Discussion with Natalie.

Natalie Kirk wrote on the BAPP SIG that she thought it would be useful to have a Skype/phone session with anyone else on the course who would be interested to discuss their inquiries and to give each other advice. 

I thought this would be very beneficial, so on Wednesday we had a phone chat, initially planned for just 45 minutes which actually extended to an hour and a half of extremely useful conversation.

• We shared our interview questions and gave each other advice as to how we would revise them or could improve them.

My advice to Natalie was that her question could be a bit more specific and direct so whoever she interviewed would hopefully provide her with a much more thorough and detailed answer.

In regards to my question, Natalie put forward the idea of asking teachers if they take into account teenage student’s physical changes such as growing bones and also hormonal changes. 

In module 2, during my literature research, I found several articles that were particularly interesting to me which were on the emotional and behavioral changes of teenagers and also the physical changes that can affect the way they act and perform in class. I blogged about these articles as it was something that I realised was extremely important to take into account when doing my inquiry but I must admit I never thought to include this topic in my interview. After Natalie’s advice and further thought I decided to add a question that refers to these changes before my first observation which was on Thursday. Below is the question I added for my interview.

When planning a lesson for teenage students, do you take into account the changes their bodies will be going through, such as growing bones along with hormonal changes?

• We also discussed Natalie’s title and its appropriateness to her topic of inquiry.

• On the day of this session I was writing out the information slips that I plan to hand out to all the students before my observations to obtain consent. Natalie read through this and pointed out sections that I could change and points that I could add.

As I said before, this was an extremely useful discussion and we plan to have another phone chat in a couple of weeks’ time to see how we have progressed.

I encourage others to get involved with Skype/phone sessions as I think it really does help to give advice but to also motivate each other.