SE1 Part 2 Fireworks and the School Run

   Just finished my second week of observations. Its been good. Doing the actual observations are a little boring, I feel like I'm making a documentary or something. I feel I learn more from interacting with the students and teachers than observing them. Started to develop a working relationship with some of the classes, more so the ones I won't be teaching but I'm sure it's valuable all the same. I'll take it as a compliment from a group of year 10's "Sirs cool he knows how to use Fireworks, (CS5 not the explosive kind haha). Started to learn some of names of students in my tutor group and year 10 group, it's quite difficult for me, I'm good with faces but absolutely rubbish with names, maybe that's something that should go into my professional development action plan. I feel i've got my teaching presence going. I walked out of the staff room the other day and just had to look at a student to get them to sort their uniform out, still need to dish out my first uniform card signature but I'm sure it will happen soon.
   Took part in gate duty one morning its interesting to see the students piling in 5 mins before the first lesson, more so the fact the school run parents seem to time it just right to drop them off right at 8.30. Funny to see the sixth formers driving as well, rallying it about in a 1 litre car with about 6 passengers, possibly defying the laws of physics and definitely breaking some part of the highway code, takes me back ha. Started to get my SoW together, so I better finish them off this weekend and start a few lesson plans. Looking forward to the time when lesson plans don't have to be 4 pages long.

SE1 Carlton Le Willows

Just finished my first two days of observations at my first placement school. My timetable has been sorted out and by all accounts looks pretty decent. It consists of 6 hours of ICT a mix of Year's 7, 8 and 10, 2 hours of Citizenship which is probably going to involve team teaching, 1 hour Pastoral, 1 hour NQT meeting, 1 hour of Department Resources and 1 hour of Rugby Club. I'm quite happy with being involved with Rugby, it's a sport I've not played for about 7 years but also a sport that I was pretty decent at so it's abit of a result, hope my boots still fit. I've enjoyed observing the different lessons but sometimes I feel there's only so much you can learn from observations, I find myself bored stiff filling out the observations book after 30 mins, would much rather be helping out or teaching. Need to do a Scheme of Work for my Year 10 group, it seems pretty straight forward, it's basically OCR Nationals Level 2 AO6 Databases so the lessons have mainly got to deliver an understanding of databases, records, queries and reports, the lessons will also involve completion of the AO6 coursework. Better get started