Teaching Challenges

[Shippou-Sensei]

I currently am doing a lot of level 1 FE stuff. (Creative Media)
After many years of teaching level 2 or 3 IT its a real adjustment.

Last year was tricky as it was my first year into this area and there were a few structural issues that made things worse(par the course). Also some family stuff that took some processing came up.

This year i'm feeling a little better and am a bit more on top of things but at the end of each week it does feel exhausting especially if you are trying something new.



What kinda annoys me is I kinda know my flaws it just takes absolutely forever to produce the materials I want to produce to turn my good idea, poor execution lesson into excellent seamless lessons. I have a tendency to end up with slightly too high a level content. Hopefully with practise i'll nail it.


It also feels complicated when you base a lesson around general media concepts that you think should be universal but then just see a sea of blank faces.

this track come to mind

 

[planetgeli]

Spelling challenges.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

It happens...
I was bombing along teaching fractions and thinking the class were really getting to grips with working out fractions of numbers.

Then we moved on...to addition and multiplication of fractions.
All was ok until wr had to find common denominators. There was no understanding at all of number relationships. Blank faces all round. Eventually the only way they could grasp it was when I exasperatedly resorted to trying to make it into a story. It was a challenge.
" numbers that are related...like in a family...and some get on better with each other than others"

After 2 weeks practice most of them seem to have grasped it.

 

[N_igma]

Right now? Finding a permanent position, think moving back home was a bad idea.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Shippy, the trick is making what seems to be the basics of a subject interesting so even if it's below the class' level they are into it. Call it a recap if you like. Build on the complexity from there.

 

[Mation]

I have a tendency to end up with slightly too high a level content.

I still do this more often than I'd like. I don't know how much flexibility you have in terms of scheduling, but I can get round it by breaking my one lesson down into two or three, with lots of scaffolding around how to approach the tasks.

It's easy to forget (for me, anyway, sometimes) that some people haven't had the chance to learn how to study, and are having to do that in addition to learning the course material. So when I think a concept should be fairly straightforward to grasp, it probably would be, if it weren't for that additional burden.

 

[sim667]

I had a real adjustment moving from level 3 to level 2 and 1....... I found you just had to produce materials that set everything out in such basic terms you were looking at half a term to do what level 3/a-level students could pick up in a couple of lessons.

 

[Pickman's model]

i'm not a teacher, as such, but today i'm giving a training session of my own design and i'm going to have to wing it a bit. although i've put a lot of thought into it and have a powerpoint and a handout i haven't practiced it as much as i should and i'm rather relying on the volubility of the attendees to take up 20 minutes of the hour

if it goes well, then the library training woman has said they'll think about rolling it out and putting it in the training calendar on a regular basis: i just hope i can do the topic justice.

 

[Pickman's model]

i'm not a teacher, as such, but today i'm giving a training session of my own design and i'm going to have to wing it a bit. although i've put a lot of thought into it and have a powerpoint and a handout i haven't practiced it as much as i should and i'm rather relying on the volubility of the attendees to take up 20 minutes of the hour

if it goes well, then the library training woman has said they'll think about rolling it out and putting it in the training calendar on a regular basis: i just hope i can do the topic justice.

it went ok tbh

 

[miss direct]

I’m a teacher and teacher trainer and although I enjoy my job, I’m such a perfectionist that I spend hours preparing. Most of the stuff I’m asked to do is bespoke, so I need to create the materials myself. Getting fed up of the insecurity and time I spend on it now.

 

[N_igma]

I’m a teacher and teacher trainer and although I enjoy my job, I’m such a perfectionist that I spend hours preparing. Most of the stuff I’m asked to do is bespoke, so I need to create the materials myself. Getting fed up of the insecurity and time I spend on it now.

That sounds awful. All the trainees in our old PGCE course are in a WhatsApp group and share resources and lesson plans regularly, certainly frees up a lot of time. Can normally find tonnes of stuff on TES and other places too but if it’s bespoke then what can you do.

