Wow-ee! What a week! I feel confident in saying that even tho' it is only Thursday.
For starters, my class teachers has a little boy (who incidentally, as it turns out, managed to poke himself in the eye with his drinks beaker on Thursday with sufficient force to draw blood and to warrant a three hour stop in ED) who had been very poorly all weekend, so when their GP said to take him back to hospital, in case of further complications following his bang in the eye, she understandably went with him.
Which, of course, left me high and dry!
Thankfully, cover was found for the morning as we had an off-site activity (planting at a local park with the "Streetwise" council group), but it meant I had to lead the afternoon again (thankfully ICT and a story time) on my tod. Ah well - all good experience.
Turns out the little fella has gastro-enteritis (and a fairly bad bout, by the sounds of it) so my class teacher duly turned up again on Tuesday morning, back to a normal routine, so I got to observe an RE lesson and a literacy session on riddles (at Y2 they aren't very difficult, don't worry) then lead the afternoon for mathematics and another story time (yup, plenty of them, which is nice).
Wednesday was interesting again, however, as my class teacher's husband duly caught a dose of said g-e from their "little darling" which meant that my mentor (the head) had to take the morning session, then observe me teaching literacy after the break! Joy, oh joy! After feedback (best summarised with her quote "don't get me wrong, it was good - but we can make it very good") I then led science - an investigation into forces and movement - and my first ever "show and tell" (which was scary, but I escaped with only minimal maulings, thankfully).
This morning, still no class teacher - so the head once again stepped in and led the class in PE, then thankfully arranged for another teacher to come and assist for the rest of the morning (numeracy then break, followed by literacy).
*phew*
I was due to be "non-contact"this afternoon, which I had hoped to use for writing some of the assignment which is due in just under a fortnight, but after a quick meeting with my mentor I was "persuaded" to stay on the premises and catch up with the heaps of paperwork (lesson reflections, planning for tomorrow, etc) in which I had fallen behind.
The meeting wasn't bad - my mentor was concerned that I was lagging with the paperwork, feeling unsupported and generally having a miserable second placement. Thankfully I was able to then state my position and between us I think we both left the meeting content that the situation wasn't as bad as she might have feared.
I was able to mollify her further by pointing out that I knew I must have done better today as two of the children in my class came and gave me a hug at lunch time.
*sigh*
Showing posts with label ICT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ICT. Show all posts
Thursday, March 8
Friday, February 16
...and there's the half time whistle!
Or should that be "half-term"? Both, I guess as this marks the half-way point of my! Eep! Where has the time flown? (Don't answer - that's a rhetorical question).
And so concludes the first part of my training. After half-term I'm working in an infants school (year 2) for four weeks, to fulfill the twin DfES requirement to have experience of two key stages (predominantly KS2 at my main school, KS1 in my second placement) and of two different schools.
It's been a roller-coaster of a start to a new career... and I wouldn't change a thing. I'm certainly not going back to office life (dull dull dull). There is a certain amount of trepidation regarding the second placement (being among the "little people" for starters) with the school being so much bigger (9 classes of just infants compared to my main school which has 5 classes for the entire primary school), but I'm continually being reassured by the staff at my main school that I'm doing fine and will continue to do fine.
So that's nice.
As a final "icing on the cake" moment, a few of my children had spent quite an amount of time - I've been aware they were working on something for the last few weeks in their playtimes - on a presentation, which was duly played at the beginning of my last lesson with them on Thursday. 41 slides!
Not quite "The Return of the King" (thankfully significantly less than the 251 minutes of the extended edition) but not a bad effort for a trio of 9-10 year-olds - obviously the sequence of work we did on multimedia (working up from posters to presentations) did pay off to some extent.
*sigh*
And so concludes the first part of my training. After half-term I'm working in an infants school (year 2) for four weeks, to fulfill the twin DfES requirement to have experience of two key stages (predominantly KS2 at my main school, KS1 in my second placement) and of two different schools.
It's been a roller-coaster of a start to a new career... and I wouldn't change a thing. I'm certainly not going back to office life (dull dull dull). There is a certain amount of trepidation regarding the second placement (being among the "little people" for starters) with the school being so much bigger (9 classes of just infants compared to my main school which has 5 classes for the entire primary school), but I'm continually being reassured by the staff at my main school that I'm doing fine and will continue to do fine.
So that's nice.
As a final "icing on the cake" moment, a few of my children had spent quite an amount of time - I've been aware they were working on something for the last few weeks in their playtimes - on a presentation, which was duly played at the beginning of my last lesson with them on Thursday. 41 slides!
Not quite "The Return of the King" (thankfully significantly less than the 251 minutes of the extended edition) but not a bad effort for a trio of 9-10 year-olds - obviously the sequence of work we did on multimedia (working up from posters to presentations) did pay off to some extent.
*sigh*
Thursday, December 21
1 down 2 to go
So here it is, "Merry Christmas"... and that's one term down and two to go. I'm shattered, but in a good way trust me.
The school production took up the great majority of the final few weeks - lessons were fit around rehearsals, although the sequence on "The Charge of the Light Brigade" that I'd been working on was squeezed in a fair bit (along with a few maths lessons on negative numbers to be sure that the children had met their targets for the term) with the odd ICT lesson on posters and presentations.
