TS 4: Plan and teach well structured lessons
– Contribute to the design and provision of an engaging curriculum within the relevant subject area(s).

As part of my TS 4 and also the RE department, my mentor advised me to plan a scheme of work, which would greatly help my subject knowledge and also my understanding of long term planning. At first, I was a little overwhelmed, as the idea of planning one lesson still leaves me wondering what I could have done better. However, as I started to brainstorm ideas, I realised that, without deliberate implementation, I was planning according to the backwards model of planning. I was thinking about where I would like students to be, what I would like them to have achieved by the end of the term, and how this new knowledge acquisition will be visible in their end of topic test.

She gave me some options and I decided to go with Eastern Religions, as I have covered both Sikhism and Hinduism so am familiar with elements that are similar across these religions and also, challenges students might face in terms of their learning. Before I had planned the lessons, I did a huge amount of brainstorming, trying to link ideas together, as well as building on students skills through the term. This required the use of Blooms taxonomy and examples of previous schemes of work using the template given to me by my school mentor.

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I created folders on the shared area with examples of other lessons, resources, worksheets and differentiated activities. Planning a scheme of work is time consuming, and it needs to be taken into consideration that it is usually and often the Head of Departments role to organise schemes of work. However through this process I was able to see how lessons add layers of knowledge to students understanding while developing the higher order thinking skills (Blooms).