Monday the 20th February 2017

Today was the first day of my internship at Højdevangens Skole where I will be the next four weeks. Today I conducted a lesson about evaluation in  7 b, which will be my main focus point doing the internship.

     I had prepared the presentation and the way that the students will work with the evaluation some time ago, and I feel confident that the way I have chosen is the correct way to do both formative and summative evaluation.

    Doing the presentation there was a whole lot of noise in the classroom, and when I look back at the lesson I can see that is was a mix of Monday morning, the first day after a vacation and my too loose teaching style that causes the noise. I have to be more detail when I present new material for the students and go I have to go through all of it from A-Z, every question and assignment they have to do. 

 

Thursday the 21st February 2017

Today, my intern teacher Janet taught us about visible learning from a more practical point of view. We went through how to make good goals, that was achievable for the students.

My main focus point at my internship is assessment and evaluation, and Janet had a huge focus on how to implement formative assessment and summative evaluation in the classroom without taking to much time from the assignments that the students are working with.

The really feels that this one and a half hour gave me a lot of ideas how to incorporate the formative assessment so that you as a teacher can see the students improvement and you can point out to the individual students how much they have improved so that they will have the feeling of success.

   I have made a page on my site dedicated to visible learning, which you can find here.

 

  

 

 

 

 

Thursday the 23rd February 2017

I was, unfortunately, sick today so I made some improvement to the material that I'm going to teach. 

 

Friday the 24th February 2017

Another day in the bed used on making improvement to my online portfolio at martinbugtrup.com 

 

Monday the 27th February 2017

Another day at home. Used to prepare the meeting tomorrow with Janet and Jesper.
I fell terrible for being home another day and letting the other guys down. I have told them that whatever I have to prepare for the next couple of days, they just have to write me.

 

Tuesday the 28th February 2017

Today we are going to have a talk with our intern tutor and intern teacher about some of the obstacles that we have seen doing our first week at Højdevangen Skole. Our main focus in this conversation will on conflict management both in theory and practice. you can see the agenda for the meeting below in Danish:
 

Forud for professionssamtalen har vi i praktikgruppen udarbejdet nedenstående dilemmaer, som vi ønsker at diskutere og finde løsningsforslag på i samarbejde med praktiklærer og praktikvejleder.

Vi har valgt et overordnet emne som er ‘Konflikthåndtering’. Ud fra dette emne har vi udarbejdet 12 underspørgsmål, som uddyber vores tanker/spørgsmål om emnet.     

 

• Hvordan håndterer man en klasse uden fælles forståelse for klasseledelse indbyrdes i lærerteamet?

  • Vi tre ønsker et fælles fodslag for hvordan vi benytter WBT signaler.

  • Inddrag telefoner fra start.

    • Bliver telefonen ikke indleveret og brugt i timerne bliver den indleveret på kontoret, og kan hentes når dagen er slut. ‘

• Fælles signal for stilhed, med konsekvens hvis signalet ikke bliver efterlevet, i form af inddragelse af sjove brainbreaks og frikvarter.  

 

• Hvordan kan man engagere eleverne i undervisningsmaterialet, og derved undgå at nogle elever saboterer/afbryder undervisningen?

  • Del undervisningen op i mindre grupper, så vi kan overskue.
     

• Hvilke metoder kan man anvende mht. elever der går direkte imod lærerens instrukser?
   

• Hvordan kan man få eleverne til at blive læringsparate, lige så snart læreren kommer ind i klassen?
   

• Hvordan giver man klare instrukser, så teenagere kan forstå og følge dem bedst muligt fra start?
   

• Hvordan får vi fokus på god engelskundervisning (med pre-, during-, og post-reading, grammatisk osv), inkorporeret i det valgte tema (American History)?

 

• Hvordan differentierer vi undervisningen så de elever der er bedst og dårligst stillet fagligt, bliver fagligt udfordret og kan engagere sig i?

 

• Hvordan kan vi anvende synlig læring i vores egen undervisning, som eleverne kan bruge i deres videre forløb.

  • Mål

  • Formativ evaluering

  • Feedback
     

• Hvordan kan man involverer et integralt perspektiv i undervisningen?
   

• Hvordan skaber vi et godt læringsmiljø, med at sundt samarbejde mellem eleverne, hvor de indbyrdes relationer er stærke. (Teambuilding/ tillidsøvelser i undervisningen)
   

• Hvad gør man som lærer hvis der elever i klassen man “ikke kan lide”, og/eller ikke kan relatere til. Hvordan får man vendt situation om, så der kan opstå en positiv relation?

 

• Hvordan holder man motivationen oppe hos eleverne, når de har lange pressede dage hvor de ikke hellere vil sidde med mobilen, snakke med veninderne m.m.

  • I hvor stor grad skal der lægges vægt på brain breaks i undervisningen. Er det en vurderingssag, eller en praktisk ting der skal være indlagt fast i timerne?

