before so didn't know what was going on. A PE teacher came in and took 2 boys away for most of the lesson, they came back at the end and were told they had to catch up with someone. Geography Year 7 Teacher who I know socially, friendly lovely chap, not a friendly lovely teacher. Very shouty and strict, which is odd and must be hard to maintain. Last lesson before they moved onto some history. Bit of a filler lesson. They used a template to make a word search for each other to solve, using words from the previous topic. While I was wandering round I got asked several times how to spell things. When I said I didn't know and they should look back in their books they seemed very reluctant and said things like 'you are a teacher you should know'. Student from science lesson showed me his work proudly. The students had produced posters for assessment. When they got their grades back one boy was very disappointed and said he was going to get his Dad to come in. The teacher at the end explained to me that that boy had handed the work in 3 weeks late despite letters and phone calls home. The students Dad had dropped it of the day before as they next day was report writing day. Even after the extra time the work was not up to standard. Year 8

The head of jr school and the principal came to observe. They we friendly and involved in the students work. The students were looking at volcanos, they had a variety of ways to present the info. Most of the class in groups of 3 were making stop motion videos with either clay or paper. A group of boys were using minecraft to construct and volcano. Year 11 Getting an exam back and looking at where marks were missed. One girl was really disruptive and unhappy with her mark. She said that the reason she hadn't done well was because they don't do much reading and writing and thats not proper learning. After looking at the exam they were doing some reading on the next topic and the teacher had a 1:1 with the student. He explained again where she missed marks, and that leaving so much black space was never going to get her marks. English Year 9? Intro to Hamlet? Maths Year 10 Double lesson. Had a ppt with all the info on. This had all the questions etc from the text book. This seemed to work well up to a point, he solved a problem one way but the next slide showed another way of solving it so he had to do it again but in a way he didn't seem so confident with. He wrote a definition on the board and said' You shouldn't take any longer to write with me'. Write defintions and important formula. the kids then got into groups to work through some of the questions. these were mixed ability. They were working towards filling in a table on the board. In practice one kid did the work and the others copied what they had done. They then had to mark how the felt the team worked, they struggled with this. A student who had apparently struggled but had changed completely in yr 10 said while others were talkign 'I listened to your answered, give me some respect'.

 Year 8 Science teacher who now only taught maths. being sponsored by the school. First teacher to put LI on board. Just after the long weekend (11/12th June) I went to see the school My friend works at (Lalor or L). It was eye opening bt not in the ways I was expecting. General stuff The Principal was lovely, and said it was a shame I could't come and observe one of her classes. The school has periods of 49 minutes, and works on a 2 week timetable. The kids mostly use ICT to look at social media, youtube and tumblr and don;t know much beyond these. Have real trouble knowing how to research information. No team teaching. Boys =/= Evil! While walking through playground I heard a loud, 'hands off policy miss!' as 2 boys sprung back from each other! Science Year 7 Science building like the Gilmore space but slightly different arrangement, more pictures posters up. The science teachers office is in this building (where Gilmore keeps the photocopier). I was warned about the teacher by the principal who called her a 'bit of a battle axe!'. I did not like the teacher AT ALL and aim to be the complete opposite of her. She started by telling off a student for wearing a scarf while wearing the biggest fluffiest scarf and jumper I have ever seen. The students were starting work on seasons, and the earth, moon and sun a topic I'm teaching in placement. The kids had done some homework looking at different parts of the earth and their seasons. After getting them to answer some questions about the different seasons, while appearing to not really listen to the answer and correcting the answer without letting the student think about it. She moved onto looking at a model of the earth, moon and sun. She asked if anyone knew the tilt of the the earth, lots guessed but one boys arm was dropping off trying to get her attention, She ignored him completely and he looked really pissed off! I

asked him later and he knew (23.4 degrees) and in another class (geo) he sought me out to show me some work he had done. While looking at the model the kids had some great questions, but the teacher replied with lots of you'll find out or we'll come to that later. I think any of the online models would have been much better that the live model as you can see a lot more detail. Lots of use of textbooks, which they all had. homework was a page in the student book. Year 8 Egg experiment to look at membranes. Didn't seem well linked to the topic they were studying, bit random. Lots of the students we're their the time before so didn't know what was going on. A PE teacher came in and took 2 boys away for most of the lesson, they came back at the end and we're told they had to catch up with someone. Geography Year 7 Teacher who I know socially, friendly lovely chap, not a friendly lovely teacher. Very shouty and strict, which is odd and must be hard to maintain. Last lesson before they moved onto some history. Bit of a filler lesson. They used a template to make a word search for each other to solve, using words from the previous topic. While I was wandering round I got asked several times how to spell things. When I said I didn't now and they should look back in their books they seemed very reluctant and said things like 'you are a teacher you should know'. Student from science lesson showed me his work proudly. The students had produced posters for assessment. When they got their grades back one boy was very disappointed and said he was going to get his Dad to come in. The teacher at the end explained to me that that boy had handed the work in 3 weeks late despite letters and phone calls home. The students Dad had dropped it

of the day before as they next day was report writing day. Even after the extra time the work was not up to standard. Year 8 The head of jr school and the principal came to observe. They we friendly and involved in the students work. The students were looking at volcanos, they had a variety of ways to present the info. Most of the class in groups of 3 were making stop motion videos with either clay or paper. A group of boys were using minecraft to construct and volcano. Year 11 Getting an exam back and looking at where marks were missed. One girl was really disruptive and unhappy with her mark. She said that the reason she hadn't done well was because they don't do much reading and writing and thats not proper learning. After looking at the exam they were doing some reading on the next topic and the teacher had a 1:1 with the student. He explained again where she missed marks, and that leaving so much black space was never going to get her marks. English Year 9? Intro to Hamlet? Maths Year 10 Double lesson. Had a ppt with all the info on. This had all the questions etc from the text book. This seemed to work well up to a point, he solved a problem one way but the next slide showed another way of solving it so he had to do it again but in a way he didn't seem so confident with. He wrote a definition on the board and said' You shouldn't take any longer to write with me'. Write defintions and important formula. the kids then got into groups to work through some of the questions. these were mixed ability. They were working towards filling in a table on the board. In practice

one kid did the work and the others copied what they had done. They then had to mark how the felt the team worked, they struggled with this. A student who had apparently struggled but had changed completely in yr 10 said while others were talkign 'I listened to your answered, give me some respect'. Year 8 Science teacher who now only taught maths. being sponsored by the school. First teacher to put LI on board. Showed the students how to revise by asking them what they knew and then getting them to make summary sheets, then asked them what they knew now. Good technique and a great teacher.