Any KS2 teachers around? Help!

[PMTIsMe]

Posted this in Chat earlier but it has been lost amongst all the others. So will try here: I got a phone call at 5 last night inviting me to interview at 9.30am Monday! I haven't taught for 8 years, tho have been into my own children's school helping out a lot. The interview has a teaching task for year 4 - has to be literacy, has to be interactive, and since I know the school has a really mixed intake I know I need to be really on the ball with differentiation. But its only for 20 minutes! So, not only am I quaking since I feel so out of touch (new curriculum etc) but how to impress in 20 minutes?? Please, any tips, thoughts, ideas would be fab! Thanks in advance..off to twitch a bit more now!

I assume you actually applied for a job?! Otherwise an invite to interview seems very weird!

Assuming you don't have to fit with their current topic, you could do some persuasive writing, although you might not have time for them to actually write. You could tell them a local mp has decided xyz then ask them what they think. Pros and cons etc. Ask for good sentences to scribe, then get chn to up level them.

Or you could do some creative writing. Maybe use a story mountain but get chn to talk in partners about what could happen at the different stages. Take ideas and scribe on post-it notes so you've got a mixed up story (ie the introduction from one pair, the build up from another)

You're better off asking on the tes website, especially as you have such a short amount of time!

Good luck! (Not lunch )

Poetry can be good for such a short session. You can do a specific format like a cinqaine. Have some kind of stimulus, wintery pictures or similar perhaps. With the specific format you can have scaffolded writing frames to show differentiation. On your lesson plan you can include how you would have extended the task if it was a complete lesson. Don't forget AFL - could do some peer assessment at the end. Perhaps include a little tick sheet of success criteria.

On the poetry front, you could do the Magic Box by Kit Wright. You could get them to write poems about things that they'd like to keep in a memory box.

With the AFL thing, you could get them to create the success criteria at the beginning of the lesson, then review their learning at the end, using the criteria. If you do peer assessment, push the fact that handwriting and spellings weren't on the success criteria (assuming they're not!) and so we aren't commenting on those aspects, yet using adverbial phrases was on the checklist so we're looking for those.

I did quite a nice year 4 interview lesson a few years ago on spelling rules/patterns. I'd need to dig the plan out to find out what I did (I know it involved post it notes!) but it was easy to differentiate and went very well and was very different from what the other interview candidates were doing (I think they'd gone for verb/noun/adjective/adverb type stuff with ppts from tes or primary resources - I recognised several of them...)

Otherwise, for a 20 minute lesson I'd go for poetry as well. Or something with generation of descriptive phrases/similes/metaphors based on a picture.

How to impress in 20 minutes? I reckon it's all about your relationship with the children.

Not a teacher.

My y4 child has had fun doing stuff on similies recently.

She then had to write a rhyming poem,

eg as black as a cat, as flat a mat, as pink as a pig, as brave as The Stig

no idea whether that's any help. good luck.

I teach yr3/4 and would go for something with a visual stimulus so they can all access it eg a photograph of a setting or character. I'd go for a writing task if you can and if you have an idea of ability groups a word bank for the lower ability children so they immediately have something to work with if a range of vocabulary is lacking. Try and include self/peer assessment so they can demonstrate evaluation and improvement but overall I'd say the observers will be looking for how you interact with the children in the class. Be really clear with the learning objective (make sure it's on display all the time) and let the children know what you are looking for in their task. I'm not sure you'll have time for them to suggest success criteria with only twenty mins.
Good luck and let us know how you get on.

I went on a poetry course led by Michael Rosen last year and one of the things I have used most as a result is the idea of writing a response to a poem. It doesn't have to rhyme, might be the thoughts or musings of another character within the stimulus poem and usually results in the children producing a fantastic range of work. It doesn't need to take long either.

The poems my Y4 class particularly got their teeth into last year included 'Colin' by Allan Ahlberg and 'Feeling ill' by Rosen himself. My favourite response to 'Colin' was the response written from the perspective of Colin's best friend - it was all about how the friend felt sorry for Colin being picked on by the teacher, hated the fact he had no-one to play with because Colin was in detention so often etc. etc. One child wrote a response to 'Feeling Ill' which was from the point of view of the rug on the bedroom floor of where the ill person was in bed!

I usually start by reading the poem (displayed on IWB and each child has a copy), letting children chat about what they think is going on/questions they'd like to know the answer to (they might underline phrases/words or perhaps jot things down on the poem itself) and then get straight onto thinking about what sort of a response they might write - a what happened next/before? What might other characters have to say about the situation? Does it make the children think of something they know about? Every time I do it I have to remind the children that poems don't have to rhyme...on occasions I've temporarily banned the use of rhyme for specific children who are addicted to it.

Good luck!

How did it go PMTIsMe?

Didn't get it I was so nervous I think I rather gabbled. Oh well. It was my first interview for 12 years, and you have to start somewhere. Thanks for asking!