In ESOL we often get our students to work on intonation, but I'm beginning to wonder whether mine needs some work as well.
Occasionally, when I am talking students through a particular activity, I ask them a question and they genuinely don't realise I'm asking, not telling, them something. Is it to do with tone of voice or is there another reason?

The peer observation I carried out yesterday was both inspiring and depressing. At the risk of a value judgement, which I of course will not use in the assignment write-up, I must say that the teacher I observed had much better classroom management than me. I suspect that if I tried right now to change the way I manage my classes I would have little success. However, I do have a golden opportunity presented by my leave of absence, which begins next week. My hope is that the students will, by the time I return in the new year, forget how I taught them completely, and so when I come back, I will have a clean slate- or a cleaner slate- to change the way I manage the classes and hopefully make some headway in the constant battle against shouting out.

I suspect that I will be pulled up in the feedback session from my college observation for using sarcasm. But I've been reading a book by a man called Frank Chalk, who says it is one of the "PGCE No-No's That Work". According to him, the secret is to "practice until you can sound absolutely sincere, as in "My word...that's a lovely tattoo you have on your neck. I might get one done myself."" (From 'It's Your Time You're Wasting' by Frank Chalk). Of course, he teaches at a rough, tough inner city school. My classes are somewhat different. That said, the shouting out and poor behaviour does occasionally present itself. Hopefully my time away will give me a chance to read more on classroom discipline, and to ruminate on the lessons I've learned from observing my peer.

My classroom management was all over the place, I wasn't teaching in the way I normally would, my mind went blank, I had a permanent sense of my own shortcomings, things went off topic and I panicked, I was convinced learning was not taking place...

Yep. It was my first observation. Of course, none of the 7407 observations are assessed. Except that this one was combined with the college observation, which IS graded. Knowing that you're being marked for something changes the way you do things. The first 7407 obs is meant to just find out what your teaching style is etc etc. Except it wasn't just doing that, which really didn't help.

Add to this that everyone wants a piece of me at the moment because I won't be here from next week, and the result is a stress, stress, stress. It's all the administration that Must Be Done before I go that's getting to me. And everyone who asks me to do something seems to think they are the only person who has asked me to do anything.

But to go back to the professional development- since knowing you are being assessed changes the way you work, I think I must make more of 'this is being marked' or 'there is a reward for the best one'.

I'll save further reflection on the lesson itself for the Reflective Practice form I have to fill out. Oh good. More admin.