Thoughts on the first term.

So. How was it for you?

I thought I'd share with you my thoughts on my teaching of the first term of smart. I'd be interested to know what others thought.

What went well

* Good relationship with the class - partly by virtue of seeing them 8 times a fornight, but I think we're starting to figure out how we work, 7DH and me!
* Research skills - This, for me, was a highlight. Even though we sucked in the final challenge (!), I loved that fact that we got kids in the library and finding stuff out. The comments from staff and pupils for this unit has been excellent. And the work the pupils produced for their projects was probably the best work I've seen from any class. ever.
* Letting go. Looking back, I think the best lessons were those where I wasn't too worried about getting stuff finished and moving on, and let the task and the pupils reaction to it determine the shape of what happened. The music smart lesson where they wrote their songs about the news stories took three times longer that I had orginally planned, but was brilliant. The lessons where they made their own animals possibly saw them more committed than to anything else. Which brings me on to...

Even better if

*I gave the pupils more ownership Despite everyone saying about there not being a sylabus to cover, and other people clearly spending a long time on things, I think that too often I resorted to 'teacher' mode and tried to get them through that lessons topic. As a result I'm one of the furthest on of the team, but feel that some of the experiences we've had have abeen a bit hollow. So from here on in I'm going to look for longer term, more project based things, rather than two or three activities to get through in each lesson. Depth rather than width will be my motto from here on in ;0)

I wasn't racing though I think that the last few weeks would have been better if I hadn't moved straight on to the thinking methods stuff (which is itself probably the weakest stuff we've got in terms of resources), but instead did some of the work that Kev has been doing on Kensuke's Kingdom. The evidence from their research work is that they produce their best work when they (rather than I) have a sense of ownership of what they're doing and I give them time to do it properly.