How do you learn to plan lessons?

We have a GTP student working with us at the moment. She is reflective and caring. My Year 12 students get on with her well and she has a very positive way of interacting with the students.
However, she is thinking about leaving the profession. The reason for this is the time that it is taking for her to plan. It seems to be taking all her time and getting harder not easier as she progresses through the course.

However, I am finding describing how to plan very difficult. I just know what I want to do. How did I learn?

I can remember struggling to plan lessons I left to the night before during my NQT year, but I always came up with something. What happened in the transition between the struggle and now when I have a clear idea what I will do in lessons up to three weeks in advance?
Is it simply experience?

Aside: it would probably help if we had complete schemes of work available to plan from and the wikid scheme is not easy for experience teachers to follow, so I can understand why a student teacher would struggle.

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Location:Bristol

Organising a teachmeet

The ASE west subcommittee have decided to organise a teachmeet. This is doesn't seem that interesting as a lot of people do this and there is a teachmeet somewhere in the country at least twice per week in the term time. It does get quite interesting when you consider that only one of the organisers know what it is and what it entails. That organiser is me, and I am not one of the main ones responsibilities.

I heard about teachmeets where I hear about most things, on twitter. The first one I went to was at Clevedon School. It was a very positive evening with a wide variety of ideas shared by the presenters. I wouldn't say my world was set alight, but it was great to be in a room with so many positive people and that is something different.

So how do you get the idea of how a teachmeet runs and how to market it across?

In my case badly, firstly my colleague didn't use the teachmeet section on the wiki website to create the pages, he made his own wiki. Secondly we all struggled to make a logo naff enough to go on the teachmeet wiki and make it into a link to our pages. Thirdly advertising seems to have been forgotten and even our own committee members haven't signed up for the event yet!

Luckily, one of the other Field Officers has come to my rescue and sent a "how-to" document. It has included things that I haven't even thought about, like who to contact at the ASE to get the email around to members that it is happening, and to make sure there are signs directing visitors.

I have to take my hat off to everyone who manages to organise a successful teachmeet: It isn't straightforward or easy.


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Location:Rudgleigh Ave,,United Kingdom

Physics education vs Science Education

I am a member of the Institute of Physics, have a physics degree and I mainly teach physics, however I consider myself a science teacher. I would say that my love of teaching is greater than my love of physics. Although I find that science principles and laws just work intriguing and that physics underpins everything interests me greatly. My students look at me strangely when I get excited by physics when principles "just work".

On Saturday I heard the President of the Institute of Physics ask for members to investigate the state of physics teaching in their local school. He indicated that he would like all members of the IoP support physics education.

During the talk we were shown facts about how there is an ever increasing number of students doing physics and a record number of physics trainee teachers, but these numbers are not enough. The upshot is that the IoP believe that there is still work needed to improve the headline figures like the number of schools with physics graduates working as teachers and ensuring all schools offer physics A-level as quite a few don't.

Sir Peter Knight would like to know:
How many students at your school sat As and A-level physics last year?
How many of the students sitting A-level physics are girls?
How do you encourage students to think about choosing A-level physics?
How many specialist physics teachers does your school have?

Once members have answered these question we are to email the answers to physicsforall@iop.org

The message behind these questions, or at least the one I heard, is that we need more physicists in the UK and the way to achieve this is to have more physicists teaching in school.

I think that it is absolutely vital that we have well trained, knowledgable teachers. However, I am not convinced that using physics graduates is the only way, and I am certainly not convinced that a good grounding in university physics makes for a good teacher.

As a teacher of science I see physics in the context of science. I want my students to see science in everyday lives. I don't teach physics because I passionately believe that everyone should love it and want to study it. Do I owe it to physics in the UK to shift my views?

When I consider the ASE presidential address and Robin Millar's points on "science for all" I am conflicted between teaching and encouraging the physics graduates of the future and teaching scientific literacy for the masses. Are the two possible and/or compatible? Maybe they should be, but I don't believe we have achieved it yet in the English education system.

Having said all of this I really appreciate all the work that the IoP are doing to support physics education. I never regret paying my £100 per year membership fee because I know they are doing good work. And since I started teaching in my school we have had 3 students apply to do physics at university, so maybe I am already doing what the IoP would like.

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What makes good quality CPD?

I have been inspired before by a chat topic on twitter via the hashtag #addcym (education wales) and I have been again this evening as the topic was about what makes good cpd.

There are four factors in my opinion: something I can use, personalised, allows me to reflect and be something I don't already know.

I have already bemoaned the lack of cpd at my school in a previous blog post and I written about how I have taken control of that and managed to put together things that are concrete to put on my CV. However, what is the point of cpd if it is poor? It just becomes another waste of time.

Good quality cpd is not easy to achieve on a whole school level, I will admit that. Making it good quality would mean making it personalised and although it is something we are to strive for as teachers I don't believe that being truly personalised is possible. How is it possible that a visiting speaker giving information about autism can take account for all the range of knowledge in the room? I find this with ICT training, it always seems to be at a level below my own knowledge. However, I would list personalisation as one of my factors that make cpd of a higher quality.

