And we’re back! As I write, I am only two days into the summer term and already things feel like they are going too fast.
I have counted the lessons I have remaining with year 11 and year 12 and it looks like it is going to be a real squeeze for some groups. We have a teacher training day tomorrow and taking into account bank holidays and other exams in the school it is really a pinch.
Unfortunately, these days away from the classroom seem to affect the same groups for me, whereas I have at least three additional lessons with my groups that aren’t affected by imminent examinations!
I am going to be tactical with this and really make sure that I trim lessons to ensure that they only contain core content that students could be examined on.
I think to make lessons enjoyable and to engage our students with the subject we often (quite rightly) use tasks that sometimes aren’t very important in terms of content but do contribute to creating good lessons.
However, I have been finding more and more that the further into this year I go with my year 11s, the more they just want the facts and “to know what they need to know”. You should hear the moaning when I get out a card sort or a match up activity.
“Can’t you just give us the answers?” is something that is often heard with certain groups!
While I don’t plan on “just giving them the answers”, I do plan on making lessons more concise and to the point. There are certain lessons that I have planned that feel a little long-winded and in reality I could take two lessons and condense them down into one more succinct, albeit content-heavy, lesson. This will ensure that all content is covered in enough detail before we say goodbye to year 11 in a few weeks’ time.
As I said, tomorrow is our third teacher training day of this academic year. I am pretty used to these by now and I find them very useful to pick up new techniques and ideas to use in my lessons. Especially during those sessions that are arranged like a TeachMeet.
However, tomorrow is our moderation day. I experienced this day last year during my training at the school although I can’t really remember it.
In all honesty, I am a little bit anxious about the day, which sounds really silly. Essentially it is a day of marking the marking of controlled assessment. I think this is the reason I feel anxious. Marking is something we do almost every day and I feel very comfortable with that. But someone marking the grade I have given a student for a piece of controlled assessment feels different.
I would hate to think that I had marked a piece too harshly or even awarded too many marks. I understand moderation is a really important thing to do when it comes to pieces of work that are worth such a high percentage of the GCSE grade. However, if my grades are slightly off the mark than what everyone else would give, I don’t want other staff to then think that I don’t know how to mark correctly.
I know this seems irrational. We get checked on everything in our job, but for some reason tomorrow feels like it is going to be a day of observation. That being said, I have sat down previously with the teacher who leads the controlled assessment within the school and we have marked a few pieces of work together. We both came out with pretty similar marks for each section so I am sure I am just winding myself up over nothing and it will be absolutely fine...
- SecEd’s NQT diarist this year is a teacher of science from a school in the Midlands.