My plans for the coming months

All my assignments this year have been handed in and I only have to go into uni for a few more things before my five week placement in June. This leaves me with a lot of spare time until then!

In this time I've organised to go back home to do a weeks work experience at one of my local primary schools. This I feel is important as as good as my seminars at university are, I still feel the best way in learning how to be a good teacher is by getting stuck in and gaining experience in schools. 

I have also signed up for a TESOL (teachers of English to speakers of other languages) course which should help with my communication with EAL children. 

I am also looking at improving my own subject knowledge, currently, I am reading about ancient Egypt.

Should languages be taught in primary school?

I was never taught languages at primary and I have bad memories of learning French and German in my time at secondary. I've had two language seminars now and found myself wondering if having languages in the curriculum is worth while. Don't get me wrong these seminars have been fun and they have given me some good teaching ideas but should it be in the curriculum?

My opinion is that to learn a language you need to be motivated and willing to put in a lot of time. If not enough time is being put in then you will fail in learning and there is not enough time in the primary school day to do languages daily (which I think is needed to properly learn a language). If it is not being taught enough then it will be forgotten. I can't remember any French and German and I now feel it was it was a waste of my time in learning. If the language you're learning is not going to be used then is it worth learning anyway?

For this reason I feel it should be optional like an after school club so the children that want to learn a language and are willing to put in the time then they can. I understand that to learn a language it is going to be much easier to start at a young age but if it is not being taught enough and the children don't see the benefit of learning then surely it's a waste of time? 

First music seminar

 

Today I kicked off the new term by handing in my last assignment for the year and by having my first music seminar. Before today I was never much of a fan of music lessons with my experiences of them being dull, purposeless and chaotic. However, after this seminar I have now changed my opinion on this. 

We started the lesson with various musical instruments in the centre of the room with us students sat around. A modern piece of music was played and we had to join in with the track. 

Another game involves the teacher hiding an object in the room from one child and the rest of the class have to make noise with the instruments in a kind of hot or cold kind of game. 

My group invented a game named "mystory 3" where one child is blindfolded and 3 children have to play their instrument all at the same time. The blindfolded child then has to work out which three instruments were played. 

Turns out music lessons don't have to be boring!

Kane Chronicles- Rick Riordan

I have just finished reading the first installment of Rick Riordan's The Kane Chronicles and thought I'd quickly note down my thoughts for future reference.

A fair few years back I read Rick's Percy Jackson series and have always regarded them as one of my favorite book series'. Because of this and because I wanted to start reading regularly again I thought I'd give his new series a read.

The Kane Chronicles: The Red Pyramid follows siblings Sadie and Carter Kane in their adventure of saving their dad and the world from the evil Egyptian god Set. The story is told retrospectively and each chapter either Sadie or Carter takes the lead, so we get both characters views of the story. Throughout the story we are introduced to both major and minor Egyptian gods as well as various monsters.

What I particularly liked about this book is that the Egyptian mythology in the book is all accurate so the reader is learning about the Egyptian's and their beliefs in an engaging and subliminal way. I've come away from reading the book with a good understanding of the story of the Egyptian gods (which I've found very interesting and I've even done some of my own research in order to gain a deeper understanding). I believe this book could even be used in upper KS2 when learning about Egypt in a cross curricular approach with English.

Though not as good as the Percy Jackson books, The first installment of The Kane Chronicles is still a good read and I look forward to getting stuck into the other books in the series.

 

St Johns, Totnes. Saturation Week Part 3

Friday: Final day and absolutely exhausted! We didn't go into another class to observe this morning, instead we got straight into our jobs. With the year 6's we finished off putting wood chippings over the path and around the pond and moved this sticky mud like substance out of sight. After the children went for lunch, another student teacher and I got into waders and cleared the stream.

After all the equipment was put away we went into the whole school assembly where we were presented with certificates for our work over the week.

All in all a fantastic week! I have learnt a lot about taking children into outdoor settings and the importance of doing this as well as the importance of developing mutual respect between child and teacher. I also take away from this placement many ideas to use in my own future practice. I am also going to do some more research into other forest schools like St Johns.

   

St Johns, Totnes. Saturation Week Part 2

Wednesday: Morning was spent with year 5 who were acting out stories from the book 1001 Arabian nights. This is an interesting and fun way to develop story recalling skills. After a discussion with the class teacher I learnt that the children will be writing their own stories based on the stories in 1001 Arabian nights but from a different culture. I found this cross curricular link with geography interesting.

In the afternoon me and my partner took 10 of the year 6 children to do our lesson. The lesson was on how sound travels. The main part of the lesson was a game where one child sits blindfolded with various metal objects around them- the other children had to steal these without the blindfolded child noticing- I thought that this lesson went pretty well.

There was also an incident where two girls had to be rescued from sinking mud by a few of us student teachers. This was during a hide-and-seek game and the girls were told not to go into the bog. The girls were completely covered in mud. Instead of shouting at the girls the teachers calmly dealt with it and explained that the girls were not naughty girls but had just made the wrong decision for not listening to them.

For the rest of the afternoon we carried on using up the wood chippings to cover muddy areas of the school ground.

Thursday: Spent the morning in year 4 again who were having a maths lesson on fractions. The class teacher had some interesting methods such as "ping-pong" where she called a number and the children would have to double it. She also used a reward scheme where if a child answered a question out loud without any child they would get 2 points for their group, if they asked for teacher support they would get 1 and they could phone a friend and get 1 point.

Afternoon with year 6 was spent taking various bits and pieces to the skip and taking soil from the car park to a dumpy bag in the school groups. We were given a S.P.A.G of the day which was to encourage the children to take note when they said a preposition as they worked.

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...