Planning and Timings

 

Observe a lesson and write a commentary on planning and timings.

Year 11 Set 2

Learning Objectives

- To explore the thoughts and feelings contained in the text.

- To demonstrate perceptive interpretation of people, place and context.
 

This lesson was focused upon Language and looked particularly at preparing the class for their exam. Miss B had clearly planned out what she wanted the class to work on to help improve their writing skills and to ensure that they are able to answer the exam question within a time limit. The class had previously read an article based upon an extract from An Afghan Journey and Miss B used this extract as the focus for this particular lesson.

Timings                         Lesson

5 – 10 minutes	Starter – the beginning of the lesson linked with the previous lesson, in which the class had chosen quotes from the text that they thought were important. Miss B then had a selection of these quotes written on a PowerPoint. She then asked the class why they thought each quote was important and how they would use them in an exam question. This showed clear planning on Miss B’s part as she had pre-selected certain quotes to use. She knew what she wanted the class to take from each quote and was able to guide them to where she wanted their focus to be.
5 – 10 minutes	Miss A then showed the class an example of a past exam answer on the text that they were looking at. Miss B had written this herself in order to display the amount of detail that the pupils should be including in their own answers. Miss B then used PowerPoint to display the mark scheme to further increase their understanding of what they need to be doing in their writing to achieve top marks. She then linked the mark scheme to the example answer and asked the class why they thought the example reached top marks.
20 minutes	Miss B then presented the class with a question based upon the text they had been looking at – ‘Explore some of Mansur’s thoughts and feelings in the text’. She then asked the class to write their own answer to the question. Miss B set a time limit of twenty minutes to complete the answer fully. The time limit was used to help the pupils to understand how long they should be spending on this type of question within their exam.
10 minutes	Miss B then asked pupils to swap their work for peer assessment. She put the mark scheme back upon the board so that the pupils could relate to this when marking. She asked them to highlight areas where the work had been written well and hit the target marks and to also highlight any ways in which they thought that they could improve. She asked them to give the work a mark and justify why they thought they deserved that particular mark. Peer assessment enabled pupils to further understand the mark scheme and to realise how they can improve their work in future. Homework – The class was set homework which was to answer a different question from the same section of the exam paper. This would enable Miss B to see if their written work improved based upon what they had learnt in the lesson.

Miss B’s lesson was clearly well planned and structured. She was able to use her timings well to ensure that she met the targets that she wanted to. The work on the quotations helped the class to look at how thoughts and feelings within the text we shown and they were then able to use these when answering the question. When answering the set question they were also required to look at the way in which people, place and context were important as they related to the thoughts and feelings portrayed within the text. Miss B’s example answer highlighted they ways in which their writing needed to reflect their interpretations of people, place and context. Timing was important throughout the lesson. In particular the timing set for the exam question was essential to help each individual pupil to understand the time that they will have to complete that particular type of question in an exam.

 

Lesson Observation

Observe a lesson and explain clearly how a specific element of the appropriate POS for that key stage is met.

I observed a year 9 set 3 lesson and looked at the way in which the lesson followed the Key Stage 3 programme of study. The lesson was focused upon the use of apostrophes and the use of assessment for learning to improve written work. Section 2.3 was used within the lesson to ensure that pupils progressed. 2.3.w states that pupils should be able to “signal sentence structure by the effective use of a full range of punctuation marks to clarify meaning”. Miss A had identified that apostrophes were a common problem for this particular class and therefore had planned this lesson to help them to understand how to use them properly. Miss A then had pupils re-read a piece of marked work in order to improve what they had already written. This focused on the programme of study 4.3e - that the curriculum should “provide opportunities for pupils to evaluate and respond constructively to their own and others’ writing”.

The lesson began with an overview of how apostrophes should be used. Miss A then used a starter quiz that asked the pupils to correctly place an apostrophe within a sentence. The main aspects of the lesson had a focus on the writing element of the programme of study but also linked in with the speaking and listening aspects of it. 4.1.c highlights that the curriculum should “provide opportunities for pupils to use speaking and listening to develop their reading and writing”. This relates to the way in which the starter quiz was presented as it relied on the pupils to be able to listen carefully in order to understand what Miss A wanted them to do with each sentence that they were writing. 

The lesson then moved on to a focus upon assessment for learning. The students were asked to look at a diary entry that they had previously written. This work had been marked by Miss A and needed correcting and adding to. The class was asked to correct spellings and punctuation and to add extra information to a question that Miss A had written on their work. This incorporated 2:3.q that pupils should be able to “use planning, drafting, editing, proofreading and self-evaluation to shape and craft their writing for maximum effect”. By encouraging the pupils to correct their own mistakes they were able to see where they had made a mistake and why. Miss A’s question had then prompted them to add extra detail and to expand and develop their writing further. Miss A worked her way around the class in order to help anyone that had any problems and while doing this she was able to praise the good work that they had done.

Miss A wanted the class to focus particularly on any spelling mistakes that they had made. This relates to 2.3.w that pupils should be able to “spell correctly, increasing their knowledge of regular patterns of spelling, word families, roots of words and derivations, including prefixes, suffixes and inflections”. In order to keep them focused upon their spelling Miss A set homework for the class to write down 5 words that they had misspelt and to learn how to spell them correctly. This would enable them to see what words they had repeatedly spelt wrong and to improve their spelling through practice and to help recognise regular spelling patterns. 

Miss A had a clear planned and focused lesson that was able to relate to a good amount of the writing requirements within the programme of study. She was also able to utilise other aspects of the POS, especially the use of speaking and listening.