QTS Q27 – Timothy West

Marking pupils work GCSE OCR Nationals

By adminPGCE, 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.

20/05/2011

Year 8s After effects lesson 4

By adminPGCE, 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.

24/03/2011

Attending Year 9 and 10 Parents Evening

By adminPGCE, POT 2, ReflectionNo Comments

During my POT 2 Placement I was able to attend 2 Parents Evenings.

For the Year 9 one I was there for the whole evening from 4:30 PM until 7:30 PM We had between 5 and 10 minutes the main purpose of this parents evening was as follows.

To review their progress from Year 8 to year 9
To Review their progress across the topical tests they had and highlight and strengths and areas for improvement
To say what targets they could achieve in the next collaborative group project to improve their areas of weakness for certain programs
To promote the ICT GCSE Course for the next year as they where choosing their modules.

As we went through each pupil was able to ask questions on areas that they found hard and we where able to praise the pupils that had done well and then target the pupils that needed improvement. It was hard as many of the bright pupils that achieved high scores did not want to carry on with the GCSE as they saw other subjects as more valuable and beneficial. We had to re iterate how valuable ICT is in the modern era but not force them. I liked how my mentor just encouraged them to do what they enjoy.

It was good for mee to see this as I was able to look at the tracked scores that they achieved throughout the year and focus on what pupils found hard so that i could tackle these in my Learning Objectives. This term I will have free rein over them as so it will be a good opportunity to focus on their specific learning neeeds and sett targets to meet them.

For the Year 10s this was mainly to

Review their current progress with their GCSE Coursework as many where quite behind. They where given exactly what they needed to prepare for each of these pieces of coursework.

A few year 10s needed to be prompted to get a move on and this had to be done in a firm yet diplomatic way with parents present

For both of these evenings I was able to contribute with a few points and thoughts on what i will be teaching their pupils.

The main difference I say between my Home School and Complimentary school was that parents where on the whole more supportive of their children and work and took a definite interest in what subjects they where doing but mainly the area of achievement as parents where paying at my complimentary they wanted to see the results.

Signed Trevor Medhurst

Please email tgm@kesbath.com for confirmation

15/03/2011

Year 11 GCSE Coursework Lessons

By adminObservations, PGCE, POT 2, Reflection, TeachingNo Comments

Working with year 11 Course work

I have been team teaching year 11 coursework lessons that are a completely different approach to normal guided teaching. The first thing is that they are all working away on their own documents and so they are all at different levels this means that you have to initially be familiar with the actual coursework requirements and structure. I have been spending the time reading through the Candidate booklet and familiarizing myself with what exactly the pupils have to do.

The pupils here are KES are doing the AQA syllabus and have to create two tasks

1) Set up a website for the driving school.

2) Set up a system to manage driving lessons and provide a link to it on the website.

So currently as they are on the old spec they are allowed to have a pre made template with headings and guidelines. They then have to do the following to create the project and then write it up in this format.

There is an analysis section that applies to both (10 marks)

Then they have to do a write up on each of these areas below

Design (20 Marks)

Implementation (40 Marks)

Testing (10 Marks)

Self Evaluation (8 Marks)

Report (6 Marks)

Evaluation of others use of ICT (6)

Total (100)

Currently the pupils I have joined are at a stage where they should have completed a preliminary stage of each of these areas some of them are at varying levels and have created a comprehensive report and others are quite far behind for example one pupil has almost finished with a 250 page report and another has still not completed making his website.

They key to helping out in a course work lesson is to be able answer questions that arise swiftly in a ‘get in get out fashion’. The way to be able to offer this assistance is to have a solid understanding of the exam board and the mark scheme so that you know exactly what is required.

I have already been looking through some of their work that they have been handing in at intervals and I have made corrections to the work. This is another way of getting to grips with the mark scheme and what they have to do to achieve the higher grades. This interval hand is a big demand on the teacher but is vital to offer

Here at KES there is a high demand to do well with most pupils aiming at the A-A* grade which means that you have to be really stringent when it comes to the actual mark scheme. This is obviously way above the national average that most state schools would achieve but is a good standard to reach and push to if I was to work in a State School.

11/03/2011

Photoshop lesson 1 – Year 7

By adminPGCE, 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

03/03/2011