Emily's PPA Cover sessions (Music and iMedia)

This week I’ve been out of the office covering a staff illness. While I enjoy being in the office creating lessons plans for our PPA Cover and recruiting our new staff, I have really loved being back in a classroom.

I taught at two schools over the two days of PPA Cover; Lydgate Primary school in Dewsbury covering singing, and Beacon Street Primary school in Bolton covering iMedia.

Lydgate Primary school on Thursday was an absolute joy. I have taught at this school many times over the past 5 years of being with Junior Jam and it’s such a wonderful feeling returning to a school and seeing how the children have matured and progressed. Of course, being remembered and greeted with smiles is always a bonus of the job. This school runs a ‘Smart Carousel’ for their PPA Cover - this involves 3 subject teachers rotating across 6 classes per day. I personally covered the music portion of the carousel.

 For the schools last half term, singing was the main focus of the lesson plans. During singing lessons, as well as focusing on keywords to help them improve their singing technique, I like to have the class as physically active as possible. The classes responded to the lesson I taught particularly well, with two teachers asking for the tracks we were singing to be sent to them directly so they could carry on the work away from their Junior Jam lessons. This was a really proud moment for me, knowing the regular teachers would be adding to my lessons and implementing my methods into their teaching in future.

My second day out of the office was at Beacon street primary in Bolton. This school also has a ‘Smart Carousel’, they choose to cover their PPA with French, P.E and iMedia. A switch of subjects saw me teach iMedia for 6 lessons throughout the day. As this was their final junior Jam session of the academic year, we started the lesson with a recap of the 6 subjects they have covered over the past year.

It was clear how much they had learnt with their regular Workshop leader Luke (He can be seen in the photo for this post) and how engaged they had been in their topics.

All six classes from Y1-Y6 had lots to tell me about what they had covered over the academic year.

After the recap we did an amalgamation of their previous topics, firstly by talking about branding and its importance. From there the class were given the task to create their own logo for a new game using all the elements that had been discussed in the introduction. They then were able to create their own game, using the coding and design skills they had learnt in half terms 2+3, as well as compose a short 3 bar jingle in Garage band using their knowledge from half term 1. It was a jam-packed lesson full of engagement, learning and excitement as they were able to play their game at the end of the lesson and share it with their classmates.

After two days out I’m back in the office on Monday morning writing about my amazing fun filled time I had in these two schools. I hope you enjoyed reading about my time as much as I enjoyed providing these lessons.