Well, yesterday was my final day for this 'block' of work experience. We did the usual sort of lessons but the main changes I felt were my increasing confidence with the kids, my ability to actually properly explain something and see the little girl (terrible at maths!) understand and be able to move on without my help, and my comfort levels in the staff room.
I was left on charge of helping kids finish decorating and glueing their easter boxes. It all went well, the kids listened and did as they were told. There was glue everywhere but we got the boxes done! (note to self - make sure boxes are cut out so they'll actually stick together in a box shape if I ever do this myself. Oh, and they take longer than you'd think!)
Okay, a couple of girls messed about a bit and I still felt a little like I wasn't sure what the best way of dealing with it was. I think that because I'm not there all the time, or know the school policies, and because they are not 'my' class it's harder. I'm always aware of treading on the teachers toes (although they are all lovely and incredibly supportive) and trying to act like a real teacher (rather than taking them to the teacher to sort out). Still, I managed it and that's the sort of thing that will only come with experience.
The other big thing that I'm noticed over these few weeks is the way the staff room has changed. There's certainly never been any feeling that I'm unwelcome, just that I was being ignored, or that we all felt uncomfortable with me about. Some of the teachers had taught my eldest son (and most knew about him) and my youngest is at school there, so that was odd, and although all the teachers were friendly when we got talking I generally wasn't included in conversations. But then they were talking about school matters, or family stuff which were running conversations. I never let it get to me, I was more than happy to accept that I was the new girl, and began popping home at lunchtimes to get out of their way. Two weeks ago, though, my car needed a new clutch and I was stuck there so I just packed some sandwiches, checked it would be okay to stay with my son's teacher during parent's evening the night before and just stuck my neck out.
It was a bit strange, but no-one minded and I chatted to various members of staff, and commented during group chats when appropriate. A few times during the last few weeks the teachers have told me that I really must just ring or pop in if I need any help or advice or anything during my training. I believe that you have to accept that you're the newbie and a trainee to boot, and accept that you're not going to be welcomed with open arms, necessarily, when you begin your training.
On the last day of term (easter, summer and christmas) they apparently have a meal together - we had lasagne and salad and cake (and orange juice or wine!). It was really nice, and I soooooo hope that one day I can work there!!
The teacher I was working with was really grateul for my help over the last few weeks and it was really great to feel useful. I certainly felt like a 'teacher' at times during the work experience, and I'm really glad the DRB made me do it because i think my confidence will be so much higher when I begin GTP.
My biggest problem so far? Remembering names. It doesn't help that I'm only going in once a week, but girls inparticular I just cannot remember!! There was one girl who I was convinced was a Bethany when she was actually a Megan! She just looked like a Bethany to me! Arghh. I have 2 sons so I guess I'm more used to boys names! I'm going to practice linking names to people. I managed it with a few kids - a boy with curly hair framing his face was called Rory - I thought his hair looked a bit like a lion's mane (Roary - Rory. Get it?)
Anyway, I've started reading 'Children's Errors in Maths: Understanding Common Misconceptions' and it seems really useful. Some of the things I've read about I have seen n class and it's given me some ideas already for things I need to remember when planning lessons, so that's good.
Also just read 'Will Storr Vs the Supernatural' - a nonfiction book about a cynical journalist's investigation into the paranormal. It was a really interesting read - probably the most fascinating I have read in a while - and I'd recommend it to anyone with an open mind!
Now I'm attempting to read 'Lord of the Rings' again since I'm beginning to participate in a LOTR roleplaying game soon, and I'm the only one who never managed to finish the book!
More when I have some news!
Saturday, 31 March 2007
Thursday, 22 March 2007
At last some news!!
Having been in touch with some people also on my course via the VLE, I found out that some people already know which school they'll be in. So, since I felt I probably should tell them that my nephew was going to school in one of their placement schools, I decided to email them and see if there was any news.
And....I shall find out my placement school after 17th April when they're confirmed (which sounds as if I won't have to do a second interview for the school - phew!) and I will be in KS1 for my base school (a lower school, yrs 1-4) and KS2 for my second placement (lasting a term, I believe) which may be a middle school (yrs 5&6).
So, now I know what's going on a bit more, and I'm very happy! Just can't wait to find out the actual school so I can arrange a visit!
And....I shall find out my placement school after 17th April when they're confirmed (which sounds as if I won't have to do a second interview for the school - phew!) and I will be in KS1 for my base school (a lower school, yrs 1-4) and KS2 for my second placement (lasting a term, I believe) which may be a middle school (yrs 5&6).
So, now I know what's going on a bit more, and I'm very happy! Just can't wait to find out the actual school so I can arrange a visit!
Saturday, 17 March 2007
More work experience
Okay, I'm finally beginning to learn some of the kids names. This was challenge a bit during my last work experience yesterday as it was Red Nose Day and the kids were all dressed up as rockers and rappers, with spiky hair and sunglasses - out of uniform they all look very different!
