Outside Schools Year 7 & 8

Outside School’s come to TAI us on a Thursday. We’ve slightly changed the timetable this year to ensure the students are successful in each Tech subject and complete one subject at a time. Last year they would spend time in two subjects - one each block. The one downside, is that student who miss a day miss two lessons each time. 

So far I've had two groups of year 7's and I'm currently with a group of Year 8's, making Hoodies. I feel like the double block ensures more work is completed and their memory retention is much better - rather than going to two subjects and having to remember the skills and knowledge they are taught each week. This also makes it easier to build relationships with these students because we spend a longer period of time with them uninterrupted.

The first two groups of Year 7's were almost test subjects! Trying the current programme I teach and seeing what they could achieve in the time given. The first group made felt monsters and a pencil case - only just finishing the pencil cases in the final lesson.

I had two boys that didn't quite complete their monsters. One who mucked around for the whole of the second lesson and then hid his monster in the scrap material container. I let our DP know that the monster and features he had cut out had disappeared as soon as I checked books in order to notify his school - I wanted to know asap where these had gone. In the following lesson, he admitted to getting rid of these, as well as cutting the monster into a strange circle shape. He found the bigger pieces in the scrap bin but couldn't locate the features as they were quite small. He was given one and half lessons - nearly 2 hours - to hand stitch basic features on. The second boy had missed the first two lessons and did his utmost to complete a very simple monster - the large pieces were cut out for him. He was doing absolutely fine, until the end when he randomly jumped from where he was stitching nicely, to the opposite side and ended up tangling the thread and making a real mess.

I spent at least half an hour fixing both of their monsters and tidying them up, stuffing them, and stitching them closed so they had something to take home.

The second group of year 7's did so much better. I cut out a couple of tasks that I thought they could do without - identifying equipment ( a cut and paste, fill in the blanks task) and didn't set any goals. They got straight into designing their monsters, learning how to cut out correctly, and how to thread a needle and tie a specific knot.

This group overall, just seemed more on to it and picked up the techniques I teach a lot quicker and retained that information/the techniques in the subsequent lessons. They made pencil cases and then with a 7th lesson (rather than 8 because our school was closed for four days due to teacher's having to isolate), they made a drawstring bag. Each student was so close to finishing these, with only the top to top stitch and insert ribbons for the drawstrings. I ended up top stitching each of their bags - I believe their were 10-12 - as they packed up their machines and popped chairs away etc. Overall they were a much happier group to teach and I was a happier, less stressed teacher! Here are a few of their felt monsters.