As I have previously blogged, I am currently trying new things. One of the things that I have changed the most is my approach to teaching year 7. At my school we are lucky enough that students get 6 hours a fortnight on their first language in year 7, so it's a great opportunity for us to really build some solid foundations for language learning straight away.
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When membership opened for the Chartered College of Teaching this week I was quick to get myself signed up. Lacking in blog inspiration this afternoon following a heap of year 8 books that were a little depressing and took far too long (despite giving fairly efficient feedback I thought...) I thought I'd quickly blog on my reasons for joining.
This week I was struggling for a post for my #weeklyblogchallenge17. Not knowing what to write I turned to twitter, and I knew I wouldn't be disappointed. I quickly ended up in a discussion with someone about the importance of MFL at GCSE level. I hope I don't misrepresent their beliefs by saying that they were of the opinion that if you weren't going to take a languages degree then A level languages were not worth it, and therefore MFL GCSE was also unnecessary for those who weren't going to take A level. Thus rendering MFL GCSE pretty pointless it would seem
The following blog intends to combat some of the arguments I faced during this discussion, and to raise as many reasons as I can to justify my belief that the majority of students have something to gain from studying a language at GCSE. I would be really interested to hear other points of view in the comments or via twitter. You can find me on the right hand side of this page, or here @BexN91 Last weekend I was at my parents house and had a look through a bag of school stuff I had left round there to see if there was anything in it I wanted to take. This bag reminded me quite how much my teaching has changed in a relatively short time, and made me think about the sorts of things that I used to do, that I don't any more. When I went back to work on Thursday I took some photos of the other things in my 'box of tricks' that I used to use and no longer do. In this post I intend to look at these things, think about what I used to use them for, why, and if they are best suited to the bin or using them again.
This year for me feels like the time to start to change my approach a little. As I've mentioned before, I now feel free from the previous presures of training, NQT and Masters and I've also been at my school for a year. Over the last term I've been reading more blogs, paying more attention to things and really reconsidering the way I approach things. I think it all started at ResearchEd back in September, when I wrote this post. Now I feel that I am able to focus on my teching in a different way, I have created a reminder list for myself when planning, something to remind me of what I could be including in my lessons and to help me stick to the basics I guess. These are the kind of things that I hope will just become natural parts of my planning in the future, and some of them already are. I think my ideas are really beginning to change, and what I used to think made a good lesson with lots of bells and whilstles and gimmics no longer is. I don't know if this is due to the type of school I now work in, but I hope not. I'm sure my ideas are going to continue to change over the next year and I look forward to it!
So, what have I included and where has it come from? |