Week 2

This week, I made the decision to experiment with blogging, and bring my reflective log to the world wide web!

This week was mainly focused on primary education and the KS2 National Curriculum. The lecture delivered by our guest lecturer was excellent in making me aware of the aims of KS2 and got me thinking about how a child’s KS2 education will affect their transition into KS3. As well as lectures about KS2, I also visited a primary school for two days in order to observe. This was an amazing experience as I was able to shadow a teacher and her class. It was interesting to see how different the structure of a school day is within a primary school setting. Although I was unable to gain a better understanding of the KS2-KS3 transition, I still learned so much from the experience, and I will research the KS2-KS3 transition independently.

This week, I also completed a subject audit. This was the most eye opening work I have completed so far during this course. From the completion of this audit, I have been able to identify my weaknesses and complete an action plan so that I may now increase my subject knowledge in these areas. This will help me to improve myself in regards to my subject knowledge, as it is essential to have excellent subject knowledge in biology, chemistry and physics up to KS4.

The lectures which were provided about lesson planning were extremely useful and interesting. Lesson planning is going to be major part of my role as a teacher, it is vital that a teacher can effectively plan a lesson which challenges, engages and inspires pupils. The lectures did not only cover lesson planning, but also mid-long term planning. This was useful because I now understand that although a specification will set out what is to be covered, this must be condensed into a set amount of lessons, e.g. a topic being covered in 8 lessons. As well as these lectures, I also plan to learn more about lesson planning independently, I have purchased a book about lesson planning to read, and to help me when I will be on placements.

The lecture about Every Child Matters was also very interesting. During these lectures we were made aware of the role of a teacher in regards to child protection. Examples of cases where there were communication breakdowns, or lack of identification resulted in the unfortunate death of a child. These lectures were very important to me, and helped me not only to recognise what constitutes referring to child protection officers, but also the procedures involved. This has made me much more comfortable now that I know how to report any suspicions/findings, as it had been an issue that had concerned me. I also learned that even something that seems small and of only minor concern could play out to be part of a bigger picture and by reporting it, it may be added to the pupil’s file if there are already prior concerns.

Week 1

17/09/2010

This week has been an intense week. Firstly there has been a large focus on our virtual schools project. I am part of Apple school. At first, I was a bit sceptical regarding the group assigned, as it is a large group containing quite contrasting personalities. However, my scepticism was unnecessary as the group is working well together, and have made good progress on the virtual workspace. During the course of the week, I developed my ICT skills further by working on the apple school workspace, using features that I had never before used. I also believe that I have developed my leadership skills, as our virtual school consists of three members of PGCE Science. I decided to start the ball rolling and create the framework of our ‘science page’ mocking up a draft of the information that will go into our page. This was uploaded onto the workspace for review by the rest of the members of the science team. As a group we also have visited a secondary school in the London Borough of Redbridge. This was a fantastic experience, as we were able to talk to teachers, students, admin and various support staff. This experience gave me a good insight into the role of a teacher and the education system from many different viewpoints. I believe this is very useful, because as a student we again have a different view of these roles, and gaining insight into others’ opinions provided me with new attitudes and opinions etc. Also speaking to members of support staff increased my understanding of their roles within the daily proceedings at a school, e.g. ICT support, special educational needs support, administrative, finances etc.

Through the delivering of the lectures, I have learned a lot about the qualities involved in becoming a good teacher, the national curriculum for science, teaching in east London, the educational system, teaching and learning skills, how children learn, teaching and learning in science, and misconceptions. These lectures have all been very interesting, and will without a shadow of a doubt be vital to my development as a trainee teacher. I now understand in much more depth the effect of different teaching/learning styles, and how to incorporate each of these styles into a lesson. The ways in which children learn, and bloom’s taxonomy has helped me to understand the ways in which a student will learn, understand and fully accept what they are taught. This has also helped me to understand why and how teachers must determine what stage their pupils understanding is at, as well as the sequence in which the process of learning will occur.