St Johns, Totnes. Saturation Week Part 1

This week I have been on placement at St John's Primary in Totnes working with year 6. Throughout the week the university students and the year 6 class has been working together in order to achieve the John Muir award. The award is based on conservation and is split into four sections discover, explore, conserve and share and the children learn about the nature around their school and the importance of conserving it.

Each day we spend the morning observing a different class in the school and in the afternoon we return to year 6 to work on the award.

Monday: Spent the morning with year 4 where they were making shoe box worlds based on stories they wrote before half term (these were inspired by the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe).

At lunch the KS1 children were kept in for wet play. Instead of the usual manic I've found at every-other placement I've been on, at St Johns they put the children in the hall and played Just Dance. Obviously it was not played with everyone having a controller instead the children just spread out and tried to copy the dance moves on the screen, very entertaining to watch and allowed them to get some exercise even though they couldn't go outside.

In the afternoon we met the year 6's that we'd been spending the week with and went out to explore the surrounding woods with them and to see what jobs need to be done by the end of the week.

Tuesday: Morning was spent in year 2. I was surprised as to how well behaved these children are, in the hour I was there, there was not one problem with behavior.

The school has DPA (Designated Physical Activity) where the children go out into the playground between lessons to have a 2 minute run around. This I think is a great idea as it helps to get their blood flowing which helps them to concentrate in their next lesson.

In the afternoon we gathered branches which we used to create hurdles and my group started on our main job which was to put wood chippings down over a boggy area. The hurdle fence making was very interesting to learn and was something a bit different.

More to come...

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.