A Day at the Academy...How to Make a "Dalek" Cake?

I am a bit behind in the blogging...but here goes a catch up day! Last Thursday I spent the day at Hereford Academy. Hereford is a much larger school than Fairfield, bragging a student population of over 800; so on that account it reminded me more of NHS than Fairfield does. Set in the middle of the city of Hereford, and smack in the middle of a Council Housing Estate, it also has a much different socio-economic demographic than Fairfield High School.

With a proper lobby and reception area, requiring buzzing for all visitors to the campus, the school reminded me more of what I have come to know as an American high school than Fairfield - although it still lacks lockers in the hallways. (The concept of an American high school is quite stereotyped here with movies such as High School Musical and Grease, which depict all American schools with lockers - I guess, though, technically, that's not really a stereotype, as it is a reality for all American schools.) It is a cultural difference that our students do not carry their backpacks during the day, emphasizing school safety, and instead store all their items in a locker and then returning to it throughout the day prior to each class. The English department at Hereford consists of ten teachers, and they use the Welsh Examining Board curriculum; as they have found that this particular curriculum works best for the needs of their students.

I was invited to observe at Hereford Academy by Abby Hughes, the Head of English. I observed a variety of classes throughout the day, including two classes related to the new Heroes curriculum for Year 7 - which actually involved observing a physical education class and a related period of instruction in a classroom where students were learning about leadership skills, as they examined various sports and coaching figures. It was quite interesting. This new curriculum at Hereford focuses on improving student skills in the five "R's": Relationships, Readiness, Resilience, Reflectiveness and Resourcefulness. This program has been in effect for a couple of years, I believe, and the teachers involved do say they have seen an improvement in student preparedness, motivation and success since its implementation.

The first class I observed was a Year 7 mixed ability lesson where the teacher was instructing her students on a Fairy Tale Poem lesson. Students had spent four lessons learning and researching the structures and backgrounds of fairy tales. They had researched and chosen a fairy tale of interest and their task was to write a poem based on that fairy tale using elements of a fairy tale in their poem, such as the phrases, "Once Upon a Time" and "Happily Ever After." While there was a lot of chatting, something I too have experienced with my teaching groups at Fairfield, the students were generally focused. Every classroom at the Academy is equipped with Activeboards, equivalents to our Smartboard technology in the US, and the teacher made excellent use of the timer feature, as she provided certain amounts of time for student work, followed by teacher directed sharing as a whole class, and teacher directed peer evaluation and sharing. I found the church bell chimes quite engaging, and it was apparent that this class had been trained well, and knew the teacher expectations when the bells would ring, as they all redirected their focus to her within seconds. The teacher will be using this assignment for a variety of assessments including a writing focuses and speaking and listening components, as the students are to present their poems. I liked this lesson and idea, because it reminded me a bit of my gothic fairy tale project I use at home when I am instructing Frankenstein and studying elements of gothic fiction. The children were very interested in asking me lots of questions about America and I enjoyed assisting some of them with their task.

One element of classroom management / school discipline that I discovered being used consistently throughout the school was a process I had learned about when visiting the British Council in September. The C4 system. This basically entails setting a school wide set of expectations for behavior and all staff use it. A student is progressively assigned warnings, until they have exhausted their chances to correct their behavior and may end up at a C4 stage where they will be excluded from classes, or perhaps even from school. This system encourages discipline with dignity, as not one teacher raised their voice while I was in the room, and also puts the ultimate responsibility of changing behavior upon the student and applies a consistent procedure of discipline to every child in the school for the same offense. Some would say that Hereford is a "rough" school, but I did not see one child reach any higher than a C2 while I was in the room; and every teacher consistently used the process.

I also observed a Speaking and Listening lesson taught by Abby to her Year 10 top set students. This was quite entertaining, as I was exposed to a cultural phenomenon called "Blue Peter", which is a television program where guests appear and "prepare" something while explaining it. (See the posted YouTube link for this episode.) The demo version that we watched involved the guest baking a "dalek" cake, and basically she had prepared a "cooking" show, where each step was explained, and stages of the cake had been prepared in advance. The students were then asked to select their groups of no more than three and begin planning to demonstrate, in this style of "Blue Peter", how to make some object of their choice: such as a paper airplane, a christmas card, or some other item of their choice. They were instructed on taking into account the importance of their audience, the use of command verbs, present tense, pronouns to involve the audience, connectives (transitions) from one step to the next, etc. Students were instructed to think about props they would need and stages of the finished product they may have to complete. Students were told this was a coursework presentation that would be due for completion the last week of term; I do wish I could return to see their finished presentations.

I also observed a bottom set (bar one) of Year 8 students and a bottom set of Year 9 students at the Academy. The Year 9 students were engaged in a library lesson, so there wasn't much to interact with or observe in that class, but the Year 8 students were in the middle of filming an animated version of The Hound of the Baskervilles as part of a unit on Myths and Legends. The project had been student driven, as, according to the teacher, the students had shouted one day - "Hey, we should make a film!" -and so the idea was born. The students built "sets" out of legos, and were using animation technology with a series of still photographs to illustrate the various events of the story line. I was seated with a group of students who were "rehearsing" the positions of their figurines for each still photograph. The hardest task was determining how to make it look like the characters were running. The Hound? A large dinosaur...! Hilarious and creative with a low ability group. I was impressed with their creativity.

Overall, it was a really valuable experience to observe at a school with a much different demographic and style than Fairfield. The students were well behaved, inquisitive and fun to watch. The faculty that I ate lunch with were also very kind and informative, and inquisitive about the Fulbright program and the details of the exchange process. It was fun to share and be an ambassador for the program, as it definitely is a life altering experience on a myriad of levels.

Thank you to the Hereford Academy staff for allowing the opportunity to visit and learn even more about the English educational system. Good luck with your new multimillion pound school building- which also promises to be a state of the art and modern facility, set for completion in 2011.