Over this last week I have had the pleasure of teaching 4 year 7 lessons. This was my first experience with year 7’s on the PGCE course however I had already done terms worth of teaching at Monkton Prep. I really enjoyed meeting them and getting to know them quite quickly. They have a very innocent and polite nature to them that is to be quite honest a delight to teach. I personally really enjoyed teaching this age as you have great opportunities for creativity and flexibility.
What we did?
The main aim for this lesson was to introduce the to adobe Photoshop and then introduce them to the scheme of work that has been prepared. The idea for the lesson was to create a “Madagascar in Bath” image with some of the characters cut out and super imposed onto the streets of bath. I introduced them to a series of basic photo editing techniques such as the levels, hue and saturation and color balance tools under the image adjustments section. I then took them through how to use the magic wand tool to select areas of white that they needed and then inverse the selection and then copy this onto the bath image. We also looked at the lasso tool and the magnetic version on this and the quick mask mode to ad and take away from the selection
What went well?
- I found that my welcome and start of by asking for hands up names was particularly effective.
- I set high expectations with my rules set out clearly.
- I thought my intro video with YouTube was really engaging and the kids really enjoyed this.
- I used questioning well to really tease out the important areas of Photoshop and who and why it would be used.
- I thought my subject knowledge was good and as I knew the program really well I found it really easy to explain everything.
- I thought I chunked the lesson well but this was maybe a weakness, as I will come on that below.
- I encouraged them and praised them well at the end of the lesson by saying good lesson as I thought it was a good one.
- They all created a good finished product that was creative and looked interesting
- I found that if I encouraged them to experiment with extension tasks such as the rubber tool.
What could have been done better?
- I didn’t at first realize the high ability of these kids and so I think that I could have done more with the demonstration time and shown them more.
- I started of not managing all the questions that well but as soon as I grasped how to give them an order of whom was next it worked well.
- I had one session where they were already in the classroom, which made the start of the lesson slightly less structured.
- I would have like to use the magnetic tool more and shown them more closely how to use the quick mask tool better as I feel my demo was week in this.
- I need to work on being more definite with my delivery still and only show one skill not a series of skills.
Lesson Plan >> http://bit.ly/j1qKCf
Observation >> click on thumbnail