It was good to be there - the morning started up with the kids counting out with the teacher how much sponsor money had been handed in. They did this once before when I was there before christmas and they were much better at it now. They then did subtraction, using borrowing. Most of the kids could do it okay but they would often do one sum and then stop at the next and say 'I'm stuck' even though the sum was exactly the same sort as the last.
Assembly involved various groups of kids going on stage and doing a performance for RND, which was fun. I took some group reading and some individual readers and we played hockey on the freezing field. The girls just wanted to gossip again! Grrr. Some of the kids enjoyed it, but many were bored. Perhaps a more modern game, or spending less time practising in pairs and more time playing together. Also, thye had an hour at the end of the day, by the time they'd tidied up from the last lesson and got changed they probably had half an hour left!
It was good to be there - the morning started up with the kids counting out with the teacher how much sponsor money had been handed in. They did this once before when I was there before christmas and they were much better at it now. They then did subtraction, using borrowing. Most of the kids could do it okay but they would often do one sum and then stop at the next and say 'I'm stuck' even though the sum was exactly the same sort as the last.
Assembly involved various groups of kids going on stage and doing a performance for RND, which was fun. I took some group reading and some individual readers and we played hockey on the freezing field. The girls just wanted to gossip again! Grrr. Some of the kids enjoyed it, but many were bored. Perhaps a more modern game, or spending less time practising in pairs and more time playing together. Also, thye had an hour at the end of the day, by the time they'd tidied up from the last lesson and got changed they probably had half an hour left!
Tuesday, 13 March 2007
At last....
...some movement from my GTP!!
Okay, it's not much but I now have access to the Virtual Learning Environment for the GTP. A few of us on the course have replied to the 'Welcome!' post so it's beginning to feel a bit more real.
We also have access to Sam Learning so we can practice our subject knowledge, and on the website we can see some of the online lessons and information that this year's cohort have been using. It all looks quite exciting and I'm soooo looking forward to it now!!
Okay, it's not much but I now have access to the Virtual Learning Environment for the GTP. A few of us on the course have replied to the 'Welcome!' post so it's beginning to feel a bit more real.
We also have access to Sam Learning so we can practice our subject knowledge, and on the website we can see some of the online lessons and information that this year's cohort have been using. It all looks quite exciting and I'm soooo looking forward to it now!!
Saturday, 10 March 2007
Work Experience so far...
Right, well I've done two days work experience now. Both fridays, both in the same class. It's a mixed yr3/4 class and we work with the lowest set maths and the highest set english.
Some of the kids doing maths still have to check the number square to work out what 6 minus 1 is, others have a higher ability but the difference between them and the high set maths I saw last year is incredible! Mind you, their level of maths is much more the level I am happy working at right now, maths is not my favourite subject!
The english lesson is more my cup of tea. I write a lot myself, am part of several wirters groups, and am about to start running a creative writing at the bookshop I'm at right now.
To remind myself, if nothing else, I'm going to list here the lessons I've been part of and anything I've learnt or questions I now have.
Friday 2nd
Maths was about adding and subtraction using H,T,U. Hmmm, I should remember to write these things down straight away as I've forgotten already what happened! Apart from realising that I'm having problem explaining things in an easy to understand way. Although I guess I didn't know what we were doing until 5 minutes before I started so I'll have time to think it over when I'm actually teaching!
Creative writing - the kids were read the start of a story about a dragon appearing in a little boys room and demanding he gets him loads of food. The kids had to decide how they thought the story ended and write it. That was enjoyable - loads of imagination in the room. It was good too because the teacher sat in the corner of the room listening to readers and left me to answer questions and generally manage the kids.
I found that my 'stare' worked a treat to settle kids as they were beginning to get rowdy, and if a group were chatting or messing about too much I just had to stand next to them for them to calm down and get back to work. Not a word said!
Then I took a group into the shared area to do some sewing (argghh), which went well. Mostly.
The youngest lot were well behaved (the arghh comes from 5 voices all at once needing needles threaded and stitches unstitched) but after lunch I had to have a go at the older ones to calm them down. It really brought home that you cannot be too pally or let the kids get away with too much because they WILL talk advantage of you!
I ended up saying something like 'I can't believe you older children are so much less well behaved than the younger ones I had earlier!' in a sharp and disbelieving voice. I was a little nervous of telling them off since they weren't 'my' class and I was a visitor in school, but as I said it another teacher walked by and said 'Quite right.' backing me up. The kids calmed down, needing only a few more sharp words to get them working with just normal chatter instead of stupid behaviour. Phew!
Then we had PE - hockey. I only had to tell of a child for whacking his stick around a tree, another for deliberately slamming into another child and following a pair of girls around who would rather just natter. Easy!
Friday 9th - Maths: more adding and subtracting. I worked with the lowest ability children while the rest of the class did more complicated work. They were pretty good with 1:1 attention but I can imagine that when they're lost in the whole classroom with no help they must get very far behind, their potential missed. One girl had an illness that meant she missed lots of school, she was really bright and picked up everything incredibly quickly and it was such a shame she was disadvantaged.
Creative writing - putting speec within speech marks and using correct punctuation.
