Stories without words

Last week as part of my ICT and computing seminars we had the task of making a story about Plymouth's history without using words.

On the first day of the project we walked about Plymouth learning a bit about its history and gathering photos to use for our videos.

The second day we were told simply to make a film which has no words that tells a story about Plymouth's history. Me and Frances decided to make ours on Plymouth's war history. We first edited the photos that we'd gathered making them black and white and removing the ones that we weren't going to use. Then using Apple imovie on my ipad we put the pictures together and added sound effects from the software itself.

Overall we thought our film was pretty good, though with more time I'm sure we could make it a lot better. Neither of us had used the imovie software before but after having a play we found it very easy to use and great for making short videos. Software that I might look to use in the classroom in the future because of its simplicity.

At the end of the second day each group presented their videos. Everybody had gone a slightly different way about it. Different groups took a different aspect of Plymouth's history and various software was used to create the videos. No group had gone the same way about the project. Every groups video was original.

This was the result of us being given little details about the task. We were purposely given little instruction so we could go our own ways on the project and be creative. We weren't restrained to strict instructions- which would of lead to very similar end results. I think this is a great teaching approach to use in my own teaching practice as it develops problem solving skills, independence and is very engaging.

Below is a link to mine and Frances Dingle's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQd696jd71w

First assignment handed in

This week I finished and handed in my first assignment. The assignment was for the core subjects and I have to write an essay on three teaching approaches for each subject (1500 words on each English, mathematics and science). The feeling of handing it over the counter was great and very relieving. I spent so many hours writing it, so now that it's gone I'm almost unsure of what to do with myself.

I've have learnt in doing this large essay that I must (and I mean MUST) reference my work as I go. So many hours were wasted trying to find sources of quotes that I had taken, many of which I had to get rid of as I couldn't find the original source. This would of been so much easier if I was doing it as I was going. But at least I know for next time.

Fingers crossed that I get a decent grade.

Probably time to make my first blog...

I've been very slow to start with this blogging stuff but I thought, as a student teacher specialising in computing and ICT, it's something I should probably get my head around it sooner rather than later.

I have found university life fantastic and am loving the independence in particular. I've already had my first placement, which I failed to create a blog about! But just to briefly sum it up...I worked with a year 1 class at Mayflower Academy with another first year student at the university. In the first week I was mainly used as an additional teaching assistant, acting as support for one table of low ability children, taking small guided reading sessions and other general jobs such as creating resources and marking books.

I did take the role as the class teacher more in the second week where I read books to the class, took a phonics lesson with my placement partner using "Phonics Bug" and took a full maths lesson as a pair which was assessed by a tutor from the university (which went well from her feedback!). I found the experience exhausting but overall very enjoyable! I do however regret not taking more chances to work with the class as a whole and for not getting myself involved in extra curricular activities- which I will for sure on my next placement!

Skip forward a fair few weeks...Today I was in Montpelier Primary school where we were teaching a science lesson on observation to groups of 8 year 3 children. This was done as a team of 4 student teachers (essentially we had 2 children each). We devised a lesson where we got the children closing their eyes and passing around objects that they had to describe using their senses and encouraging the use of strong adjectives. The lesson went fantastically! All the children engaged well with the lesson and seemed to be enjoying it just as much as us student teachers.

The only downfalls of the lesson came from the introduction and conclusion. The introduction wasn't quite followed by the plan we made and the conclusion was rushed but also not really planned at all.