Week 4: Reflection

Positives and Needs to improve:

** I felt much more confident this week.

** Behaviour Management: I felt I had much more control over the class. It seems like my new rules (name on the board) is working with the students. Although the students did they to test me on them. I stood my ground.

** Instructions: I really tried to work on my instructions to make them as clear and concise as possible. For example, during one of my SOSE classes I had the class work in groups to design a poster representing a lobby group. This required a number of instructions so I wrote them on the blackboard so students could follow them more easily. This worked well. However, another problem arose with this activity. Because it was a group work activity students worked at different paces. I really needed to give the students time limits for the different stages of the project.

** With my year 11 Modern History class I think that I have gotten to the stage of being able to create a much more relaxed atmosphere. I think I personally was much more relaxed and confident which in turn created a better learning environment.

** I had been constantly implementing the Productive Pedagogy of "connectedness." I feel that I was really able to do this successfully in my Year 11 Modern History class. We are studying the concept of "Totalitarianism" and the characteristics of totalitarian states using Nazi Germany as a case study. While we were studying the characteristic of propaganda I explained that this type of indoctrination can still be seen in todays society - I showed them a video of the "Islamic Mickey Mouse." The students really seemed interested and this in turn sparked some great class discussion. After this I then showed them a current example of a totalitarian state - North Korea - I explained that all of these characteristics that we have studied in relation to Nazi Germany are not just part of history. I played a short 5 minute documentary of North Korea and had students identify aspects of totalitarianism that they could see.

I also worked on Connectedness when I begun the unit on totalitarianism. I played the opening 15 minutes of the movie "V for Vandetta" and had students identify aspects of totalitarianism.

I definiately think that "connectedness" is a key to improving students motivation and ability to learn.