This week I visited Liberton High School. I met the class with whom I will be working, I discussed further my ideas with the biology teachers at the school, and saw the school grounds.
Meeting my class
I was surprised that the class I will be working with consists of only 15 students. However, a small group will make it quicker and easier to manage and carry out the practical work, and I will also be able to support individual students more closely. From my lesson observation of the class, the students seemed to enjoy practical activities and video clips. They were much less engaged with directly delivered oral information. Although this will be necessary in some instances, such as for explaining activities, I will try to keep this ‘lecturing’ style of teaching to a minimum, and think of other ways that I can keep the students engaged. One example I have thought of is with a starter activity on averages. Instead of recapping averages on the board, and delivering the information to the students verbally, I will create a multiple choice averages quiz. This active engagement will hopefully be more effective in refreshing the students’ memories of how to calculate averages.
Discussion with teachers
It was really useful to discuss my ideas with one of the biology teachers I will be working with. I was given a good insight into the needs of the class members, from the teacher’s perspective, as well as advice as to which learning tools will work well with the class. For example, I was told that many pupils struggle to formulate headings for tables, and axis labels and scales for graphs. I will therefore create a template table and graph for the students to use. It was also good to find out that the classroom has resources such as mini whiteboards, which the students could use as part of my insect quiz. I now have a much better idea of the equipment I will need to provide the school with, and can now organise this. I will provide the school with an equipment list for each lesson, to enable them to devise an appropriate risk assessment for practical activities.
After discussing the timings of the school day, I now know that the school’s lessons were shorter than I anticipated. Therefore, I have decided to deliver my material over 5 lessons, instead of the 4 I had initially planned. This will ensure that I can deliver detailed and clear information, without rushing the content to finish a lesson on time.
The school grounds
Now I have seen the school grounds, I am reassured that sampling can take place on site. This will mean that the students will have more time to identify the insects they collect, and analyse their results. I have decided that we will sample underneath a clump of the plant broom, and have another sampling location in a more diverse clump of rough grassland. I will group the class into pairs, and each student will be responsible for a yellow bowl in a different habitat (broom vs grassland). In addition to placing the bowls, students will also measure the diversity of the vegetation. To make this simple, I will get the students to count the number of different plants that they observe to be present within a 1 x 1 m quadrat. We will do a practice of this as a starter activity in the classroom, using a picture. I hope that this will mean students are better equipped to carry out this method of measuring diversity in the field.
Next steps
I now have a more concrete idea of the practicalities surrounding my lesson delivery, and I have begun to consider how I can keep students supported and engaged. My next steps will be to begin to design the lesson plans and resources, in preparation for teaching in March.
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