A new year, a new RISE partner!
My focus area for Term One was:
How can I build students listening stamina and deliver an appropriate amount of content?
I decided to film a modeled writing lesson as I felt this was an area I would like to further develop. I found that the students in my class were less engaged during teacher modeling and in adjusting the session times, to shorter sessions, I was concerned about the amount of content the children were being delivered. I was keen to be able to strike the right balance. Some factors that I needed to consider was class dynamics - my class is very boy heavy ( 1:3 ratio of girls to boys) and the open classroom environment needed to be addressed.
When I reviewed my lesson the areas of need were very apparent. Cathy was my RISE partner and she provided me with a lot of constructive feedback - that was kind, specific and helpful. She acknowledged that my lesson was too long and that was trying to squeeze too much content into the modeled writing session. Cathy asked a lot of questions around the class environment and things beyond what she could see in the video. She was keen to get the whole picture so that she was able to provide me with useful, meaningful feedback that would assist me in delivering a better lesson. We discussed a variety of strategies that I could use such as scaffolds/templates and Cathy was also able to make suggestions about modeled writing sessions she had used and observed in other classrooms that were successful.
I walked away motivated to put Cathy's suggestions into place and with aim of investing more time into familiarising myself with boys education.