TGIF!

Soooooooo.... having had a really good experience in my lesson today, I can confess to what a disaster the one on Tuesday was!

On Monday, I led the lesson, helped by a cover supervisor. We had loads to get through but all the children were stars and it went really well. I know it went well because I asked the cover supervisor to be bluntly honest afterwards and he only picked up the one thing that I also realised went a bit awry. Tip: Never have both 'Task 1' and 'Task 2' on the board at the same time as many students will be confused over this seemingly easy-enough-to-figure-out information and leap straight ahead to Task 2! Luckily it didn't really matter which way round they did it, so all's well that ends well, as they say!

However, lulled into a false sense of security, the next day's lesson with the same group was a total farce which ended up with two students getting detentions. Well, it wasn't a total farce but it only takes one or two disruptive students to throw everything off. Of course, I knew that one of these students had problems and I should have been ready to nip bad behaviour the bud so it was my fault. It really threw me, though, as this student had been an angel the day before!

My lesson today was with the same group again. 'Forewarned is forearmed' and I went all-out to ensure that I was in control at all times, gave clear instructions as to what the students would be doing and the standard of behaviour I expected from them, I eliminated all possible distractions and had back-up tasks prepared for any student I needed to send out of the room. As soon as the disruptive student from Tuesday started playing up I took him into the office and had a chat to him and although his behaviour wasn't perfect after that, it was much better and he did actually manage to do some good work. The rest of the class are no trouble at all but if you let one child get away with something, it definitely has a 'domino effect' on the others.

Such a relief! There are still a few things to work on but, then again, it was only my fourth-ever lesson. There's no problem with my subject knowledge, lesson content or how I relate to the students generally, it's just that I need to be firmer with difficult behavioural issues. It's a real relief to find that most of the things I'm doing wrong I actually realise are wrong too, which means that hopefully I'm able to look at lessons objectively afterwards and make rational, level-headed evaluations - something which will be hugely important if I'm ever to improve.

Today's picture is nothing to do with my lesson, I just saw this little mannequin as I was passing by the art department on my way home. Hopefully I'm not quite that wooden in front of my class!