 

[dessiato]

I, for a while, taught some marketing executives in the olives and preserves industry. Absolutely everything was produced solely for them. Every single lesson was individually designed and created for them. 100% bespoke. The whole of Sunday was devoted to material creation, listening, reading, writing, speaking, with exercises and, of course, having to change things last minute for correcting/preparing any sales literature/marketing materials/preparation of presentations etc. It was bloody hard work, but the best 4 hours of lessons I ever had.

 

[extra dry]

Being asked to come up with a three-hour lesson about detectives/crime for young learners.

Anyone know of any good resource sites for topics.

Other teachers in the group have taken some of the easier areas, like famous detectives and fingerprinting activities.

I am thinking along the lines of a crime report/Crimewatch theme or Colombo

 

[miss direct]

Oh that sounds fun! Can you turn the room into a crime scene that they investigate? It could also be fun to create a gallery of rogues based on their own drawings to find the criminal.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I found this after a quick Google

13 Free Murder Mystery Games for Your Dinner Party

These free murder mystery games are perfect for a party or dinner and include printable scripts, biographies, evidence, and clues.

www.thespruce.com

 

[Des Kinvig]

i'm not a teacher, as such, but today i'm giving a training session of my own design and i'm going to have to wing it a bit. although i've put a lot of thought into it and have a powerpoint and a handout i haven't practiced it as much as i should and i'm rather relying on the volubility of the attendees to take up 20 minutes of the hour

if it goes well, then the library training woman has said they'll think about rolling it out and putting it in the training calendar on a regular basis: i just hope i can do the topic justice.

I do quite a bit of this kind of stuff, and winging it and hoping for a lot of group interaction is usually the strategy for me. Depending on the subject you can encourage it by asking devil’s advocate/provocative question etc.

I can usually gauge within the first five minutes how well or badly it’s likely to go.

 

[dessiato]

I found this after a quick Google

13 Free Murder Mystery Games for Your Dinner Party

These free murder mystery games are perfect for a party or dinner and include printable scripts, biographies, evidence, and clues.

www.thespruce.com

There’s some ideas there that I’ll use at summer school. Thank you.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

PhotoFit Me

Would you make a good eyewitness? Photofit Me explores how we remember faces and challenges you to construct the face of a culprit or to recreate the face of a celebrity or even a friend! Test ...

www.open.edu

 

[extra dry]

Cheers for the input. I had a bit of a think about it last night and my three ideas are;

Crimewatch type program, the students think of a suitable crime, write the script, who, where, what, when then for how the students can do reconstructions and video it and have 'reporters' and 'police spokesperson'. Follow up with the criminals after they have been identified and arrested.

2. A look at famous unsolved crimes, Wh questions, 'what's your guess?' ie what do you think happened to the artworks/diamonds est. Then using what they have read come up with the perfect crime. Young learners, I can show a clip or two of the Pink Panther/ Peter Sellers etc

3. Future crimes, what will be a crime in the future... Just a working title at the moment.

 

[kalidarkone]

I like your ideas apart from I think Pink Panther /Peter Sellers could be too dated imo. Maybe something a bit more relatable?

In terms of future crime - clip of minority report yype thing And ...currently there is stuff in the news about the police using profiling software in order to prevent crime.

'Lamb to the slaughter' by Roald Dahl is the perfect murder afaiac.

 

[extra dry]

I like your ideas apart from I think Pink Panther /Peter Sellers could be too dated imo. Maybe something a bit more relatable?

In terms of future crime - clip of minority report yype thing And ...currently there is stuff in the news about the police using profiling software in order to prevent crime.

'Lamb to the slaughter' by Roald Dahl is the perfect murder afaiac.

Out here in Thailand, the pink panther cartoon is still popular, in fact, because the Thai students have never seen it, it is 'New' to them.
I will check out the book, thanks