With the new term just about to start and, even though this year I am not teaching a cohort of students; I have been busy facilitating new teacher induction sessions and that led me to reflect on how I felt at the start of a new term.
There was a mix of anticipation and trepidation, excited to try out the innovative approaches and tweaked activities I had been working on over the summer. Whilst also looking forward to getting to know my new student cohort whilst rolling out my updated student induction.
Knowing the importance of establishing effective lesson routines to help the student to settle in and ensure there is a solid foundation built for the rest of the year where learner readiness and behaviour means we can make the most of the time we have in class.
When it comes to routines, one of my key ones is how the students enter the class. I like to greet them at the door. To enable this, I make use of a pre-connect activity, some tasks that they do as they arrive, the instructions are displayed on the board. Soon as they arrive in class, they start the activity. That frees me up to greet them at the door when they arrive.
The other thing I do to reduce the disruption caused by late students is to make sure that they are always spare chairs near the door. So, when a student arrives late, they know to sit there and not wander across the whole classroom to sit next to their friends, this just helps to reduce the disruption to the lesson.
One of the other areas I focus on is the use of technology is lesson. First the use of mobile phones, it is worth remembering that our 16-year-old students have never experienced a life without smartphones, so for them it plays an important part of their life.
I agree that I am happy for them to use their mobile phones at certain points in the lesson, but instead of asking them to put them in their bags, where they general end up migrating to their laps. I prefer for them to be left on their desk.
To facilitate this, I provide each student with a place mat which has an indicated space for the phone with a note to remind them to mute notifications and QR codes linked to the resources being used during the lesson.
One of the benefits of working like this is at a glance, I can see who is using their phone when they have not been asked to.
The other aspect of technology is ensuring that from day one that the students can access all the College's systems. At our college we use Office 365, so I go through and introduce them to OneDrive so they can safely manage files. I also highlight tools like the dictate feature and immersive reader. I highlight the benefits of creating and storing their files in OneDrive so they can access them across a range of devices.
I have recorded several short tutorials on each of the key tools and functions in the main MS Office apps. To help them keep organised I encourage them to use Microsoft to do.
Here is my video tutorial on using Microsoft to do.
The trepidation as to whether the tweaks made over the summer to lessons, assignments and resources result in increased student engagement and understanding. Also, how will the student cohort gel as a group.
However, by the end of the first week it starts to feel like the new normal and I can turn my attention to initial assessments and ensuring the students are on the right course.
For all those starting a new term I wish you all the best.
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