Fake Headteacher: I feel sick!

I am in my third year of teaching.

I feel sick.

I am sitting at a pupil’s desk.

In front of me are 30 books that need to be ‘deep marked’.

I have to deep mark twice a week apparently.

I will need to highlight bits I like in green. I will need to highlight bits in pink to show where pupils need to improve.

In addition, I will need to write a couple of next steps that pupils must respond to. But that’s ok because we now have ‘feedback to learning’ time built into our timetables – 30 mins after lunch. We don’t do quiet reading now.

I feel sick.

I feel sick because I know I have already given so much feedback to all 30 pupils in the lesson.

Nearly every pupil has responded to my advice. Nearly every pupil has made progress and moved forward with their learning.

The only thing I want to do, is to write a congratulatory comment.

They deserve it. They did everything I asked of them. A lovely comment will motivate them and reward their hard work.

But I know that I have to to deep mark twice a week and it’s already Wednesday.

I will need to highlight bits I like in green. I will need to highlight bits in pink to show pupils where they need to improve. I will need to write a couple of next steps.

I don’t want to.

It’s common sense to me see.

I already knew from the previous lesson what to teach today. I discussed the lesson with my TA afterwards and had a flick through the books to double check how they got on.

I made a few notes on whole class misconceptions or things they were a bit wobbly on still.

I wrote down a couple of new things I wanted to introduce too.

I made notes on the few who struggled and the few who needed extending.

I had a quick chat with the pupils who struggled yesterday, just before the lesson today, to give them a bit of a boost.

I started the lesson showing pupils examples of misconceptions or errors from yesterday.

I used the visualiser to help improve an actual piece of work from one of the pupils. I gave time for all pupils to re-address this in the lesson.

I taught the new skills for the lesson.

I checked their understanding throughout the lesson and stopped the lesson if I thought I needed to re-address anything.

I quickly picked up on individual errors and supported them in a variety of ways.

I extend my more able (based on yesterday’s lesson) with questions and challenges such as ‘can you now…? Show me.. etc.

I stopped the lesson to look at good examples of work and discussed ways we could move learning forward even more.

I gave opportunities for pairs to evaluate each other’s work and respond accordingly.

I lost count the about of times I

2017-19 Full blogs are now archived in the book ‘How Do You Think the Lesson Went?’