Homework Continued

As expected, learners did not do their homework but their enthusiasm to get a merit/distinction was refreshing so I decided to have a gentle talk with them. I have found that the imbalance of teaching hours means learners uphold a unit over another. For example, they will have video production classes 2-3hours a day and compared to other units which only get 1 hour. I have tried to extend this by adding workshops to the lessons especially during practical tasks but it doesn't always work because learners end up doing other pieces of work. According to other teachers, learners are unable to prioritise their lessons. This is mainly due to the fact that they do not do homework. I shared with them, the way in which I juggle university, teaching, work and homework:

Monday: teaching

Tuesday: teaching

Wednesday: university

Thursday: teaching

Friday: teaching

Saturday: off

Sunday: work (paid)

"By the way guys, I don't get paid to teach you..."

Their facial expressions were priceless and it put them in their place. In the end end I gave them individual targets. Each learner was (for now) required to do at least 1 hour homework except for one learner who was ahead, I decided to give her a target of 2-3 hours.

Despite all this effort I think the college itself needs to be tougher on entrenching rules on doing homework.

Homework

I have come to the conclusion that I need to get the students to do homework. Sadly, they never do homework and this is obvious from the fact that they have a tendency to hand in their assignments late. I was told that it is a requirement for learners to do a minimum of 5 hours homework and reading outside of college but this is not being emulated with the year 2 BTEC media class. 

I gave the learners feedback and told them to improve their worksheets, complete the extension tasks and work on documentary photography. I half heartedly asked them to do it over the weekend and give it to me on monday. To be honest I am expecting a disappointing result but I am going to prepare myself for this:

• Ask why it has not be done (Get their side of the story)
• Reward (hopefully) whoever has completed it through accommodation cards
• Highlight time management and responsibility 
• Make connections with university and deadlines 
• Make connections with the workplace and deadline 
• Highlight the fact that I am a trainee student teacher and I am juggling work, university and teaching and still manage to meet deadlines. 
• Keep them back to complete the work if I need to 

I need to try get leaners to do homework. This is where I will really test behaviourism and humanism. 

Using Schon

Now I am doing the photography unit, I decided to challenge the learners by teaching them semiotics.

Level
I found whilst teaching them 'signifier' and 'signified, I may have confused them. They seemed to grasp denotation and connotation better so I decided to stick to that when asking them to use semiotics as a method to look at images.

I think I should think about rehearsing. I know this is not something I will probably do in the future but hopefully that will be because I will have gained more experience.

Timing
I initially thought that my presentation and the work sheets would consume the lesson's time but I had 15 minutes remaining and so I thought on my feet (thank you Schon) and decided to give them an extension task to find either a photographic, advertising or magazine image and use semiotics to deconstruct it.

For future lessons, I will need to consider adding extension tasks for students who are ahead as I am trying to encourage learners to use their sketchbooks, I will use them to get learners to do extra research or develop their ideas in their books.

Marking 
At the end I got back all the worksheets and marked them. I sat there and thought about the way I marked:

• What colour pen shall I use?
• Shall I make a distinction when another student does better work e.g. "excellent work" or "very good work"?
• Should I give feedback on work that will eventually be stuck in their sketchbook?

I think I will ask my mentor for some advice and look at some previous marking they have done so I have a better way of approaching this.