Today we were attached to a year-9 student belonging to the Key Stage 4.
MEETING WITH THE TUTOR
The meeting with the tutor, during the first 20 minutes of the day, is used to take the register, to pray the daily worship and to give notices to the students. In order to pick a student from the class, the teacher uses an app which works as a roulette with all the students' names (which can be accessed at the website www.classtools.net) The selected students read a text about how to achieve your maximum potential and a prayer.
The tutor reminds the students about the charity initiatives that will be carried out during the following weeks before Christmas, including collecting presents for other children.
A musical video is played. This is 'the song of my life' chosen by the teacher to talk about his own experience when he was young. You could only get this song buying a 45 record, which the teacher bought when he was 10. This is a wonderful way to share his own life with the students, creating rapport with them.
FIRST PERIOD – ENGLISH
The class begins with a recap activity. The students were working on a newspaper article. The teacher plays a video which uses this article as a way to explain how they used to prepare their old GCSE exam. The video gives the kids many tips that will help them to understand the purpose of the article, the kind of text it is, the audience to which it is addressed…
The teacher explains the structure of the English GCSE test that these students will have to take next year. These English GCSE exams have changed recently. Last year they took into account both course work and external tests, but the government has modified this and next year the students will only be assessed using a test to check their reading and writing skills. The teacher told us that in some ways this could be interpreted as a step back to the times when he was at school himself. Currently, the test will include three texts and the students will be asked to answer some questions about them and also to produce some creative writing. They will have 2 hours and 15 minutes to complete the task.
The pupils have stuck the article on their notebooks. The teacher asks them to copy the key questions next to the article: What kind of text is it? What is its genre? What is the text about? Why has this text been written? What is its purpose? Who has the text been written for? Who is the audience? How has the text been written? The teacher makes sure that everybody understand the key words in these question, explaining their meaning. He insists in the importance of answering them in order, following the sequence that is presented in the examination. But he doesn't give them the answers, as he wants the students to find them by themselves.
The teacher hands out another article, which was used in the GCSE exam last year, and asks the students to stick it on their notebook and answer the key questions working in pairs. He gives them only 5 minutes to complete the task, even though this seems to be a rather complex activity. I wonder if they will be able to answer all these questions in such little time! I notice that not all of them are actually working on the activity,, and not all those who do work have managed to finish answering all the questions in the allocated time. Nevertheless, the answers that I have seen are quite appropriate and sensible!
The correction is made asking the students about the answers they wrote, and he uses them to give the correct answers. The teacher doesn't elicit the key words, as he wants the students to think about them and use them in their own explanations.
In order to tackle with the last question (How has the text been written to achieve its purpose?) the teacher gives the students some more time to read the text again and try to give a proper answer, as it is the most difficult and decisive one. The idea of reading the text twice is a very good one, as students can read it first trying to get the gist and later trying to answer specific questions.
As a final activity, the teacher asks one student what she learnt about the way to understand a texts.
SECOND PERIOD – DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY
At the beginning of the class, the teacher explains the students what they have to do. They are working in teams, developing their technology projects. The technology classroom is full of equipment that the pupils seem to be able to use in a very responsible and skilled way. Each student knows what they have to do, and they do it in a very silent and efficient way. Some of them check their designs in the computer while others are cutting wood or fixing the different pieces of their projects.
Each student has a personal folder where he or she keeps all the documents related to the project. The folder contains an assessment guide with the different deadlines established by the teacher. Students have to investigate the design context before developing different design proposals in order to create a model. The model is photographed and this image is added to the folder. Later, they make the final real-scale project. At the end of the project there is an evaluation.
THIRD PERIOD – PHYSICS
In this session, students will take a test on physics as a preparation for the GCSEs. They can use a equation sheet that is provided by the examiners. Students have a short time to revise the contents, asking questions that other pupils try to answer. The test is based on the general structure of similar exams in the GCSEs. There are 30 marks and students have 30 minutes to complete it.
When the time is out, the teacher collects the exams and gives the students a sheet of paper with the answers. They are doing peer assessment with green pens. Students are trained to mark their mates' exams since they are in year 7, and this helps them a lot. After marking the exam, they also include specific written feedback including a section to explain What Went Well and another way to show what could be done Even Better If. Anyway, the teacher checks and revises some of these marked exams, especially if she is suspicious of any pupil who might be cheating.
The teacher explained to us that teaching physics in England is not easy, as the GCSE exams are getting increasingly difficult but there are less weekly sessions now than there used to be. Next year, the students will have to memorize the equations, as there will be no equation sheet given to them during the exam.
FOURTH PERIOD – MATHEMATICS
I notice that all students open their notebooks and write, under the date, the heading STARTER, which means that they are used to these warm-up activities and they expect the teacher to begin his/her class with them. I am also surprised to realize that the class is divided into two different sections (left part and right part). They compete to obtain positive points with their answers, which are shown on the IWB by the teacher.
As a starter, the teacher gives the students a mathematical game. They must think of a number and do some calculations with it. The final result should be the same for everyone. This is the way to introduce algebraic expressions, using a letter to represent
The class is focussed on preparing a forthcoming assessment. In order to check that everybody understands the contents and has the necessary skills to pass the exam, the teacher uploaded some activities to the FROG learning platform. First of all, the exercises that the students have already done are revised. The teacher asks them if they found any problem, and tries to explain the difficult activities. However, he tries to get the answer from the students rather than giving them by himself.
In order to get ready for their exam, the teacher gives the students some more exercises. There are different models, so the students can choose the kind of activities they want to work with. The teacher insists on the importance of detecting the 'muddiest points' the pupils might be struggling with. This class is a good opportunity for them to make these hard points clear. Some students might be revising the content, others might be working in pairs, others might be doing exercises individually, other might be helping other pupils… so everybody is able to find the best way to get ready for the test according to his/her personal learning style.
The teacher also gives the students an 'effort grade self-assessment' sheet, containing the following questions:
Do you bring the right equipment to lessons?
Do you always arrive on time?
If absent, do you try and catch up on missed work?
Is homework always completed?
Do you attempt the homework extension (when it's set)?
Do you revise carefully for assessments?
Do you ask questions to aid your learning?
Do you volunteer answers in class?
Do you work in a focussed manner at all times?
Do you always allow others to work in a focussed manner?
If working in pairs/groups, are you cooperative?
Students must grade themselves from 0 to 10 on each of these questions. Finally they have to award themselves an overall effort grade, which can be Excellent, Good, I, U
FIFTH PERIOD – COMPUTER SCIENCE
In computer science the students learn theory in some classes and practise programming in others. This class is about binary logic. The teacher begins presenting the lesson objectives.
To explain the logic gates, the teacher uses a slideshow. In order to show how these logic gates work, the students are invited to enter FROG and use the logic.ly webs. However, the teacher can also lock the computers so that everybody looks at her.
Using the logic.ly software, the pupils learn how to use the NOT, AND, OR logic gates
Pupils are asked to complete a worksheet with the three corresponding truth tables, which are corrected later by the teacher. Later, the teacher explains how to combine different gates and asks the students to fill in a second worksheet that is collected by the teacher. Finally, there is a recap activity at the end of the session.
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