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QTS Q14

Marking pupils work GCSE OCR Nationals

By PGCE, POT 312 Comments

I have been marking some OCR nationals GCSE coursework over the last 2 days, which has been a great chance to learn more about the course and the way that it is delivered.

The school use a really great method for monitoring the work and recoding it through access program call JAS. The Head of IT has developed a series of queries that put the work into a database that can be viewed in excel.

The process for the pupils is to submit their work to the Joint Assessment System

Then me as a teacher can print out all the levels and then goes into each pupil and clicks on the work that needs to be assessed. Once I have given it the correct grade that I feel it deserves I then put a grade and a comment for any improvements that could be made to actually increase their grade before it is submitted.

The process is made simple once you get into a rhythm and once you master the nuances of the program. It takes a total of about 5 minutes per piece of work. The hardest part is when you have to make a judgment call on quality of the PowerPoint slides.

Once pupils then receive their work back then they can make the edits to it and view what each module needs to working on.

Above and below is an example of som work that I have marked with reference to the powerpoint that they where creating.

Below is an example of the tracking and monitoring that this program achieves and helps with.

Bellow is an example of the class that  have been teaching and the results that they have achieved.

Year 8 Fireworks Apprentice lesson 4

By PGCE, POT 3, TeachingNo Comments

What we did & Learning objectives!

  • To learn how to use the program Macromedia fireworks to create a Logo for your product.
  • To learn how to use text and typography in your logo design
  • To learn how to use shapes and colors in you logo design
  • To learn how to use special effects to enhance your logo design

What went well?

This was a fantastic lesson and the quality of the pupils work was brilliant at the end of the lesson.

I was really able to nail the behaviour of the pupils by issuing them a clear set of objectives at the beginning of the lesson. In my PowerPoint I was also able to use a good merits and sanctions technique with smiley faces and sad faces indicating if I am happy or sad with them. They responded well to this and I was able to follow through on this well.

The pupils responded well to peer assessment and

Students Learning

The pupils learnt the program well and where drawing on prior knowledge that they had developed in previous practice. It was great to see the quality of the work go well and they where all on task working really hard which was such a bonus and pleasure to see. Students had clearly learnt from the process and the demonstration that was followed well.

What could have been done better and what will I do about it?

This is hard as most of it went really well. I can only look at the fact that I could look at given pupils that did step out of line harsher sanctions particularly at the break time lessons.

Students Learning

This could have been helped if I was able to fully show a few more points during my demonstration.

Feelings

I thought this was a great lesson and I was really happy with the behaviour and the quality of the work that the pupils produced.

I also had a secure knowledge of teh program and requirement of what i was teaching which really helped. This was demonstrated by the quality of the pupils work.

Please use this link to view my full lesson plan >> http://bit.ly/mRoaOc

Full observation >> http://bit.ly/iJN9T2

Resources >> http://bit.ly/k42Qhk

Year 8s After effects lesson 4

By PGCE, POT 2, Reflection, Teaching125 Comments

Class

Year 8

What we did?

Please see lesson plan for full details.

The main objectives and purpose of this lesson was to ask pupils to use Adobe After Effects to create a short video clip to advertise the activities week at school. It was to mainly focus on the use of special effects and building up the video in a manner that looked effective creative and appealing.

What went well?

I was able to explain the initial part of the lesson with ease with in my time frame in the plan.

Pupils responded well to selective questioning rather than hands up. The questions were a good process of reviewing previous lessons.

The general working atmosphere was purposeful safe as I used a quiet tone to keep the mood of the lesson quiet. It is interesting how if you are quiet in your delivery the lesson atmosphere is quiet.

The creativity and experimentation was fantastic as they were using the special effects. It was great to see them really explore their creativity and try out different effects and apply them to their videos

I found that when an issue came up again and again I was able to pause what they were doing and address this issue head on.

I found my monitoring and feedback to individual pupils was effective simply by just viewing what was happening on their screens and patrolling around the classroom.

I initially did not show enough detail when demonstrating the various parts of the screen but when i placed an example of it up on the screen it was easier to see what was going on.

What could have been done better?

