Who am I? My name is Katie Austin and I am currently completing my NQT year at Bitterne Park School. Previously I studied at Exeter University to gain my PGCE in History and Citizenship and prior to that had worked at Sherborne school as a 'graduate assistant' where I taught sport and looked after a house fifty female boarders originating from many different countries. I had graduated and achieved a 2.1 BA Honours degree in European Studies. I have decided to undergo a masters in education to keep my focus and interest in furthering, improving and developing my skills as a teacher and researcher. I felt that once I had completed the NQT year I would need to set myself realistic and interesting goals in order to develop my career in teaching. I wanted to teach as every day is different from the first and I believe it is extremely rewarding and challenging profession. A profession that can leave you flat on your face or flying above the tree tops!

The focus of my investigation The focus is based on the improvement of challenge through different media for a year 7 history class I teach. The aim is that I will instill and encourage the pupils, girls in particular, to partake more in the lessons, respond to questioning and share work and ideas with the whole class. I chose this focus because challenge is part of the history department development plan for this year. As a department we have been looking at individual lesson plans and asking ourselves what can we do to improve challenge? I personally want to 'raise the bar' in my lessons and, "good history teaching should make history challenging for all pupils at appropriate levels." (Ofsted, 2003-4) I will be introducing new resources and lesson plans and will video the classes 'progress' with the help of my Head of Department, Andy Foster. Introducing new behaviour strategies will occur as the pupils will be participating in different actrivities. The use of drama, role-play, video and art will require me to explain what is expected of the pupils. For example, when using drama I will need to lay down the boundaries and rules in order for puipls to feel safe and confident in knowing what expectations they must meet. I have no classroom assistants so I will not have to plan for this. Spidergram - My Focus

What was your approach and/or what evidence have you gathered? Having discussed and deliberated, and finally narrowed my focus, with my research mentor I set about making a time line for research and collating evidence. It was a good idea to help me with me focus to complete a spider-gram. With me research mentor we ran through all the different aspects and how to meet them. This was then added to my evidence and can be found on the Bitterne Park School snapshot. Once this was completed I set about writing a questionnaire for the year 7 class for whom I focused my research on (a copy of which can be found from the link below). The aim of this was to ask pupils to share their ideas on what it means to be challenged. From the questionnaires I hoped to deduce what, girls in particular, thought could be included in a challenging lesson and how this could be delivered by the teacher. The questionnaires were handed out and pupils had eight minutes of the lesson to complete it. I also had put a copy onto OHT to model how to fill in the questionnaire. This worked well as the class is mixed ability and some did need more assistance in completing it. I was then able to devise four lesson plans with resources, which encompassed challenge through several different types of media, baring in mind the conclusions from the questionnaires. I then taught all four and evaluated the impact of these compared to previous lessons. Parent evening: I have had the opportunity to ask parents and pupils about the recent lessons in history. They were positive and encouraged about their own progress and the increase in confidence. I have attached a conversation with parents of one of the pupils i teach, bearing in-mind i had several parents to see that night and not only for history. I hope to observe my mentor teach in order to offer feedback and support and he will also observe me. Questionnaire Parents Evening Conversation

Diving deeper

What results have emerged? Questionnaire: 1) Summarising the evidence gained form the first question - challenge is seen as something that is hard and testing but can be tried and succeeded at. It uses words and evidence to test your skills. 2) Pupils mostly associated the words - test, dare, try, question, contest investigate and analysis - with the word challenge. 3) Pupils found the following (in order of most difficult) most challenging in history lessons: a. Evaluating evidence. b. Reflecting on your own work c. Performing a drama sketch from written work d. Presenting findings, questioning and hot seating (all came next) 4) Pupils were then asked to think of their own challenging task and the results are as follows: Produce a play/ Mark an assessment/ Independent research/ Create puzzles/ Reflecting on own work 5) Pupils thought they were most challenged when we used hot seating, drama and producing an assessment on Hannibal. Lesson Evaluation: From the evidence above I reread Blooms Taxonomy and wrote several lesson plans and made resources. I then evaluated these lessons. An example of which can be found in the link section below. Conclusions: I feel the pupils have been engaged and participated in class discussions more as well as working well in groups to accomplish the tasks and activities that have been set. The pupils previously found working in groups a challenege as this year 7 class have issues with working with different members of the oppsite sex. The pupils used drama to produce and present their news reports. These were filmed and then evaluated the next lesson. Pupils were expected to build upon the skills they had learnt of organisation, communication and analysis of information to produce a second news report based on a different topic. Pupils were engaged and found that watching and evaluating their own performances really enabled them to apply themselves and put hundred percent effort into their new presentations. Watching the new presentations will enable them to see how far they ave improved and also challenge them to crtitically anayses their own and other performances. I have been happy with the process I went through to gather evidence and the creation of lesson plans taylored to my focus. However, there are several things that I would change. I would have like to have interviewed the pupils individually and repeated the process after the lesson plans were implememnted. It would also have been beneficial to ask another member of histroy staff to use the lesson plans and see what if any changes they noted in their classes. Time is a factor and bearing this in mind I wil allow planning for this in my next action research project. A notable change is that a majority of the girls were able to voice their opinions and really benefited from the experience. It has given them the confidence to contribute more in lessons and partake in different activities without worrying what others may think of them. I still have two female pupils who are very shy and I hope to continue to boost their confidence as they are beginning to rise to the challenge. Evaluation of lesson

Examples of student work I hope to edit some video photage and put a link in here.

TT500MAR Work-based Mentoring Award Professional Master's Programme Bath Spa University College. This programme will enable me to work towards achieving a professional development Master's degree. We are using an action research approach to advance our professional skills and understand, reflect and analyse our role as mentors. I want to be a research mentor as it will provide me with essential skills to reflect and evaluate my own practise and more importantly learn from and help progress other peoples professional development. It is a rare opportunity to be able to be part of this team of researchers and hence the support and determination of us all will make this project not only rewarding but potentially influential on the learning of other teachers. Please see the spidergram link below to find out what I think it means to be a research mentor. In my reflective diary I have written in more detail about my own and my mentors thoughts on being a research mentor (please see the link in the section below for this). I have also linked my mentors snapshot in which he has included links to our mentor meetings which work towards completing task 3. Spidergram - Research Mentoring Link to Mentor's Snapshot

Portfolio Evidence and Professional Learning Task Account Please follow the links below to see the main account of my mentoring award activities and tasks. Professional learning Task Account Reflective Diary Self-Assessment

Other Perspectives Pupil responses Pupils have responded positively and have really enjoyed taking part in the different activities. The pupils have been using different media to access challenging tasks. They found the drama most challenging and have really applied themselves to achieve their objectives. Pupils found that once they had evaluated their previous performances they could adapt their techniques to their new television report and improve upon specific aspects of their organisation, communication, research and eventual presentations. Mentor responses Meeting with Angus Lafferty - please see my reflective diary.

What resources / references have you found helpful? Brookes, V and Sikes, P. (1997) The Good Mentor Guide. Milton Keynes, Open University Press, Chapter 3. Fletcher, S. (2000) Mentoring in Schools: A Handbook of Good Practice. London, Korgan page, Part 1, 2 and 5. Parsloe, E and Wray, M. (2000) Coaching and Mentoring. London, Kogan Page, Chapter 6. Shea, G. (1992) Mentoring: A Guide to the Basics. London, Korgan Page, Chapter 1. Tomlinson, P. (1995) Understanding Mentoring. Milton Keynes, OUP, Chapter 3. www.teacherresearcher.net