How I love my TA.

During my first placement I was blessed with a fantastic group of TAs. Not only were they a great group of people to talk with informally and professionally, but they had a sincere love for the job and a desire to make a difference to the pupils. I predominantly worked with two of the TAs in two of my classes where support for pupils with different needs was required. The first class where I received support was a year five class where levels were not above 2a. The class was quite small to cope with their demands and their lowered ability meant that progress was slow. However, when the TA became available (they were always in demand for things like cover or inclusion) they made teaching so much easier. The TA helped me because she was a familiar face in the classroom and with someone new taking over teaching they found it easier to adjust. Towards the end of the placement i began to do spellings with the class every week but all that I would do is sit with one half of the class, read their spellings (which were different to the other half of the class) and mark them. The TA worked exceptionally hard through the rest of the lesson as she took spelling books, HFW sheets and planners in to give the pupils personalised targets and write the next week's spellings in the pupil's planners so that they could be learnt. I was astounded at the work she did because there was actually no time for me to do this in the lesson. When my mentor began to give me more free reign with the class and properly take a back seat my TA was still in the class with me, offering support whenever and wherever I needed it. In the beginning I felt quite cheeky asking someone to go and do something or sit somewhere in particular to do something, but as I became more acquainted with the school and the system they used I understood that this is what they expected of me. After this the TA was always included in my planning, whether or not she would be in the classroom with me. I felt more comfortable to do this and the pupils showed progress by doing so.

The second TA was used in my year seven class for both targeting one pupil with behaviour difficulties and several pupils for intervention reading. In the year five class I enjoyed having the TA because she made my life and my work an absolute breeze, but this second TA was worth her weight in gold because a lot of the time her work meant that I could teach effectively and not just crowd control. She targeted one specific pupil and sat with him on many occasions, making sure that  he completed the work asked of him. She wasn't in every lesson but every lesson she was in helped me a great deal. I didn't get to see much of the intervention reading but I know that this engaged the pupils whom she targeted greatly. They progressed in their reading skills and began to attempt to use a more complex vocabulary as my placement progressed.

Several times I would sit and talk with the TAs in the staffroom and pick up ideas about how to target specific pupils, different techniques for teaching pupils with different needs and I fully believe that my teaching practice is better thanks to these members of staff. Watching the work they do and acting as a TA in lessons for other teachers was exhausting and I fully commend the work they do in the classrooms. I believe that a good TA is one of the best people to have in the classroom with you at any point because they don't just support the pupils, they support you too. That's why I love my TA.

Drama in lessons. To be or not to be?

English is a subject that lends itself nicely to being dramatic through various means. First of all, the obvious one is the study of texts, primarily plays. When a pupil studies drama in a school environment they are usually given a book that contains a play with several roles, then are split into groups and asked to act it out. From personal experience this is quite an effective method of getting through large chunks of text and acting provides a medium where all pupils can be equals without fear of ridicule. So how is this different to teaching a set text such as Othello to pupils in an English classroom? The only difference between an English classroom and a drama classroom is that there are seating plans, chairs, tables and an environment in which the pupils are used to writing instead of doing.

When teaching a play it is important to engage all of the pupils, especially as an engaging lesson will stick with the pupils and information may actually come to them in their time of need: the exam. I believe it is thoroughly important to get the pupils out of their seats and fully exploring the play, both in words and movement. The pupils need to feel the atmosphere that Shakespeare's audience would have felt when watching Othello being performed. This way they not only understand what is being said and why, but can also understand why certain characters were made to feel or be seen in certain ways, therefore deepening their understanding of the text. How does a teacher fit into this? So far I've only talked about pupils engaging, pupils doing and acting, but as teachers we need to lead by example, to show the pupils that it's ok to be out of their comfort zone. In the classroom I perform every time that I teach. I need to, as my real personality is that of someone who is laid back and quite happy to accept what happens. This is not acceptable in a classroom from someone who leads, therefore I perform for every single lesson. I change my voice, my attitude, my persona and the way I look every time i come into school. This builds up a defense against what pupils might say or do, but to lead when teaching a play I need to let my guard down and show the pupils that it's ok to look a bit stupid and be unsure of what to do at the beginning. This element of trust at showing a glimmer of the real person behind the suit is what being dramatic in a lesson is all about. There has to be a relationship between you and the pupils that works, and trust between the two groups that you won't be laughed at too much. I enjoy being dramatic and sometimes over-dramatic in a class for effect. Humour is a great way to get through to pupils, and I have found that certain aspects of being dramatic can always get a laugh from the class, diffusing situations or getting all pupils to focus.