I really need to work on my timings at the end of the lesson and will be making sure that I have the end of the lesson time noted down and memorized in my head as I thought I had 5 minutes before the end of the lesson but I didn’t.

I found that a few pupils needed to be watched and I was slow to react to them and meet their needs with the harder parts of after effects.

I could have possibly planned my intervention times better as they were a bit ad hoc.

I am still needing to learn names in a better manner.

Photoshop lesson 1 – Year 7

By PGCE, POT 2, Reflection, TeachingNo Comments

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

After School Animation Club

By PGCE, ReflectionNo Comments

I have been helping out over the last 5 weeks in an after school animation club.

Here at the school i am placed in you can choose from a series of after school clubs there are several that range from Art club to hockey right across the board to the one i am helping in Animation club. These extra curricular clubs are brilliant as the give the kids the opportunity to do something that they really enjoy outside of the normal school day. The benefit of this is that it’s a more relaxed time that is not like being in a lesson and it also gives them more opportunity to explore and get into the club they have chosen.

In our animation club we are using two main programs. One is Macromedia Flash MX and the other is Scratch from MIT.

Most of the kids that come are either year 7 or 8 and so scratch is extremely popular as it is really easy to use and get to grips with but still requires the ability to logically program the sequence of events in their game or animation that they are making. It has the “High ceiling yet low complexity” benefit as everything is done using simple to understand bolt together modules.

At the moment we been really just allowing the kids to get to grips with scratch and then encouraging them to think of and plan a game or animation that could work. We have had to give them ideas and prompt them to stick to one project as they are quite easily distracted by all the other games that people have made.

I have been mainly going round answering and helping them one to one with their own projects and working particularly with a select few who’s projects I have been able to get to grips with.

It has been so rewarding to go through their ideas and watch them turn that into a real life game. One chap is making a simple game that has a main character that shoots the baddies that parachute down the screen and then walk to attack him. There is even a boss at the end who is harder to kill. We have been looking at how we can use the variables to create good game play and also how we can create realistic animation in the physical sense.

One of the thing I have learned is that you need to prompt the kids but not do it all for them so its important to give them the mouse and get them to figure it out with your guidance. This way they remember it more and more and are then able to go away and do this on their own.

The other brilliant thing is that it has given me the opportunity to broaden my own subject knowledge as I have to really think on the spot when helping the kids and at times we are both learning the program together. Thankfully I have been able to pick up the program quicker than they have and am then able to really help them develop their skills.

Our numbers are running low at the moment so we are about to introduce a 3d animation program called Mission Maker which looks amazing. It allows them to make fully 3D games without having to create everything from scratch as all the GUI is created and the coding is done through a form field rather than through a coding language. Again it has great (High ceiling) results but is not that complicated to use or control.

We are expecting the number to increase with the introduction of this new program Mission Maker and I’m really looking forward to getting to grips with it.

All in all it’s really great to get involved with extra curricular activities out of the classroom and to use that as a chance to broaden my subject knowledge and invest in the kids that want to go deeper with this ever growing area of animation.

 

Lesson 3 OCR Nationals AO2 – Year 9MQB4

By PGCE, Reflection, TeachingNo Comments

What we did & Learning objectives!

We had a catch up session to get them up to speed with the current AO2 Slides such as some were falling behind on the slides.

We then moved onto looking at how to…

?        Learn how to copy and paste text and graphics from the internet in compliance with copyright.

?        Learn how to download graphic and text files in compliance with copyright

What went well?

I was really happy with my behaviour management this lesson and Even though it was wet outside I managed to get them coming in and logging on quietly and swiftly. Once I wanted them to start I was able to get their attention quickly and  get them looking at me.

I am finding that if I give a simple count down in seconds it works for me and by 0 they are usually quiet.

I felt that the pace of this lesson was great and we were able to cover allot. I feel this was clear as I made it clear what my expectation were early on and stated what I wanted them to get done by the end of the lesson. This pace even almost picked up towards the end of the lesson which was great.

Students Learning 

They responded well to questioning and I was impressed as they had retained allot of information from the last lesson. They were completing the slides well and were able come up with a valid explanation of the process they were doing.

What could have been done better and what will I do about it?

