Task 4a
So after a lovely break and a well deserved rest for us all, it's back to the endless evenings of exercising our brains and moving forward in our BAPP journey.
After reading the handbook and task 4 components, I thought it should be about time to blog task 4a. I had different ideas swimming around and after a big brainstorm session I found more of a direct route into my inquiry. My interest and ideas seemed to sway towards teaching. After using my personal teaching experiences in module 1, I figured this would be a subject I would enjoy exploring and want to learn more about.
After my first brainstorm I decided to do another, concentrating on points surrounding teaching. I found it generated more ideas about the different styles used by a classroom teacher and a dance teacher. I feel I'd be really interested at comparing the differences and possibly similarities of the techniques and styles used between the two, and it will be useful for my future as I'm looking to pursue a career as a teacher and gaining my PGCE after this course.
The questions I came up with will hopefully give me insight to the day to day tasks, challenges, routines, overall styles of both types of teacher. I've kept the questions the same for both teachers, as I feel this will show me more of a comparison between the two. If you have any ideas or think separate questions would benefit my inquiry more do let me know.
Questions
1. How do you cope with a disruptive pupil?
2. Do you find your energy levels affect the classroom?
3. How does your style of teaching change with different age groups?
4. Do you find it difficult to plan motivating yet useful tasks for the pupils?
5. What are your techniques to keep the pupils attention span?
6. How much of pupils participation is useful to you? I.E reading an extract, demonstrating a move.
7. How do you cope with the pupils at different skill levels?
After I spoke with a fellow dance teacher, her thoughts were that the questions were quite vague. There also seemed to be an obvious topic behind the questions.We decided together that they could have used refining a little. Using these as a base she said that to, help me determine the differences and similarities in techniques and methods each teacher has, I should ask what and how they use their techniques in the classroom.Therefore with a few of the questions we decided to change the language of to see if this had an impact.
Hi Ashleigh!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment on my post. I feel we have a similar inquiry topic, being education/teaching based. I've set up a SIG group on facebook which is focused on more teaching topics which may be use to you. As regards to your inquiry questions, you have some interesting areas of inquiry.
From experience of teaching within a classroom setting within a school and singing teaching, I find management signals are a great way of controlling behaviour with all ages.
I find younger pupils (5-7yrs) react better to exercises when they are short and energetic using lots of movement to keep their attention. I would say no longer than 10mins for a warm-up, games/exercises 5mins each and learning a dance/song keep to about 20mins. When children get older you can extend the time e.g. seniors can work on a dance/song for 30-40mins.
My most effective and successful lesson are those that I have planned to times as you have a guide line and don't have the tendency to spend too much time on one thing. A good structure and well rounded lesson develops pupil progress as behaviour tends to be at a minimum because pupils are focused on tasks.
I try to make learning exercises fun, as pupils see it as a game rather than a technical lesson and learn without realising. When pupils are focused they will retain information better and come away learning something.
When teaching a phonics lesson with reception aged children I always introduce actions to help pupils remember the sounds and praise pupils with fun saying's. Having visual aids within the class helps reinforces the learning objective.
I hope I've given you some ideas to think about. keep in touch,
Nat x