Monday, January 14, 2008

Full of energy ...

That's the pupils, not me!! Pretty tired after another full day. However, at least I managed to get most of my Learning Objectives met by a number of pupils in each class. I had Year 9s before lunch - I told them to stay behind and complete some more work before they went for lunch so that they had produced what they thought was a reasonable amount of work for a 45 minute lesson. A number of pupils pushed their way past me - I decided to let them go, since I was not in the mood to be battered about - so it was interesting to see which students stayed. The good ones, obviously, who had not completed enough work, but are conscientious enough to realise that, and perhaps felt a little bit shamed into doing the work themselves. Whereas those that don't really care left, having hardly done anything. I know which ones will be at the top of my list for any special trips.

The Year 10s did frustrate me. I'd planned a nice lesson on Sacraments, but the same group as always were talking loudly and disruptively. Again, I was going to keep them back to complete the work, but a fight broke out in the corridor and a couple of my pupils again tried to get out, and since I had to open the door to try and sort out the fight, the class left.

Some of my Year 7s did a fair amount of work. They are learning the Lord's Prayer tomorrow - I hope they concentrate!

Had a whole staff meeting. Some controversial stuff there - it was feedback about our A*-Cs and our CVA - but I have to admit to being impressed with our CVA (Contextual Value Added). If your students leave school with the grades that they were expected to achieve, bearing in mind other issues such as ethnicity, poverty, attendance levels, crime levels, free school meals etc, then the CVA is 1000 (the standard, average figure). Ours was almost 1030, which is pretty good, even better when we realised we were only a few points behind some top London schools! So we must be doing something right. Feel more positive at the moment.

H is cooking one of our favourites - beef and kidney stew with rice. Delicious! Smells great!

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