The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again
As many of you have seen over my previous posts, I have a challenging S5 class. With my time (and energy) consumed mostly behaviour management, it is nigh on impossible to teach the other pupils in the class and deliver the education that they have the right to receive. This week, I made the decision to be proactive in order to allow the other pupils the best education that I could give them.
Luckily, this week was shortened by a local holiday on Monday and an in-service day on Tuesday meaning pupils were only in Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Wednesday arrived and I knew that it would bring with it some interesting tales from the long weekend and some sleepy pupils.
S3 was the first class to walk through my door and we continued to read 'Witch Child' the pupils are getting more involved in it. I love that they all want to discuss it now and are asking about what happens later in the book. I tried a new technique with this class on Wednesday and asked them to read in small groups then discuss the chapters they had read. It was interesting to see the confidence of some pupils and to push the others to get involved. They were a bit excitable but overall it worked really well and we got a lot done. So much so that we read as a class all period on Thursday!! To add to the pieces of work we have done in addition to the novel, today I had the pupils write a letter from the point of view of a puritan or witch on the ship that the protagonist was on. They got involved thinking of common puritan names. This was a fun activity but it also involved testing their knowledge of the book because the brief was to include details and experiences that had happened in the novel.
The S2 class that I only see once a week was my next class and they were eager to get started on our new adventure - poetry. 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' by Alfred Lord Tennyson to be more precise. It was one of the first poetry ventures that I attempted as a student teacher and I absolutely adore it. We set it off with a short history of the Crimean War (cue pupils laughing at my TERRIBLE sense of geographical locations of most countries!) and a reminder of poetry techniques: alliteration, assonance, enjambement, similies, metaphors, onomatopoeia etc. A poor pupil offered a sample 'metaphor': "A stitch in time saves nine" - I tried to explain it is an idiom but then there was mass confusion. Anyway, we started to annotate the poem and the pupils got really involved and were enjoying learning all about it. While this class can be challenging with low level disruption, they were a real joy to teach this week and I am really growing a little soft spot for them.
Now to my S5 and the never-ending stomach eating nerves that consume me when I even so much as think of this class. Wednesday and a double period last thing is always interesting. I booked the computer suite in the library in order to allow pupils a chance to finish various drafts of their personal reflective essays. All was going fine until a certain group of pupils refused to do any work whatsoever and were looking up quad bikes on the internet. Having given three clear warnings, eventually they did the task that they were asked to do. For the second period, I took them back to class where the same group of pupils were continuing to be disruptive, unsettling and were answering back. The worst culprit I decided to send to the head of department to sit in her class until the end of the period and work there instead of disrupting my other pupils. As I have mentioned before, I have an amazingly supportive head of department who immediately came through and read the riot act to the whole class. She explained to them that she was paying for a full time teacher for a small class and that they should appreciate that.
So this is where my 'At Grass' link comes in. 'At Grass' is a poem about horses being sent to grass as a way to describe them being put in a field to do nothing. The S5 pupil being sent out was forced to retire from the position of power that he felt he was entitled to within my class. Cue struggle of other dominant males attempting to take over his position. The next day, I removed all of the 5 boys from my class who had been part of the disruptive group the previous day. I sent them all to the other classrooms before the lesson started giving them textbook work to do. It is funny that just as a horse at grass does very little except stand around all day, so these pupils also did no work and just sat refusing to do anything at all. Without these boys, the rest of the class were visibly more at ease, more involved and more confident in the classroom. The whole learning environment was fantastic and we thoroughly enjoyed our lesson together! Not only that, a few of my colleagues popped in and out for various reasons and afterwards commented on the more relaxed and yet more productive learning that was happening for all of the pupils.
I hope to start again with these pupils on Monday morning and I am fully prepared to give them another chance but this week I have my strong head on and I refuse to allow those pupils to bring down my confidence. I know in my heart that my lessons were good with them gone this week which means it is them, not me or a lack of ability, who are ruining the lessons.
Miss.
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