Sunday 17 October 2010

Week 5

In lectures we learned about English as a second language, health and safety, and student voice. I found most of these lectures really good. As the leader of the EAL task within my virtual school, I had already done some research into EAL policies etc. Dr Raymonde Sneddon provided valuable feedback regarding each virtual schools work on the task to date. From her feedback, I feel we can now improve on the task, and I feel a little more understanding of what EAL students go through, and the ways in which they can be helped within individual lessons. During the lecture on health and safety, I felt as though for me personally, I did not learn anything new. This is because at my previous job, we dealt with CLEAPS all the time, and I am very familiar with CLEAPS software and hazcards. Regarding the COSHH, again I feel competent as I was the COSHH co-ordinator at the school I had worked in. The lecture in student voice made me think more about student’s opinions, and the fact that sometimes it’s the little things that they need to keep focused (such as blinds to stop the sun getting in their eyes). I think that this lecture has helped me to remember not to ignore students’ opinions. It is easier as a teacher to assume that everything is ok, and that you are doing well, but by gaining student feedback, I will be able to improve myself, and my quality of teaching.
This week, I had the opportunity to perform a demo in front of my peers. This was recorded, and I was able to view this afterwards. This was excellent! I really did find it useful as in my own mind, I thought that my voice was high pitched, and I was really worried that people could see that I was nervous and shaky. When watching the video back, I realised that I need to worry less about those things, as they are not visible. My voice was clearer than I had thought and the pitch was not too high. In general I believe I looked more relaxed than I had actually felt.  This has given me a lot more confidence in myself.

Sunday 10 October 2010

Week 4

Learning about behaviour management was very useful. Being unable to control a class is big worry, which is why I found the lecture very useful. I also have read the book “getting the buggers to behave”. Knowing about some of the techniques available to help control a situation and prevent conflict from occurring will be very useful, and I believe that this knowledge will enable me to develop good behaviour management skill. ICT, numeracy and literacy in science are all essential , as these cross-curricular areas of the national curriculum are essential science. Although I have used data-loggers before, and I understand the pros and cons associated with their use, I did not find this lecture useful at all. Each data logger is different, I may never use this type of data logger again and it is completely different operating each type of data logger. Again I had more practice in planning assessments during the lectures this week. Working from a scheme of work I had the opportunity to plan activities with emphasis on the plenary for each activity.
I also had my placement induction visit this week. I enjoyed it a lot as I had the opportunity to meet the staff and pupils who I will be working within a few weeks. The school was nice, and the pupils seem to be well behaved.  I think that the students will be a bit challenging in the sense that they seem to be quite cheeky, but other than that they seem very bright, and genuinely work quite well.

Saturday 2 October 2010

Week 3

This week’s lectures were mostly focused on the theories of learning, writing assignments, developing thinking skills in Science, critical thinking, progression, starters and plenaries.  All of these lectures were great, we have already began to learn about the theories of learning, and I have done some reading into the behaviourist and cognitive families. This was great because when the lecture began, I already felt fairly comfortable with the lecture as I already had a basic understanding of the concepts, and had read about some of the key theorists e.g. Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bruner. I find this topic extremely interesting as you can relate the theories to different teaching techniques and to the ways in which I learn/learned. The writing assignments lecture also was surprisingly useful. As I have already completed a degree, I was a bit unsure of why we were being told how to write essays considering the amount of essays I have written throughout my education. My sceptisms however, was quite unjustified, as I feel more capable of planning and structuring not only an essay, but any piece of research or work. I also believe that now that I feel more able to organise my own work, I will be able to help students to organise their work more effectively. The lecture on starters and plenaries was excellent. Starters and plenaries are essential in every lesson, and there are many possible approaches to each. Essentially each have a very specific and different goal, however the same activity may be used as either a starter or a plenary. During the lecture I had the opportunity to devise both appropriate starters and plenaries for each lesson on a scheme of work. This was fantastic practice, because each activity differs and what may seem appropriate for one lesson might not be for another. As well as the information I have obtained from the lecture, I also have a book with ideas for starters, which I look forward to reading, as this will give me a good range of activities at my disposal.
In addition to the standard lectures, I also took part in official CEOP training on the 29th September. This training was an amazing opportunity. While working with children, unfortunately throughout the course of your career, there will be children you work with who will suffer some form of abuse. Considering this, it is important for the child to know how both that how to report abuse, and understand that they can do it. By undergoing this CEOP training, I am aware of child protection issues, advice children on making online activities safe and reporting abuse.
My virtual school had a meeting this week, we discussed many aspects of the wiki, agreed on content and design issues. We also watched the EAL task video together as a group, and discussed which direction to take on the task. This week we also decided to assign 3-4 task leaders for each task, the role of these leaders was to direct the discussions on these topics/tasks. I am in the EAL leadership team, and therefore have put together some ideas on integrating one of the EAL students into our school.
Within our virtual school, we also visited our assigned school. Once again the school did a fantastic job of arranging people for us to talk to, and also allowed us to ‘roam’ the school to get a feel for the environment, check out any areas of interest, and experience the average noise levels of lessons (which was virtually non-existent!).