I thought that I would blog about the English departmental review. It enabled me pause for reflection and gave me the opportunity to think about how I could do better with my students in my classroom.

The review started off with a teacher’s lesson plan. Our Level Head then solicited for suggestions to make the learning outcomes sharper and more targeted. I suggested that the teacher could infuse the teaching of connectors of sequence into her Success Criteria.

My suggestion wasn’t what the Level Head was looking out for, but it wasn’t too far off. The conclusion we were supposed to arrive at was “the use of contextual clues”. That, in itself, was a good ‘A-ha’ moment for me. I think that I model my thinking to my students quite well, but I haven’t quite stressed the importance of using contextual clues in my Success Criteria. Following the departmental review, I actually highlighted the term “contextual clues” to my students, so the review wasn’t just an academic exercise for me.

The Level Head then showed us another example, in which the teacher wanted her students to infuse multisensory details into their writing.

This teacher went about differentiated instruction by getting high-progress students to focus on all five senses while instructing their weaker counterparts to focus on less senses. The Level Head explained that this wasn’t a very good example of differentiated instruction.

She suggested that while high-progress students could be challenged to write their paragraph independently, low-progress students should be given more scaffolding in the form of pedagogical tools. In this case, weak students could perhaps watch a video that would provide ideas on how the various senses are engaged. They could then translate what they have watched into their writing.

On the whole, I felt that I have benefitted from this review because I realised that amidst the daily grind, I sometimes got students to complete exercises (aka paper pushing) without strengthening their conceptual understanding. So, in order for my students to learn for life, I should resist the temptation to get them to just do worksheets.