 

 

At the meeting was our intern tutor frighten about the environment that we see every day at the school and all the issues that the children bring from their homes to school. 

He said that this is not an environment for first-year students and that we should drop the normal form of teaching but instead split up the class into three groups and teach them this way. 

When his thoughts came to light, the three of us had to explain that our will to be there had led a burst over the weekend because of the harsh environment in the two classes that we teach. To this, our tutor said that he totally understood why we felt that way and we should be careful and protect our self.

After the meeting, I have much more taste for teaching again white the agreement that the five of us made and the plan for how we are conducting the teaching from here on and to the end of the internship.  

 

Thursday the 2nd March

The first day after the meeting, so first day that we had to try out the new strategy in practices. 

We started in 7th B where the class was split into six heterogeneous groups, each of us took care of two groups. The heterogeneous group structure is the normal and most given way to split students into groups because you have both strong, middle and weak students. We also introduced new 'Classroom Rules'. These rules are about behaviour in the classroom from the use of their phone to be ready when the lesson starts. The class had a positive response to the rules all in all but had some reservation about that they had to hand in their phone at the start of the lesson because use of the phone doing the lesson will mean that their phone will be hand on to the school office, and they can pick it up 15.15 in the afternoon.  

The lesson went very well after the discussion about the phones and there was a totally different attitude towards learning and the noise level were on a perfect level, where you could hear that they were working but still you could have a nice and quiet conversation in the middle of the classroom.

 

In 7th C we did more or less the same as in 7th B but with one huge difference. Instead of heterogeneous groups, we made homogeneous groups. We did this because this class is so challenged socially that heterogeneous would not work. The students seem to love the idea that they were split into smaller groups, and that the groups were in different locations at the school.

I have chosen to take the most socially challenged students in the class with a mindset that they can learn something if the learning involvement is less stressful and crowded. The first lesson went perfect and I can honestly say that it was the best teaching experience that I personally have experience doing my education to become a teacher. 

 

Friday the 3rd March

 

Today we saw Janet teach history in 7th B where she had a specific focus on visible learning. She started out the lesson by walking to the end of the classroom where the learning goals are hanging. She had the students turning their entire body towards here and when she went through the goals the students had to show how close they were to the reach goals by showing one to five fingers on their chest where one is "I have no idea" and five "I know everything". By showing their fingers on the chest on the teacher can see on which level they think they are on and by doing that, there is no competition between the students and therefore the students are more willing, to be honest.  

This way to incorporate formative assessment was a great exception for me because I have had a hard time imagining how to incorporate formative assessment the best way possible. 

 

Monday the 6th March 

 

Today I had to teach both 7.B and 7.C. I started by teaching 7. B in a single lesson where the class began repeating the classroom rules, which was introduced last time. After that, the students had to go into their groups - here I made a mistake by not making clear enough instruction about who went into which groups and where these persons had to sit to this manoeuvre took longer than it shut.

All in all the lesson went very well and again there was a bigger concentration atmosphere present in the classroom after the group instruction than there were before.

 

In the lesson in 7. C was quite perfect. I made all the students work and say a great deal, which they wouldn't have done if the whole class was together, and also in the class, the 'learning vibe' was thick in the air. All the students had a positive mindset from the beginning of the lesson and the whole way through. I only have to work on one student attitude. To help him the class and I made a rule that if a person doing the lesson swore I would take one minute from the break for this particular student.

 

 

Thursday the 9th March 

 

Today we went on with the separation of 7. C and the new working groups in 7. B.

Again today it had a positive influence on the working environment in the classes. I feel a different relation to the students after the groups had been made. It is like the students have more energy because they do not have to relate to so many students at the same time, which makes the effective learning time that much bigger and makes it possible for us as teachers to have a bigger focus on curriculum and didactic instead of only classroom management.  

 

The 12th - 20th of March 

 

I have chosen to make a collective logbook for the last days of the internship because there are some specific things I have notes and had thoughts about.

 

The heterogeneous grouping in 7.B:

In 7.B, my internship teacher and the class teacher made heterogeneous grouping to support the both the social and the learning involvement. This grouping was a huge success from the time it was implemented doing the internship. Quickly the students connected to the other group members and the noise level went down and the focus on what was at hand went up.

 

The homogeneous grouping in 7.C:

As stated earlier in this logbook we made a homogeneous grouping in 7. C in order with the conversation with Janet and Jesper. Just like it worked with a heterogeneous structure in 7. B this way was the best in 7. C because of the lack of social skills by the students.

I went from trying to teach a class who was not ready to fit in a normal class involvement and therefore was not ready to receive normal plenum teaching to a group of students, who had the biggest social issues that fit and work together without any troubles. 

I had a behaviourist approachment to the students in my group as a method to motivate them to learn. Therefore I made deals with them, like: "Now we will concentrate on the subject for an hour and if you do that, we will go out playing football the rest of the second lesson."

This motivation theory worked perfectly with these students because their attitude towards "normal" classroom teaching change from "fuck that shit" to "or great, let's do it".