Teaching in Year 4

[start_to_finish]

This was quite a shock to the system after spending most of my time in Year 6! When I had them on the carpet, the class were fairly good but moving between carpet and desks seemed to be something that engendered a lot of unnecessary chat (they do this for L as well, apparently) and they seemed to have a huge amount of trouble in just getting on with their work without chatting and conferring loudly with their next door neighbour.

I think next time I need to have a bit of an explicit discussion with them before I ask them to move about what I expect in terms of moving around the classroom and general behaviour during on task time. In the DT lesson I did that afternoon we did that and it worked much better, although I was also requiring less quiet in general for that (you can talk, but please use partner voices) so that might be part of it. Actually though, I may be exagerating. It's very early in the year and I checked with the next door teacher (I wanted to apologise!) and she said she hadn't heard us, so it might not have been too bad. Still, I've seen them manage the independant work with much lower noise levels so I should have been able to expect that.

The other thing that I found tricky was that there's so many in that class with SEN and really both tables doing the one-dot work needed adult support. The LSA was with the most challenged group (and they managed to do quite well really) but I had to divide myself between working with the other group and answering questions from the rest of the class. Again, perhaps better expectation setting might have helped (I'm going to be working with this table, I expect the rest of the class to work independantly) but also planning something for the SEN which didn't need quite so much prompting - they were building multiplication sums using multifix and then drawing them and writing down the sum and answer in their books so I needed to be there to give them sums to do and to stop the boys (and it was the boys) just building random things with their multifix.

Comments

[timscience.livejournal.com]

I may be exagerating. It's very early in the year and I checked with the next door teacher....
You probably aren't exaggerating, but even if you are, hit them up early with your expectations. As I'm sure you know, kids much prefer it when they know the boundaries.

[back-to-skool.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've now tried it with another class in that year group and it worked *much* better.

Year 4

[(Anonymous)]

Remember this is a learning process. Even experienced teachers have lessons they feel could have gone better. I think discussing your expections at the end of the carpet time would be a good idea - and then quiet reminders of classroom voices from time to time - praising those getting on with their work. Maybe asking individual tables to move instead of the whole class moving around (always a receipt for chaos). During plenary you can comment on those who managed to focus. As you get to know the class you'll also know whuch children shouldn't sit together! Mum xxxx

Re: Year 4

[back-to-skool.livejournal.com]

One of the things I found much easier in the other Y4 class I took that week was that it was only a few so it was much easier to pick out examples of good behaviour to praise whereas I actually found that tricky with this group.