The highest ability kids picked this up really well, the lower ability had great imagination and worte funny enjoyable stuff but struggled with the concept of speech for different people beginning on different lines. They also often needed a kick start to get them going. It's often hard to get going with a blank page and I think that a quick roleplay session or working in pairs to discuss ideas migh have fired them up more. It was also a shame to see kids (boys mostly) with a good ability to write so disinterested about writing. It's something to think about.
Listened to some group reading. The teacher said that she didn't have a hope of listening to 30 readers a week so getting them to take turns reading a page each of a book was a good way of hearing lots of readers at once.
Then more sewing - mothers day is looming and they are behind! More arggghh, but it wasn't so bad. I kept a group with me while the others had PE. It was good to be in charge of the group alone.
Looking forward to more next week.
The questions I came away with were - children were told they could not subtract 9 from 7 as 9 was larger than 7. Do they then learn in year 6 about negative numbers? Do we just pretend they don't exist until then?
Also, the learning objectives were on a whiteboard but not referred to and in very technical SoW type language - is this t=normal? Wouldn't it be better to have it in 'kids' language? That's what I'll try to do. If they don't understand the LO then there's no point it being there!
Anyway, there's my thoughts.
Advice for today - write you experiences down RIGHT AWAY or you will forget what happened!
Some of the kids doing maths still have to check the number square to work out what 6 minus 1 is, others have a higher ability but the difference between them and the high set maths I saw last year is incredible! Mind you, their level of maths is much more the level I am happy working at right now, maths is not my favourite subject!
The english lesson is more my cup of tea. I write a lot myself, am part of several wirters groups, and am about to start running a creative writing at the bookshop I'm at right now.
To remind myself, if nothing else, I'm going to list here the lessons I've been part of and anything I've learnt or questions I now have.
Friday 2nd
Maths was about adding and subtraction using H,T,U. Hmmm, I should remember to write these things down straight away as I've forgotten already what happened! Apart from realising that I'm having problem explaining things in an easy to understand way. Although I guess I didn't know what we were doing until 5 minutes before I started so I'll have time to think it over when I'm actually teaching!
Creative writing - the kids were read the start of a story about a dragon appearing in a little boys room and demanding he gets him loads of food. The kids had to decide how they thought the story ended and write it. That was enjoyable - loads of imagination in the room. It was good too because the teacher sat in the corner of the room listening to readers and left me to answer questions and generally manage the kids.
I found that my 'stare' worked a treat to settle kids as they were beginning to get rowdy, and if a group were chatting or messing about too much I just had to stand next to them for them to calm down and get back to work. Not a word said!
Then I took a group into the shared area to do some sewing (argghh), which went well. Mostly.
The youngest lot were well behaved (the arghh comes from 5 voices all at once needing needles threaded and stitches unstitched) but after lunch I had to have a go at the older ones to calm them down. It really brought home that you cannot be too pally or let the kids get away with too much because they WILL talk advantage of you!
I ended up saying something like 'I can't believe you older children are so much less well behaved than the younger ones I had earlier!' in a sharp and disbelieving voice. I was a little nervous of telling them off since they weren't 'my' class and I was a visitor in school, but as I said it another teacher walked by and said 'Quite right.' backing me up. The kids calmed down, needing only a few more sharp words to get them working with just normal chatter instead of stupid behaviour. Phew!
Then we had PE - hockey. I only had to tell of a child for whacking his stick around a tree, another for deliberately slamming into another child and following a pair of girls around who would rather just natter. Easy!
Friday 9th - Maths: more adding and subtracting. I worked with the lowest ability children while the rest of the class did more complicated work. They were pretty good with 1:1 attention but I can imagine that when they're lost in the whole classroom with no help they must get very far behind, their potential missed. One girl had an illness that meant she missed lots of school, she was really bright and picked up everything incredibly quickly and it was such a shame she was disadvantaged.
Creative writing - putting speec within speech marks and using correct punctuation.
The highest ability kids picked this up really well, the lower ability had great imagination and worte funny enjoyable stuff but struggled with the concept of speech for different people beginning on different lines. They also often needed a kick start to get them going. It's often hard to get going with a blank page and I think that a quick roleplay session or working in pairs to discuss ideas migh have fired them up more. It was also a shame to see kids (boys mostly) with a good ability to write so disinterested about writing. It's something to think about.
Listened to some group reading. The teacher said that she didn't have a hope of listening to 30 readers a week so getting them to take turns reading a page each of a book was a good way of hearing lots of readers at once.
Then more sewing - mothers day is looming and they are behind! More arggghh, but it wasn't so bad. I kept a group with me while the others had PE. It was good to be in charge of the group alone.
Looking forward to more next week.
The questions I came away with were - children were told they could not subtract 9 from 7 as 9 was larger than 7. Do they then learn in year 6 about negative numbers? Do we just pretend they don't exist until then?
Also, the learning objectives were on a whiteboard but not referred to and in very technical SoW type language - is this t=normal? Wouldn't it be better to have it in 'kids' language? That's what I'll try to do. If they don't understand the LO then there's no point it being there!
Anyway, there's my thoughts.
Advice for today - write you experiences down RIGHT AWAY or you will forget what happened!
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