Release the creativity - good behaviour helps.
I have been fairly quiet on here for the last few weeks, and not without good reason. Over Easter I moved to my second school placement, and as a result I had one of those rare and miraculous events in teaching: a work-free holiday. Due to this, I have had nothing to blog.
However, I have now been at my new school a week and what a difference the school makes! My current school is a C of E secondary school whose whole-school focus is mutual respect and trust: the first time I took a class I asked the students to "listen up" and stood in shock as silence swept the classroom in 10 seconds flat. I didn't know what to do with myself!
To give you some indication of the reasons for this, the sanction for swearing in school is a week internal exclusion...they really don't go soft on them. But as strict as this is the students respond really positively to it. And with this comes and interesting dilemma.
I am so used now to teacher-led classrooms where I can't try out the fun creative activities I see on Twitter because, whilst I made a vast improvement to my class behaviour systems they still weren't at a level where I could trust them to do activities that involved walking around the classroom without someone kicking off at someone else (not a bad school, just a bad mix in students in my classes).
With this new well-behaved set of classes, a sudden freedom has emerged. I can now try as many wacky and risky activities as I want and know I don't have to worry about the behaviour of the students. Due to this, in the first week alone I have tried silent debates (5 dotted around the classroom) with year 10, making board games with year 8, and a lovely activity with year 7 where the whole class completed a mind-map and then half the class wandered the room and added items they didn't have and taught others the ones they had but the sitting half didn't. It was amazing. And that isn't all, this week coming I have research projects, finger puppet parables, more silent debates and numerous other things. It is such a relief to be able to just to teach. I love it!
However, I have now been at my new school a week and what a difference the school makes! My current school is a C of E secondary school whose whole-school focus is mutual respect and trust: the first time I took a class I asked the students to "listen up" and stood in shock as silence swept the classroom in 10 seconds flat. I didn't know what to do with myself!
To give you some indication of the reasons for this, the sanction for swearing in school is a week internal exclusion...they really don't go soft on them. But as strict as this is the students respond really positively to it. And with this comes and interesting dilemma.
I am so used now to teacher-led classrooms where I can't try out the fun creative activities I see on Twitter because, whilst I made a vast improvement to my class behaviour systems they still weren't at a level where I could trust them to do activities that involved walking around the classroom without someone kicking off at someone else (not a bad school, just a bad mix in students in my classes).
With this new well-behaved set of classes, a sudden freedom has emerged. I can now try as many wacky and risky activities as I want and know I don't have to worry about the behaviour of the students. Due to this, in the first week alone I have tried silent debates (5 dotted around the classroom) with year 10, making board games with year 8, and a lovely activity with year 7 where the whole class completed a mind-map and then half the class wandered the room and added items they didn't have and taught others the ones they had but the sitting half didn't. It was amazing. And that isn't all, this week coming I have research projects, finger puppet parables, more silent debates and numerous other things. It is such a relief to be able to just to teach. I love it!
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