Back to formal reflections

The scene: a typical Tuesday

1. Things that went well:
- Dealing with a newcomer to my class that will prove a challenge - so much so that this student may not stay in my class long. BUT I think I dealt with this student reasonably well - I gave the student two verbal warnings before exiting them from the class, spoke to them in the corridor to re-establish expectations, and upon reentry the student appeared more settled.

2. Things that I would do differently next time:
- Clearer expectations of a research activity. I should have given students a minimum number of points to achieve in each category within a retrieval chart (eg. "You need to have at least three dot points on women in Ancient Greece").
- If I posted the sources on the walls around the room I could have made a "Gallery" activity rather than a less engaging seated one.
- I could also have done with a broader range of sources, or better extension options for my more capable students.

3. Forward focus:
- Next lesson I need to integrate my newcomers more effectively. They need catch up work to bring them up to speed with this level of work - I can't put this activity off, they need it, so I think I will need to give this to them in their next lesson and prioritise it over the next activity which they will need to miss out on, at this stage.

Week 9: Just When I Thought We Were Settling In...

Well I hardly know it all by now but I was at least starting to feel a little more comfortable....

And then today one of our classes was collapsed due to staffing issues, meaning that each of my three classes now have an extra four or five students. They weren't big classes to begin with, so this is not a case of me complaining about large class sizes - but I feel like all of my work establishing classroom expectations, getting a feel for the dynamic of each set of students, creating seating plans that cater for those dynamics, and so on, now has to be repeated.

*sigh*