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.