It was not my fault as RM Tutor was not installed on the teacher’s machine which meant that I could not do my demonstrations by taking over the screen. I was able to adapt and ask the students to come up to the front so that I can show them the areas that I needed to demonstrate.

Students Learning 

A few students were being lazy and at times I was getting frustrated that they had not listened and need to keep my calm and figure ways for them to stay focussed.

Feelings

I was really pleased with this lesson and felt confident with the pupils and started to feel relaxed whilst teaching them which enabled me to go round checking that they had completed their slides.

Please use this link to view my full lesson plan >> http://bit.ly/cjQnTl

 

Networking ICT GCSE Theory

By PGCE, Reflection, TeachingNo Comments

What we did & Learning objectives!

 

This was a theory based lesson that was teaching the year 11s all about networks and looking at how they can be applied in the real world with advantages and disadvantages.

Understand what a network is the purpose of them.

Understand the advantages and disadvantages of networks.

What went well?

We had a time of silent study to answer an exam based question worth 8 marks. This worked really well and after what was quite a rowdy lesson they were all silent and worked really hard on this and so I praised them for it. It was good to see them doing some independent learning.

I enjoyed being given the freedom to take the class on my own as this allowed me to be my self and to really try and be free. I found this also brought challenges.

What could have been done better and what will I do about it?

I over planned for the course that I was doing so had to remove some extra information that they did not need to know about. I was curious why I was not told about this but I should have read the exam spec again as it said that this was the ICT short course.

I thought that there were elements of boredom which lead to the low level disruption of talking. Thankfully I was able to keep it under control and issue a warning to back up that I meant business.

I feel that I could have tried to think up some more creative ways to express the topic and could have teased out more during the questioning time to get them thinking about it. I felt that I was reading to much of my PowerPoint and not really explaining the points and making sure that they understood what I was saying. As many of them where beavering away with their notes but not really taking it in.

I feel that I need to really try to keep the behaviour tight and keep insisting on no talking when I was talking. I also feel that need to think up some more engaging activities to get them thinking about the theory more the trouble is that they are not really getting on task when I ask them to do group discussion and feed back as they don’t answer my plenary questions and I really need to push them to answer it.

All in all I feel that I will need to keep planning interesting content and maybe observe my mentor teach a lesson on theory for example he suggested to look at analogue and digital data.

Please use this link to view my full lesson plan  >> http://bit.ly/ay9fTR 

 And resources like powerpoints >> http://bit.ly/99WSEY

 

Lesson 2 OCR Nationals – Year 9MQB4

By PGCE, Reflection, TeachingNo Comments

What we did & Learning objectives!

These are the learning objectives for the lesson…

To search for all the 8 different band websites.

To learn how to judge if their band website is valid or trustworthy.

How to save or bookmark favourite pages that you find online.

Learn how to organise these pages into folders and categories.

What went well?

I thought that my plenary went well. I asked them to stand behind their places and answer a question and if they answered it correctly they could leave. This meant they were leaving the classroom on task still.

There were constantly on task and filling in each part of their PowerPoint slides which meant that they were achieving allot. The total result was allot of work done in the lesson.

I tried to walk around and asses how each pupil was doing and if they had completed each part I had asked.  

I was happy with my delivery to them up the front and I felt that they were all paying attention to my delivery.

What could have been done better and what will I do about it?

I changed my lesson plan last minute which meat that I was a bit disorganised when I came into the lesson. I had to quickly finish my slides and resources. This was because I realised that I needed to take a different course of action as the logical order required me to talk about validity of websites before I asked them to source them.

I need to be more specific of what I require of them when explaining technical aspects as when I showed them how to book mark and create folders and sub folders I did not take the time to do this to the full. This meant that it was not quite clear what expected of them. I re demonstrated the book marking process but needed to give more time to this.

I was hoping to get a practical exercise to demonstrate putting sites into folder and the importance of organising and structuring but sadly did not get onto this.

My Feelings

Well I enjoyed this lesson and the pressure that it put on me to adapt and be versatile with short notice. I feel that if I knew this earlier it would have taken the stress of the whole lesson as I was worried I wasn’t going to get it all in.

