Year 1 Swimming Lessons

On the Thursday (last day at St Francis) I went up with Year 1 to take each class for a swimming lesson. We took a coach to the local leisure center and when the children were changed sat them down to wait for the teachers the center were providing. There was some kind of mix up and some paper work went missing so no-one had any idea about which children should be in which ability group. This caused chaos and the other teachers and myself had to quickly assess each child and put them into three groups. When this was finally sorted I took the lowest ability group in the shallow end. I have taught swimming for several years and expected this to be a doddle. However, this was not the case as the children I had taught in out of school lessons usually had some kind of experience in the water. These children had none. The lesson did not go well as I expected the children to be able to do more than they could. Also, I didn't know any of the children's names which made organising and behavior management difficult.  

The second coach brought the second Year 1 class who were slightly better organised and has a better idea of who was supposed to be in which group. In this class I had about 14 children (double what I had in the first) so I expected this lesson to go even worse. However, this was not the case and the children were far better behaved. I also had a better idea of their abilities, so I was able to give them better suited activities. Instead of trying to get them doing anything that involved them taking their feet off the floor I just did water confidence games. This lesson went fantastically!   

This has taught me how it is important to be aware of children's abilities before trying to get them to do something that will prove to be too difficult for them. 

Last couple of days

Spent Tuesday afternoon in with year 5 who were making paper mache masks as part of their Mayan topic work, I don't think I've done paper mache since I was at the school as a pupil myself!

Thursday afternoon I asked if I could observe year 3 (one year group that I have had very little to do with so far) and with a teacher who actually taught me when I was in year 5 at this school. The class had PE where they were doing tennis. I particularly enjoyed watching the warm up which the children also really enjoyed. All the cones were spread out in an area of the playground. One team had to turn them into volcanoes (up side) and the other craters (filliped up-side-down) this linked to their topic work. The children then had to run around the court and when a color was shouted they had to quickly find their own cone of that color. Lastly, the cones were spread out a little more and the children had to run through as many "gates" as they could in 30 seconds. This was repeated where the children had to beat their score but had to hop then crawl.

Tomorrow I'm taking a year 1 swimming lesson...

MADD

This week I've decided to come home to do a weeks work experience at St Francis, the school I helped out during my time at 6th form and also my own primary school. 

MADD is music, art, dance and drama combined into one and the school uses this to create a musical every other year where each class is involved. The teacher is devoted to just teaching MADD across the whole school and unfortunately told me she fears it may be scrapped in the future due to lack of money.

This years production will be Disney's "The Little Mermaid". The teacher started the lesson by getting the children to play "Just Dance" on the Wii as a warm up. This was done in a similar way to what I saw at St Johns but with year 6 children instead of KS1. I was a little surprised that every child joined in as I was expected the boys to just cower in the corner. I was told that they have been brought up through school doing things like this so that they are used to it which I think is great as it helps to develop their confidence, I don't think I would have joined in when I was in year 6. 

Next the children were given verbs such as "crumble", "creep" and "float" for them to move around the room to their interpretation of the word. This was followed by watching YouTube videos of other peoples production of the musical which the children compared and discussed. They then split off into their groups to create a sequence of dance moves to the music. The teacher explained to me that the art comes in when they make props and costumes, some of the children will be fish while others will be jellyfish and turtles. 

This lesson was great to watch and all the children seemed to be enjoying it! I will certainly be looking to compare with lessons like this done in other schools and to do some more of my own research into MADD.