Gah, the irony might just kill me

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 06 February 2008 23:21:59

We had a meeting today about how important it is to make our lessons interesting. It was explained that children find lessons very predictable and we really must avoid that. They know what we, as individuals, are going to do (which is in itself quite clever because half the time I only decide what we're doing as we go along), we need to cater for different learning styles - not every time granted but generally - I myself am not an auditory learner, I am a visual learner and to some extent a kinasthetic learner. The meeting catered largely for auditory learners but there were notes we could read - of course as we also had these on a print out and my reading level is pretty good I could have just gone away and read them myself. We're told to guage body language, note when children turn off from what we're saying, then perhaps we have said enough. I don't believe that it is an adequate tactic to simply say 'discuss this for 30 seconds with your neighbour' as a break away - the whole thing is a turn off. I agree that there needs to be a variety in lessons, and in an ideal world this would be every single lesson every single day of every single week. The reality is that when you have over 20 lessons a week you cannot make them all 'all singing and dancing'. If you run one staff meeting in a half term you may be able to do something a little more enthralling, or perhaps not when you are addressing a very tired staff after a day of seeing approximately 150 pupils.

Ever since my teacher training I have been a firm believer in sticking to time limits - most importantly end of lesson time limits - that way the pupils know that if they have worked well they will be allowed to leave on time, making it clear that you stick to your side of the deal but they need to stick to theirs. The meeting was going to be up to one hour but certainly no longer. Hmm my watch said 1 hour and 20 mins.