Thankfully I achieved all of my lesson objectives so al in all I feel this was a good lesson

Please use this link to view my full lesson plan >> http://bit.ly/dzMWDm

Researching Online – photos and text – Year 8MQB1

By PGCE, Reflection, TeachingNo Comments

What we did & Learning objectives!

In this lesson we had a look at good ways to research content online with a focus on text and pictures. The purpose was to give them some structure and guidelines on how start to populate their websites with good looking content.

  1. To find out some key points about your topic like using effective search techniques – what it is – history of how long it’s been an issue – a few key facts and figures e.g. how much GM food is produced in the UK. Also include one news article
  2. To gather some relevant images and pictures from Google image search and from a stock photo website like corbis images

What went well?

I laid down the ground rules to start with and set high expectations which went well and I was able to control the class without to much trouble.

I was really happy how I was able to start with a recap and get them on task quickly. I was able to use this time to make sure that each pupil was up to scratch.

The pupils were on task and achieved a good amount of work in the lesson. They are really beginning to create a website that looks good and could be actually used on the web.

Some of the questions were answered well

The where able to use their english and skills to write the work  they had researched to create the work in their own words. I had to make sure that pupils where comming up with sentices and paragraphs that where realated to the work and to make sure that it was relevant. It was interesting as some pupils literacy  levels where much higher than i expected which makes sense as this is a top set.

What could have been done better and what will I do about it?

I asked them to find content for their website and did not show them how to import it straight into their website. I should have said compile it in word and then paste it into frontpage. I think in the future I would make sure I have each instruction completely clear that allows them to completely get on with the task.

I was meant to show them a few more options to find stock photos so will need to make sure I plan for demonstration time a bit better.

Its was hard to just talk about some of these websites on the PowerPoint with out demonstrating them again I think its best to have a live example of the website rather than just image.. screen shots could be taken to achieve this come to think of it.

 Feelings

It was a busy and fairly tiring lesson but this was because it was the last lesson of the day and everyone was tired. How ever they did get a decent amount of work done.

I was really enjoying it and feel that it went well.

It was interesting as I enjoyed the time also when my mentor left the class room as this gave me complete freedom. This is not at all to say that I don’t like him there. It is just at times you want to please and glance over at your mentor for approval which shouldn’t be the case we are teaching the kids not our mentor.

Please use this link to view my full lesson plan >> http://bit.ly/bWh9yP

Introducing A02 OCR Nationals – Year 9MQB4

By PGCE, Reflection, TeachingNo Comments

What we did & Learning objectives!

We started the new AO2 module and worked through how search engines are used including advanced search features on google.

These were my learning objectives

  • Understand the importance of search engines on the web mainly Google

 

  • How to use key terms effectively on a search engine

 

  • How to use advanced search features on a search engine

 

What went well?

I really felt my use of fun facts and figures about google helped get the kids on side things like “in this lesson google would have made enough money to buy your house that’s £180 000”

I felt that they all listened well and responded to each task that I asked them to do.

They all managed to complete first two slides of the PowerPoint with the screen shot evidence and highlighted and annotated.

Behaviour was good and no real disruptions  I think this was a set high expectation of the lesson and maintained them throughout the lesson as for example a kid had his head down on the desk and I had to reprimand him to pay attention and it obviously worked as he snapped out of it and no it was not because he was bored.

I completed all my lesson objectives and managed to incorporate

To have a chalenge at the end of the lesson about finding a specific site was really good and kids walked about talking about it. This will get a merrit for those who answer it well.

What could have been done better and what will I do about it?

I could have explained the use of quotation marks better in the advanced google search as some of their description were a bit woolly and not correct. I had to re iterate the fact it was to search for a group of words that make up a whole phrase and those words in order. In the future just be really clear about description and almost dictate to them the correct explanation initially but make sure they don’t just copy you.

I almost ran of time toward the end so plan to do plenary slightly earlier.

I need to make sure I have my lesson objectives typed up on power point before the lesson starts as well as the home work rather than doing in the lesson before the start.

 Feelings

I really came away from this lesson buzzing and on such a high note as i really enjoyed it and i feel that the kids enjoed it tpo

Please use this link to view my full lesson plan >> http://bit.ly/9lZukn