Smoothing Out The Transition To Secondary

Y6 students who are starting at MHS next year had a transition day today - a little taster into what life will be like at a secondary school next year. As part of the day, the Y6 students had a double lesson of PE and my OUED class were asked to run this. This was a great opportunity for us to spend the last couple of weeks leading up to transition day linking back to our Group Dynamics unit and compare how my students were interacting with each other now to the beginning of the semester. We had some great discussion around Tuckman's stages of group development and where there had been shifts across the stages.

Unfortunately some of my students didn't show up for transition day, but we made the day work and the kids that were there did a great job. It was a great final lesson for the year. Running activities for a large group of students with a lot of energy is challenging for teachers let alone 13/14 year olds! They knew that this was a great opportunity for leadership experience though, which is a key skill to develop in OUED. A few of them really took the role seriously and I could see they were reflecting with their partners after each of their rotations to try and make their activity 'better'.

The structure of the day, the number of students and several teachers was an organisational experience for me too. I don't often plan events like this and in fact I don't know whether I had organised anything with this many moving parts on my own before! I certainly enjoyed planning and going on camps more, but it was still experience nevertheless. Although I was running around like a headless chicken for nearly two hours (great for my steps!) and there were some things that could have been changed, overall the session ran pretty smoothly. The Y6s had a taste into a variety of team building activities (such as obstacle courses, creating shelters and relays) as well as a mixture of invasion and target games including floor hockey, number games and beanbag throws - so I feel we met the brief!

I do enjoy organising things so event management could be something I dabble in more. In the future maybe I could keep an eye out for opportunities to develop these skills further. Next week is Activities Week so today was also my last teaching day at Marryatville! Here's to the next chapter, whatever that may bring...

9OUED Units: What Did The Kids Think?

I asked my 9OUED class for some feedback about each of the units in the form of ratings as well as general feedback. Initially they were hesitant to share their thoughts. I think this was because they didn't want to offend me or hurt my feelings if they didn't enjoy something. However, after some prompts and reminders that this is a genuine opportunity to adapt the course for future students and I would actually be disappointed if they didn't share how they were feeling, they opened up a bit! We actually had some great discussion. 

We went through each of the 4 units and discussed 3 areas for each; their overall enjoyment throughout, their experience and thoughts of the excursion/camp for that unit and the skills and knowledge that they learnt (how much and how interesting). Students were asked to rate from 1-4 between the 4 units (1 being the highest). For example, I could have said that I enjoyed the ecology unit the least and the rock-climbing unit the most. As a result, I would have given rock climbing a 1, bushwalking a 2 or 3, group dynamics 2 or 3 and ecology a 4.

I have created the alongside graphs as visuals to show what the students said (unfortunately some units have less feedback than others because we had students join us partway through the semester and/or they didn't come on the excursion(s)). Some of the clear pieces of feedback from the quantitative data (alongside the in-class discussion) include:

- Bushwalking in general was clearly the most enjoyed unit of the 4 but less than half of the students actually enjoyed the overnight bushwalking camp experience. Chatting with them though, it wasn't necessarily that specific camp, just that they realised they don't like bushwalking. 

- They clearly learnt the most skills and or knowledge throughout the ecology unit. This didn't surprise me but was great they were able to recognise this! Despite learning the most though, the excursion to the beach was their least favourite of the four throughout the semester. The general consensus was that there was a lot of talking from the people facilitating the microplastics experience and not enough hands-on. I agreed with this and as a result there will be some changes next year (such as borrowing the equipment and the teacher running the session). 

- Generally the rock climbing unit was enjoyed and the experience of actually rock climbing was positive for many of the students. I observed lots of positive involvement in the learning around the safety considerations and preventative measures in the outdoors (both at school and at the rock climbing wall). I started to include some more specific scenarios to break down/discuss after attending the fatality prevention PD and the students were really engaged in these conversations.

I have enjoyed creating this 9OUED course this year and felt so lucky to be able to teach the first groups of kids. Using the kids' feedback and my own reflections, I have created a semester unit plan with all resources and activities for the teacher who will be taking over next year. I'm proud of this and know it is a great place to start for anyone who may take over the course (and can't wait to see how it develops over the next few years). This brings me to the end of my time teaching OUED for this year. I have learnt lots and have really been pushed out of my comfort zone. Here's hoping in the future I have more opportunities to teach OUED! (Will certainly need a lot more development though!)