Shout outs for Teacher Development in the community and the dedication of a House Director

I have two mentoring moments I want to share from over the last few weeks. The first comes from trips to Bafokeng schools with Jill. A couple times over the last few weeks I have traveled with her to her meetings at various schools that have been given Zurich trolleys (mobile libraries), and I have learned a lot from her in the process. While the meetings at the schools are interesting and informative, I think I learn the most on the car rides to and from the schools. Jill is very knowledgeable about the Bafokeng people and is very keen to share her knowledge as we pass different points of interests and she tells different stories. I look up to her for both her teaching skills and her community work greatly, and I have really appreciated the opportunities I have had to learn from her experiences in our trips to Phokeng.

The second mentoring experience I wanted to share was mentorship I have witnessed Sarah Taylor giving to her house. Since I live with Sarah, I get to see the hard work and dedication of a house director in a new light. I knew the house directors had a lot of responsibility and administrative tasks, but it recent weeks I have been able to see what an important role as a mentor she plays to the students and other teachers in her house. It is little interactions like following up with a student who lost a flash drive, checking in on her new teachers to see if they understand the ATL and report processes, and staying at school until supper time to help her house with inter-house dance practice that shows me the care and commitment she has to see her peers and students succeed. She is a great example of a mentor to me and those around her and I am inspired by people like her daily.

Food for thought from Grade 1s

It's always a pleasure to see students learning general things that we do in our daily lives. My mentor and I are currently doing cooking and baking with the Grade 3s every Thursday. My mentoring moment of the week is based on my observation of this cooking and baking lesson. The learners were taught  how to make  rice salad. The interesting thing was to see how children interact with one another and learn new facts and interesting things about cooking. They were learning without realizing that they were actually learning. I gained much from this experience because I have never seen cooking and baking lessons throughout my practical teaching. It  is a really nice experience.

Magnetic Maths in Grade 1

I gave a Maths lesson which was about introducing new concepts of  less and more. It was the first time I taught Maths and I found it very interesting as the learners were giving answers that I didn't think they would give. However, there were some challenges when coming to deal with those learners who needed remedial assistance to grasp this new concept. My mentor helped me where she saw that I was struggling. In this case I was trying to show them how I add when I was doing 'one more' and how I subtracted when I was doing 'one less'. I thought drawing pictures was the best visual aid, then my mentor stepped in and offered me magnetic counters which I could use on the board instead of drawing pictures. This was the best mentoring moment of the week.

Taking more responsibility in Grade 1

I was given an opportunity to be  with the class on my own for the whole day. I had to do all the work planned for the day and I managed to do it. It was a nice experience.  Few days later I taught a Setswana lesson in front of Mrs Roberts. Yesterday I read a story to the learners, it was also a nice experience and I chose a book that made it easy for me to involve the learners in my reading. they were not just listening, they took part by using their voices according to what was written in the book. For example, girls were mothers and boys were fathers. The learners enjoyed the story so much that at the end they clapped their hands for me. 

Ridgeway College's Brian O'Regan reflects on the traits of effective teaching

2013-03-06 Visit to Lebone II College, Brian O’Regan

These are the points that were gained from my visit to Lebone II College. Some of these points may be obvious to experienced teachers, but to a novice like me they were very helpful.

1.    Technology does not replace the teacher. The teacher is still the most important part of the classroom. Technology is great to have but it is just an aid to teaching, it is still the personality and skill of the teacher that get the subject matter across.

2.    Flexibility. It is important to be able to change tack quickly during a class when you realise that what you are doing is just not working, either because the pupils’ attention is wandering, the energy levels are low, or they just don’t understand something. Both Heleen and Sarah were very good with their flash cards of definitions that could be brought out at a moment’s notice to liven up the energy in the classroom.

3.    Continuous assessment of the levels attention and comprehension of the pupils throughout the lesson so that you know when to change tack. All the teachers whose classes I visited were very aware of this.

4.    Use of technology needs to be seamless. Waiting for apps to load or scrolling through menus interrupts the flow of a lesson.

5.    Address pupils individually, not as a class. If you address them as a class they just do not pay attention, for instance when trying to get them to be quiet. In Lieze’sprac one table was being inattentive and disruptive. She quietly went to them and talked to them without fuss and without having to include other students that were getting along just fine. They were soon brought into line.

6.    Repetition of examples. Do not assume they can understand the topic when given just one example. Give several examples each with a different angle. E.g. Lieze had a lesson on energy and to get the pupils to understand where energy comes from she askedwhy does a Bar One give us energy, then where does the lion or the bokget their energy from to chase and to run away, then where does a fire get its energy from, each one a different example of the same principle.

7.    Interaction between pupils. All the teachers at some point in the lesson split their classes into groups of between two and four pupils. The interaction between the pupils in the group was as important a learning experience as being taught by the teacher.

8.    There has to be variety in a lesson to keep the attention of the pupils. The hook/concrete preparation/I do/we do/exit was a good framework to hang a lesson on.

9.    The huge benefit was being able to sit in on different teacher’s classes and see their different teaching styles. In the end you have to work out your own style, but it was very useful to see what they did and decide what would work for you and what wouldn’t.

10.  Make the lessons fun or challenging. I am really struggling to make my maths exciting. Adel got her pupils to play games against her and against each other which involved multiplication. The excitement levels really mounted with their competitive instincts. They learnt much more than they would have done by just doing exercises.

11.  Give the pupils activities so they can take in concepts themselves. For instance, Sarah is doing cell division and got the pupils to cut chromosomes out of card and move them around on paper. Previously I would have considered this too childish, but looking at the kids I could see they were taking in the theoretical concepts learnt off the white board and realising in their heads how this actually worked.

12.  You have to find your own style of teaching.

13.  Murray’s literal notes on how to asses a lesson were a great way to formalise the observation of a lesson. This will come in useful at Ridgeway because we do monitor each other’s classes.