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Literature Review.

“How to Survive your First year in Teaching” Sue Cowley 2003.

I found this book very interesting, as it is all about the teacher and how they can cope with their career choice. There wasn’t too much about how the lessons should be productive ensuring the students are gaining the best education that they can.

Below are some notes that I picked up on that were to benefit the students.

On Lesson planning Cowley wrote “Until you meet your students and get to know them a little, it is hard to anticipate their needs and interests” Pg 4

On behaviour: “Start of by being as hard as possible, you can always relax, but you can never get a class back once you’ve lost them” Pg 7

 Cowley also talks about creating games and rewards to control behaviour on page 7-11

“Take into account the weather, time dates and previous activities and respond to the mood and reactions of the children” Pg 23

“Engage students to starve of boredom” Pg 27

On Boundaries: “Boundaries should be fair, realistic and achievable”

“Setting boundaries is a matter of personal taste and opinion, it also depends a great deal on the type of students you have to teach” Pg 10

On self-evaluation: “Think about what works and what doesn’t and take notes” Pg 14

Cowley gives a concise list of tactics to control a class:

·      Have a “Deadly” stare

·      Don’t talk till they are silent

·      Negotiate with them

·      Respond to the mood of the class

·      Show them you’re human

·      Put yourself in their shoes

·      Avoid confrontation

·      Build a barrier (as a teacher); don’t take things personally, Choose sympathy over anger, reason to the situation.

·      Praise one and encourage all.

Over the following weeks I will put some of these techniques into practice and see who benefits more from these strategies, teacher, student or both. I will blog my findings

Notes on Module 3

From the reader I can see that Module 3 is all about the Professional inquiry. 

• The inquiry is a summary of our findings, and we have to bring together all of our work from the previous modules. 
• Continue to interact and engage with others.
• Professional inquiry must show knowledge and understanding and is a professional arfifact.
• Mark is based on 100% coursework,we have to refer to Reader 7, review Module 2, complete task 7A and continue to use all inquiry tools (Interview, focus group, survey, observation,. literature review) 
• Inquiry needs to be a written set of findings, an analysis of data.
• Reflections of inquiry need to be blogged and written in our learning journal.
• Ethical issues an safeguards still need to be in place.
• We should use our journal for private learning and reflection.
• We need to submit, a Critical Review, Professional Artifact (evaluative summary included) and Oral Presentation.