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.