Hollie wrote this about the recent visit of Sue Phillips to Edge Hill, where she worked with Undergraduate and Postgraduate students:
My biggest fear in the classroom is having a class full of pupils and they do not listen to me. I fear they will not be engaged in the lesson I am teaching them, that it will not be interesting enough for them.
When I think back on my Religious Education lessons at school, my teacher made the lessons interesting- but it was only ever using videos or conversations in the classroom. Her personality was amazing and she was meant to be a teacher- she was my inspiration. However, from what I can remember about my lessons, we never did anything crazy, fun, whacky or out of the ordinary.
This year of University has taught me how to be a better teacher, using different ways of teaching the students to keep them engaged and interested in the lesson.
Sue Phillips came to University last week and told us ways on how to make an RE lesson more interactive, keeping the students involved in the lesson, making them feel apart of it.
Most of the things she taught was about using stories, keeping them involved. You make a story, tell it to the class, keeping them engaged and guessing as to what is going to happen next- and I have to say I love this idea! You can use it in so many different ways, and you adapt it to RE topics.
For example, you could a story about a young girl making decisions that people around do not necessarily agree with, linking to the idea of morals and morals in religion, with another connection to rules in religion and why religions have rules they follow. This links to their central beliefs in the religion.
Sue really helped me with ways to help the older students in the school by giving ideas on how to keep essay writing creative and fun too! It was more to do with the layout of the structure creating more discussion rather than a template on a piece of paper.
She not only gave me a lot of ideas that I can use for teaching when I start my placement in April, but I have recently created a Scheme of Work in a group for Judaism to teach a class of Year 8 pupils next week. With these different ways of teaching, making the classroom more interactive, I have incoroporated some of these ideas into one of the lessons to make it more fun and interesting for the students.
Every week, with books I read and visits to places or people to university, it makes me more confident about becoming a teacher. I cannot wait to start my placement next month!