Today I have the absolute delight of being able to do a learning walk with our school improvement partner. It was a great experience, because I had somebody challenging me on my observations and really got me thinking about how what I had seen would impact on my own teaching. Has definitely made me realise that learning walks are better done in pairs :)
This time I saw a year 11 science lesson, a year 8 RPS lesson, a year 9 maths lesson and a year 11 English lesson.
RPS was my favourite! It was a class with some tricky boyish characters and it was interesting to see them in another lesson. They were having a discussion about babies being special and the teacher had the pupils very well engaged in discussion, they clearly all wanted to take part and were not shy to have their say. I was inspired by the confidence and relaxed attitude that the teacher had with allowing the open discussion to flow and how even though it was teacher led in terms of organisation, it was the pupils who were driving the content. In my citizenship teaching I need to take a leaf out of this teacher's book! Just let the discussion flow from the pupils and see what happens... What's the worst that could happen?! I am aware that I am a bit of a control freak and I struggle to loosen my control of the pupils in the classroom, but as our SIP said today "pupils are most confident when they are doing". I am going to make that my target for next week - as many lessons as possible will have an task that involves more freedom and puts me out of my comfort zone (yes that's right, i am trying to organise freedom..!)
I picked up a really nice vibe around the school when I was wandering today. Was lovely to see pupils enjoying their learning so much and the relationship between them and their teachers - everything was so positive, and the positivity was showing through in the results of their learning. When speaking to individuals, everyone seemed to know what they were learning, their strengths, areas to improve upon, what they were meant to be doing in their tasks...
In fact, I have almost come away feeling slightly overwhelmed and unsure of where I need to go and I what I need to do next. Inadequate, almost! It's a great thing really, in that everything I saw was so good and Of course I wouldn't want to see anything bad, but I know that my lessons just aren't there yet and I really want them to be. But, hey ho, that is part of what learning walks are all about and It is experiences like these that will help me get there in the end! (hopefully...)
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