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QTS Q8

Evaluation of the Apprentice Year 8 Unit

By PGCE, POT 3, Reflection, Teaching124 Comments

Evaluation of Year 8 Apprentice Unit

Over the last 5 weeks I have been teaching Year 8 a new module that I have created a medium term plan for. This unit has been called the Apprentice unit. The main concept for the project is to come up with a product that they can sell to pupils at their school. The product needs to be small and affordable with the average pocket money that pupils have per week.

To start with I asked the pupils to think about what sort of people they are targeting and what sort of products they might like. I gave them some clues to get them started with the product one of which was a usb lipstick product that could sell to females.

Above is an example of how I designed a simple poduct in firework and then asked them to create a similar sketch for their product. This particular idea really gave them the chance to be creative with their product. It was important that they undertook this task so that they could have an idea of what the product would consist of for the production phase. This lesson worked particularly well with some fantastic produces being produced.

They also had to think about how they would brand their product and come up with a logo. This was a good chance again to use the program fireworks to design it. It was important to give them a few examples of different logos and take them through the program in steps otherwise the pupils forgot it by the time they had a go.

Finally the pupils had to go through and sort out the finances of the product to figure out how much money they intend to make. This needed to be done with an element of competition.

At the end of this unit the pupils will be assessed via a presentation and they will have to present their PowerPoint that they have collated their research in and pitch it as if they where in a boardroom.

All in all this was a great project that is suited for an end of year project to consolidate a series of skills .

Please see this folder for all the resources files and folders. http://bit.ly/ivXjSw

AB tutor a teaching tool

By PGCE, POT 2, TeachingNo Comments

At KES they use a client control piece of software cann AB tutor that is similar to RM tutor. This is a great tool for showing and demonstrating to pupils work that requires fine details. It simple takes over their screens and allows you to show them what is happening on your screen. It is really useful for monitor pupils work and to see what applications they are using. This is a good test to see if they are on task without actually walking around. I have also been using it to display pupils work at the end of the lesson which has been really great for plenary seshions. It really helps give instant feedback to pupils on the work they have created and is a good quick way of formative assesement.

I used ab tutor after i recieved some feedback that pupils couldnt see the screen and needed more feedback on their design work.

Although KES own the software some of the teaching staff do not use if for ICT lesson so i was able to give a seshion on how to best use it after I had become familiar with it myself. This was great for colaborative work and for helping others members of staff to get up to speed with this technology.

Starters in ICT lessons

By PGCE, SD - ICT, SeminarsNo Comments

SD Seminar

A started activity

Buy a bag of sweets like quality street.

Hand out sweets and ask them to use the sweet to describe a certain topic

This helps focus creative thinking reflection reward simple

Book on pimping your ride

10 starters on Microsoft packages

Anagrams –

Interactive hangman

Memory games

Interactive word search

Dingbats –

Word search

Tool bar quiz of the different tools on programs match the icons with the function identifies aras of

Audience and purpose. – PowerPoint think who is

Data capture

Looping games q and a on sheets but answer and question is different on sheet. So the kids call out question and thn pupils have to respond with answer

Logo quiz – brand identity

ICT in society starters

Will it blend YouTube Videos?

Brick in washing machine

Image  close-up

Research questions eg.words 1st bug

Draw ICT equip in homes

Name ……. as many as you can think of (List)

Programming starters

Spot Key Procedures in scratch

Word search and quiz

Sequencing – arramge in correct sequence

Masking game layers guess the celeb

Shock spook scratch game

Spot the difference

Animation vs animator

Colour scheme designer http://colorschemedesigner.com/

Copyright – Year 9MQB4 – OCR Nationals

By Observations, PGCE, Reflection, TeachingNo Comments

Formal Lesson observation

This was my first formal lesson observation from my university tutor. I was quite nervous about it as I really wanted to impress. I found myself planning all evening and tried my best to make sure that all my resources and activities were just right. 

The actual lesson went well with no major issues. I was happy with what I delivered and though they could have achieved a bit more written work I think they would have enjoyed it and I could tell they had learned something. It was an ambitious lesson to try and I feel that I managed it well.

I tried to use some post it notes to get the kids thinking about how all they have to do is write something down to copyright it and so i aske them to do this. I then had some great advice which was to extend this by saying how would you feel if i went and sold each one of these to pay for my next holiday to Kenya. This would have been a great way to get the higher level of blooms taxonomy.

I found that my feed back from my tutor was far but quite hypercritical which was hard to swallow at first as I really did try my best. I think I am still having to come to terms with the fact that I am not going to perfect yet and actually teaching is always about seeing how you can do things better next time. So the advice was great and I can see why they push us and try and find areas of weakness. 

  • I need to concentrate on listening more to the responses from the pupils during questioning time and then if they
    are good expanding on this and asking other pupils to engage with it.
  • Identifying the areas of strength and spikes in learning and praising that highly.
  • I need to really make sure that they get on task quicker and give them options if they are not starting the work
    and making clear the expectation on them to work or get a sanction.
  • Continued work on low level disruption.

All in all I think that it’s necessary to be humble and then strive to be the best.

 Please take a look at the following to get an idea of how the lesson worked and what resources i used followed by my observation report. 

Lesson observation report = http://bit.ly/gZBzno 

Copyright PowerPoint =  http://bit.ly/e9SdK4 

 Lesson Plan and Evaluation of lesson = http://bit.ly/i04wPg

Bits and Bobs – SD Seminar Week 9

By PGCE, SD - ICT, SeminarsNo Comments

Today we are having a looking at a series of bits and bobs.

We are going to look at a series of gadgets that will help us in our teaching that are fun and practical. Things like web cams, and microphones, Control devices like the Bee-bot using,

Death by PowerPoint

We watched this video that was really funny

Automated response units are a a good way to get feed back from the kids in a voting fashion.

Block poster  is a great tool to make a large posters

http://www.blockposters.com/

Audacity is a great free audio capture program http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Posterous is a free online podcasting application

https://posterous.com/

have a listen to our pod cast that we have uploaded to posterous

http://trcwest.posterous.com

Cue prompter is a great website for doing a scrolling auto cue prompter and its free

http://www.cueprompter.com/

We have been given loads of great links from Andy my tutor.

For the audacity part we used a large condensor mic that has a usb port and we used that to record out sound. We then used audacity to record all the tracks.

We had to just plan out our script and let it role on the script prompter above.

Once we had all the tracks sorted we put them into one linear time line normalized the volume and used a few fun effects to change the pitch and speed of the voices.

Its was great fun today and really enjoyed working in a team and collaboratively.