What went well?

This week was, without a doubt, my most successful so far. Last week’s pivot to focusing on the basics with Grade 5 in maths paid off, with a number of the students making huge strides in their confidence and understanding of long division. Seeing it click for them, and the excitement they took from it, was incredibly rewarding as a teacher.

The 5s and 6s really took to using the computers during our technology lessons – so much so that I had to arrange extra time for practice after school! Introducing them to a new technology and seeing the pace with which they learn how to use Microsoft Word has been fantastic. When they reach Grade 9, they are examined on Word and Excel skills – most students in Ng’ombe take these exams having never used a computer before. Giving the students access to typing practice now will have a significant impact on their confidence and competence when they come to take these exams in a few years.

I got the chance to do a couple of fun experiments with the Grade 6s too. We used balloons to demonstrate that air has mass and used a ruler to investigate how vibration speed changes the frequency of a sound. The highlight of my day was walking outside at lunchtime and watching them trying to recreate the balloon experiment in their free time!

Outside of normal teaching duties, my main responsibility was to type up all the test papers and create a template that can be used for future testing. Previously, all tests had been handwritten and photocopied, so I was glad I could help with the move to digitising this process in an effort to make future test writing more straightforward.

What could have been done differently?

This weekend, we should have used our Saturday mall trip to prepare slightly better for the week ahead. The Grade 1s have a slightly frustrating habit of destroying every pencil we give them – usually by biting off the lead. Upon going into my Wednesday Grade 1 science lesson, I noticed we had barely any working pencils left. While it was a good challenge to adapt the lesson such that the students could join in verbally rather than just through writing, the stress caused would have been better avoided. Luckily, we know to restock the pencil stores this weekend!

With the addition of after-school slots for extra technology lessons, the students had far more time to spend on the computers. The time they can spend actually working on the computers is always limited (there are only two computers available for the class of 14), but I did not take advantage of this opportunity to give them some more challenging work – rather, I stuck to the old template of giving everyone chance to do the exercise during the lesson and using the extra time for them to experiment. While experimenting is great, my priority has to be getting their skills to as high a level as possible to put them in a good position for working towards the public exams. Initially, this means plenty of practice at the basics of text editing.

I was so busy with the typing up of tests that I didn’t put enough focus on actually devising my own questions. It wasn’t until Friday that I coordinated my questions for Grade 5 and 6 science with Teacher Eddah and Grace. Luckily, there was still time to make edits to the papers and my questions were added in, but it made me realise how over-focusing on one task can have unintended side effects.

Leadership reflection

Typing up all of those test papers certainly required some determination – formatting the maths tests was especially painful. While it was not the most stimulating work, being able to do it to a good standard and see the help it gave the teachers was great. The effort was also collaborative, as I got feedback from Mercy and Isaac on the style of the templates. I also had to work with Grace and Teacher Eddah to write the science papers for Grade 5 and 6, ensuring that the content was fairly distributed according to how much each of us had taught.

During our revision, some of the Grade 5 students experienced some setbacks in maths, arriving at mental blocks and struggling to do questions that they had been able to do the week before. It would be easy to get frustrated at this, but I found I could empathise with them by remembering my challenges in doing times table frenzies as a Year 5 student. Focusing on bringing out empathy has been a focus of mine this week, and has been a really useful tool in demonstrating that being stuck, not understanding a concept is ok and that it is an experience everyone has many times throughout school. This was the first step towards progress in revision, which I hope we can capitalize on next week in the final revision lessons to ensure everyone is comfortable with the content.