All that you have is your soul (Tracy Chapman).

Friday 16 September 2005

The Teaching Codes

This is the way I see it:

Teaching is made up of a series of codes that need to be unlocked to ensure survival in the classroom.

The first of these is learning the kids’ names and I think I’ve nearly cracked that one. I don’t know every child’s name, but I feel confident that I can match at least 20% of names to faces in each class. This one should be in the bag by half term (he says naively)

Code #2 however is proving to be far trickier. In short, I need to get the seating sorted out. This will be achieved by trial and error – working out whom should be sitting next to whom, or not for that matter; where to seat the disruptive or weaker kids and finally, which places in the classroom are danger zones – i.e. the parts of the room where mischief will be more prevalent (such as corners or areas that extend beyond my eye-line) and where I should instead sit the kids whom I can trust to get on with their work independently.

I have discovered that putting together a successful seating plan is nothing short of an art-form. I’ve even had to resort to asking other teachers where they seat the same students in their classes.  There are so many pitfalls to keep in mind that you need to seat and re-seat the kids until you are absolutely sure you’ve got it right, otherwise they will continue to disrupt/fight/avoid working whilst you watch your lesson turning into a mini-Iraq.

I’ve only discovered two codes so far.

Watch this space.

1 comment:

I'm not even supposed to be here today said...

Did you read my "eye of the tiger" post from yesterday. I was moved around almost every two days in my geography class. It wasn't my fault (yes it was)... I was the only girl in a classroom with 33 kids. WHat can I say - the testosterone went to my head! I couldn't keep quiet... plus, I was already very knowledgeable about geogrpahy (at that level anyway) so paying attention was not required to get an A+.

I hope you figure it out. ANd I sincerely hope there aren't too many kids like me in the classes!!!

(although one is enough sometimes!)