d. Developing Your Own Knowledge of the Resources

Having made decisions about using some of the resources and opportunities in tandem, it is important for the teacher in the case study to get to know the resources well enough to feel confident about using them in the classroom. It is also important that the pupils will feel comfortable about using resources.

We can focus on this with an exercise that requires that you get to know the bistesize site with the writing material on it. You will see that it contains a whole range of material beyond the writing - material on reading at higher and foundation level and revision. We shall come back to this.

Now answer the following questions - just to give you some focus to begin with:

  1. Go through the whole package for this writing skills area quickly, and note how many, and what kind of pieces of writing, students will develop when they work through it.
  2. Are you satisfied that the range of products above will meet the demands of the writing paper for your school or board? If not, feel free to add some further work of your own.
  3. Look now in a little more detail at the grammatical advice. Are you confident the pupils will understand them or do you need to provide extra help on say, tenses, or how to construct longer sentences?

When you have looked at the site in the light of these questions, and perhaps written some worksheets of your own to go with the website, you should discuss with your mentor what you want to do with the resource in the classroom. This can be done in a mentor visit, over the telephone or by e-mail, and should serve merely to satisfy you that you are on the right track with your use of the materials.

e. Planning the Work of Learners