How about if you aren't teaching a play, but a novel instead? Can I still be dramatic? There are several ways of doing this, with or without class participation. From my experience of being a pupil I remember being read small parts of Of Mice and Men in year nine, and my teacher (who somehow managed to put the fear into every single child in the school) was reading the book to us as we followed and read each character in a different voice. This was unexpected from such a stern member of staff, but the technique worked as it created different characters with real voices in my imagination. I specifically remember that Lenny had a rather childish voice, with what seemed to be a little inspiration from the Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge (he over-emphasises certain words, creating a specific sound) and George was gruff, with a little Southern in there for good measure. I actually think that if John Malkovich hadn't been cast as Lenny then my old year nine teacher would have been great, with some make-up work. From personal experience teaching classes I have found it easy to integrate drama and be dramatic in lessons. When teaching a year seven class the text Wolf Brother we did two different tasks: one a news report and one a role play activity. The news report worked particularly well as we used iPads to 'film' the news broadcast and reconstruction of the crime, enabling pupils to take the task a lot more seriously. The role play was a fantastic way for pupils to express themselves as they took on different roles from the book. Enabling them to be dramatic in the classroom allowed them to explore the feelings and activities of the characters. The other thing I did was take a leaf out of my year nine teacher's book and use different voices. When teaching Matilda to a year five class I made us of the classroom. We were in a mobile every time, which meant that the room was a little less solidly constructed than the main building. When it came to Miss Trunchbull I was able to bang and thump around the room with great effect, as the floor was entirely made of wood and the sound bounced around the room. This made some pupils jump, but the majority laughed and it allowed them to enjoy the text a little more.

To be or not to be is the question, but I can guarantee that any chance that I get to be dramatic in a classroom to further pupil learning, I will.

What did Shakespeare do for me?

Shakespeare has had a large impact on my life from when i began to read it in year eight through to uni and beyond. When i began to study A Midsummer Night's Dream in year eight i was bored beyond belief and lacked enthusiasm through lessons, predominantly because of the teacher and how she talked the whole play at us with little around it. Safe to say this left me a little less than enamoured with the Bard and his works.

In year nine they probably did something else, but seeing as i missed all but three weeks during the back end of year nine this can be discounted without any prejudice to the bard.

Year ten and eleven melted into one for me, as it was predominantly learning for GCSE exams. For the coursework we studied Romeo and Juliet, as most pupils up and down the country do. For me Romeo and Juliet was a gateway through to another pupil, a friend of mine who i was attracted to, and who many people knew that i was attracted to. As an aside at this point i believe it is important to inform you that i was overweight, struggling with health and sporadically in school. I'd been attracted to this girl for a while, but never been able to vocalise it through being shy around her, and at that moment i was quite properly stuck in the 'friendzone'. However, in my English class all of that was able to change. My English teacher at this point was of a higher caliber, and the person who motivated me to further my career with English. Her idea was to distribute roles to the class, and the roles of Romeo and Juliet were changed every lesson. When it came to my turn to be Romeo and the teacher turned around to the class and said 'Who's going to be Juliet?' and several of my friends shouted out this girl's name, i blushed at the back of the classroom and smiled a bit, but felt utterly embarrassed. The teacher laughed and agreed, so for a short while i was her Romeo and she was my Juliet, which made the world of difference to me and opened me up to be the romantic person i have become today. Safe to say that this girl wasn't romantically interested in me, but she remained a good friend who didn't know what i felt during our GCSE classes until i left halfway through year 11 for health reasons. Shakespeare had opened up a vault of emotions that i had no other way of accessing unless it was through literature, my teacher and Shakespeare's play.

After this my thinking around Shakespeare delved into the analytical and theoretical through college and university, where i found the true humour and tragedy in the plays, but the main thing that Shakespeare did for me was to open me up to another way of thinking and feeling, and giving me a chance to experience how that other person felt for me as Romeo. Without the Bard, I can honestly say that i may have been a lesser person today.

The Importance of the Short Story

When reading we often shun the short story aside in favour of the novel. We expect more for our money, therefore when we spend £4/5 on a book we expect many chapters and in depth characters, plot twists and developments that we can engross ourselves with over a serious period of time. However, we aren't children and our focus as adults engrossed in literature is entirely different from children who are initially being exposed to new topics.

As teaching staff we have a choice when it comes to exposing pupils to literature from around the world. When pupils begin learning about literature we can either give them dense novels that take several weeks to get through with arduous plot twists and complex literary devices to contend with. With a universally loved text this would not be an issue as all pupils would be engaged but with a text from a different heritage then pupils may struggle to understand how the text progresses as we cannot understand how their culture and society works or how it has been affected by history.

The function of the short story is unique to English, and without it in lessons pupils would be at a loss. If we focus on the size then it is far more manageable for children who have yet to leave school, as if they do not connect with the text then they do not have to struggle along with the rest of the class for a whole term to cover it and fall behind. Instead, they take one or two weeks to try and handle it and then the text changes to something different that could engage them immediately. On a social aspect it is paramount as teachers that we create well rounded individuals who are respectful of others and their beliefs/ideals, and behind History and RE I believe English to be a provider of this skill.

As schools provide a strong background to develop social, moral, spiritual and cultural skills I believe that if we lost the short story from the curriculum then it would not be just English teachers that were affected but the spiritual and cultural well-being of the pupils and the school.