As part of that personalisation if cpd is going to be any use to me then I have to learn something new. This isn't very easy to achieve, or at least it hasn't been for me until recently. (Until I discovered that you can use twitter for better things than finding out about the latest celebrity rants. See my previous blog posts on twitter and creating your own cpd). I find cpd provided by school to be on topics I have already investigated and didactic so don't get into the "how", so I don't learn much.

What is possible in any cpd session is reflection and I would insist that any good session allows for and encourages this. When I ran a session for science teachers in the past I gave lesson objectives to staff to help them think about specific lessons and better focus their reflections. Then we discussed what we thought in a plenary session.

Lastly, in any cpd session that I participate in I want ideas that I can take straight back to my classroom and implement. So it needs to be clear enough for me to understand, have resources that I can use if I am unsure and be something I am not already doing.

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How Science Works - the implementation

Following the CPD model of The Cramilington Learning Village and other schools we have an Action Enquiry Question to work on throughout the year. I have selected "How to implement How Science Works in the Curriculum".

This breaks down into several other questions: what is "how science works"? Why is it important to teach about it? How is teaching "how science works" different from what we do already? What changes do we need to make in order to implement "how science works" in the science curriculum?






I read the book in the image above about how science works and was completely sold on the importance of adding it to our curriculum and that did involve making a shift in how I think about the aim of science education.

Firstly "how science works" needs to be integrated into the curriculum and not a bolt-on. I agree with this, but it is hard to get staff to see that and not try and reach how science works by doing stand alone lessons that involve researching a topic or carrying out a full investigation with only a tenuous link to the topic being studied. For example in our key stage 3 scheme of work we have research lessons and data lessons. The objectives of these lessons often don't support the learning or consolidation of knowledge and are contrived; they feel more like ticking a box than supporting the engagement of students. The research lessons can be boring and the data lessons formulaic.

"How science works" needs to be more than doing some practicals and talking about a science related news story like global warming. It should help students become scientifically literate, and by that I mean help students understand what makes science "science".

The GCSE specifications and resources like Boardworks do try and address what science is. Schemes of work, resources and specifications ask that students be aware of the implications of science through things like the advantages and disadvantages of kidney transplants, and show how scientific ideas have developed for example the Big Bang Theory. Do we concentrate on this or only teach the bits that are examined in a way that kids will remember? If we do, is it enough to just expose students in that way?

Considering all of this, my main objective when teaching how science works is to ensure that students don't think that scientific ideas are fixed, but constantly change when new ideas are presented.

The best lesson I have taught on this was from the segue scheme about developing the theory of plate tectonics, my post-16 students see this for themselves when the turn on the news and tune into what is going on at CERN. However, it is hard to get it across to students when we teach it using language like "Newton's 1st LAW".

Finally, I really hope that I have managed to get across that science is constantly evolving and ever more complicated to a group of students I have taught from year 7 to year 11, and that this will help them appreciate science no matter whether they choose to study it further.

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What do I need what I start a new job?

I have been asked by the Head's PA at my new school to compile a list of the things that I would like for the day that I will go and visit. I will be starting as Head of Faculty.

Before I compile that list I want to think carefully about why I will need the information I ask for. My major worry is that I won't hit the ground running and put the faculty back while I learn the ropes of the new school. I know that I am capable of being a good head of faculty if I have a strategy and a good understanding of how things need to move forward. So I need to find out what is working well in the faculty and what needs to be improved.

How do I do that? More importantly how do I do it while inspiring confidence from my new colleagues and not irritating them.

The list in the ASE/SEP resource pack for Heads of Faculty involves

• School development plan 
• School handbook  
• Departmental handbook, including health and safety policies and name of radiation protection officer (if necessary) 
• 2010-11 and 2011-12 department development plans
• Exam results and any analysis student data/tracking within science department 
• Copies of any internal/external reviews on the department 
• Whole department timetable 
• Schemes of work 
• Access to class lists 
• Information on current budget information on how to bid for capitation 
• Another head of faculty to buddy up with 
• Performance management procedure 
• Observation cycles
• Copies of minutes of departmental meetings if available
• Job descriptions of the post holders I line manage

My main question though is what is expected of me. Will I be able to get that information from paperwork? 

Using social bookmarking

I find or I am sent so many useful links to websites with great resources and ideas. But I am not always in a position to use them straight away for a variety of reasons.

I used to keep a word document of useful links. It wasn't easy to search and formatting was tricky. Now I use social bookmarking. I found out about it when reading an article in a teaching magazine. At first I just tried it, adding websites that I already know about and gradually my use has increased.

The site I use is called delicious. You can create "stacks" meaning it is even easier to keep related bookmarks together and browse them. I also have apps on the iPad that make it even easier to add and search the websites I have bookmarked.

As the resources available on the Internet expand social bookmarking is a great way to keep track of the useful things I have seen. Try it.


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