Mixed Ability

The last five weeks went well I felt, my first-year wood Technology group are starting to really show improvement and the basic skills seem to be becoming more natural to them, some students have really progressed well and have went two drawings ahead of others. The main challenge for me after the Christmas break will be to keep the top 10% constantly challenged while also continuing to work on bringing the bottom 10%s skillset up. I plan to give them an in class graded test in a couple of week’s time.

Within the last two classes with my second-year metalwork class I have really seen the benefit of having a peer teach another student. As the project has continued students have progressed at different speeds and with absences due to sicknesses and matches etc students have gotten onto different parts at different times, this is natural within a practical class. It has allowed me to get stronger students such as Mark in my first-year wood technology class to peer teach certain skills under my supervision to Sean who missed some classes. I have also been able to apply this in bigger clusters of students where a jigsaw method of peer teaching takes place. ”Collaborative instructional methods call for two or more students to learn, teach, or express something relevant to the understanding and skills relevant to integrating work. In this family of instructional methods, groups of learner’s encounters, produce, or present content themselves. In these approaches, the learning takes place through some form of peer interaction with each other and with the subject matter. This family of instructional methods—featuring techniques like panels, role plays, round table discussion, jigsaw teaching, reciprocal peer instruction, and problem-solving groups—works particularly well in promoting integrating work” (Cahalan, 2017, p. 79). The benefits of these methods are that the information and skills are shown by the peer in a language and manner directly relatable to the learner and allows students to work interactively together in a constructivist manner of learning. “Constructivism has been a very powerful model for explaining how knowledge is produced in the world as well as how students learn. Moreover, constructivist teaching practices are becoming more prevalent in teacher education programs, while demonstrating significant success in promoting student learning” (Shah, 2019, p. 1). Another benefit is the clarity of the explanation by the peer is another assessment method for me to use to gauge his understanding of the concept and skills needed.

The first-year wood technology group were shown a good few demos on removing the slot and the other areas of waste material within the race car project. They responded really well to the new information and began to apply it correctly when they began to cut out the front spoiler, they will continue these processes within the next practical class.

My fifth-year construction class are making progress but are constantly getting through less material than I anticipate within my lesson plans, this I’m putting down to unfamiliarity with the processes which is ok. I’m happy that the students are picking up the basic skills and they are behaving really well and adhering to all safety precautions which is good. I find that peer teaching and differentiated teaching practices do not apply to these students as much as other groups as they are all at a fairly even base level and needed to be slowly guided through every step, from chatting to my cooperating teachers they say this is the way with all construction groups as students have as students that take construction usually take it because of their success with technical subjects at junior cert level.

Bibliography

Cahalan, K. A. F. E. &. M. G. S., 2017. Integrating Work in Theological Education. 1 ed. Oregon: Pickwick Publications.

Shah, R. K., 2019. Effective Constructivist Teaching Learning in the Classroom. Shanlax International Journal of Education, 7(4), pp. 1-13.