It's so hard to know what to say, here. The situation has changed so much since I started, that I'm not totally sure which way is up any more. I'm petrified at the thought of qualifying, yet desperately concerned that I'll never be ready and so won't pass muster when it comes to assessment time. (This was mitigated to some extent when my mentor assured me that he still wasn't convinced he'd ever be ready by the half-term in the summer term of his PGCE training).
This has been a wonderful first term - the school is excellent, the staff supportive and helpful and the children... well, most of the time they're lovely, too.
Now, next term, I just have to get my head around all of the paperwork hoops through which I need to jump in order to qualify! Wish me luck... eep.
The school production took up the great majority of the final few weeks - lessons were fit around rehearsals, although the sequence on "The Charge of the Light Brigade" that I'd been working on was squeezed in a fair bit (along with a few maths lessons on negative numbers to be sure that the children had met their targets for the term) with the odd ICT lesson on posters and presentations.
It's so hard to know what to say, here. The situation has changed so much since I started, that I'm not totally sure which way is up any more. I'm petrified at the thought of qualifying, yet desperately concerned that I'll never be ready and so won't pass muster when it comes to assessment time. (This was mitigated to some extent when my mentor assured me that he still wasn't convinced he'd ever be ready by the half-term in the summer term of his PGCE training).
This has been a wonderful first term - the school is excellent, the staff supportive and helpful and the children... well, most of the time they're lovely, too.
Now, next term, I just have to get my head around all of the paperwork hoops through which I need to jump in order to qualify! Wish me luck... eep.
Sunday, November 12
Observed, moi?
I survived! Yay!
Actually, it all went rather well, in the end. The lesson itself was much smoother than last week and in other areas my work seems to be okay, too.
My link tutor was, I think, rather impressed with the lesson content (she actually said she'd normally have tackled that sort of thing with Y6 pupils) and noted that I'd successfully explained the objectives and had challenged the higher ability children as well as keeping the others engaged... and also complemented me on my burgeoning class management skills (sink or swim does work as a learning strategy, y'see).
All of my notes and files are okay, although I need to start evaluating/reflecting on my own lessons (something I've been doing orally with my class teacher and mentor, but needs to be written in some form) and collecting the various bits of evidence that I've actually done all that I'm supposed to (which apparently consists of me getting staff to outline and sign bits of paper).
So I'm pretty happy, all in all :)
Actually, it all went rather well, in the end. The lesson itself was much smoother than last week and in other areas my work seems to be okay, too.
My link tutor was, I think, rather impressed with the lesson content (she actually said she'd normally have tackled that sort of thing with Y6 pupils) and noted that I'd successfully explained the objectives and had challenged the higher ability children as well as keeping the others engaged... and also complemented me on my burgeoning class management skills (sink or swim does work as a learning strategy, y'see).
All of my notes and files are okay, although I need to start evaluating/reflecting on my own lessons (something I've been doing orally with my class teacher and mentor, but needs to be written in some form) and collecting the various bits of evidence that I've actually done all that I'm supposed to (which apparently consists of me getting staff to outline and sign bits of paper).
So I'm pretty happy, all in all :)
Friday, November 3
Bad end to a good week
Oh my... what a mess!
This last week I've been really diving into taking an active role in the numeracy lessons - I had to plan this week which I did, the week before half term. It was supposed to be a few days of co-ordinates, followed by the start of a sequence of lessons on, um, sequences. However, in the grand tradition of all best laid plans (see what I did, there?) it had to be amended on the fly. Between by MB (my class teacher) being impressed with how much the children were enjoying the main activity on Monday and then being in college on Wednesday the whole week ended up on co-ordinates (leaving me with only three days to plan for this week... which was nice).
Wednesday was... interesting... too. Seems the game is most definitely afoot now, with a great number of fellow students starting to come under varying levels of pressure. Some personal (a big blog shout out to Darren whose girlfriend has been rather unwell), some professional (again, a big blog shout of encouragement to Helen, who had a nightmare of a link tutor visit) but above all, mostly just stressful. Plus, between Darren and myself, I worked myself up into a "bit of a twizz" about my own upcoming link tutor visit (which between us we managed to bring forward by a week). And so I came back to school, still panicked, and it took me until lunch time to realise why I was feeling so jittery and get over myself.
The maths (I think we can call it maths again, as I've just noticed that the newly launched "Primary Framework" talks about literacy and mathematics) went well - very well, actually. My interactive whiteboard (henceforth, IWB) battleships was very well received, the use of the scale map of the acropolis that we've been using (note the cross-curricular links to the history topic) was suprisingly successful and the tangrams were rather fun (only one pupil managing to actually solve a tangram before we gave them the solutions so that they could do the actual co-ordinates work).
ICT on the other hand... eep! There I was... I'd been through the actual introduction, showing the children how to use the drawing package (OpenOffice.org Draw, actually, given that it's free) and then got them seated where we wanted (for the differentiation, don't y'know) and got to the first, brief, point of the main activity - get the children to copy the relevant file from the network into their local folder ready to start work editing... and... then the lesson ended. Yup. Th-th-th-that's all folks. So, just to spell it out, I spent about 30 minutes trying to coach 29 children into copying a file from a shared folder on the network. Aargh!
On the bright side, I have a perfectly good lesson plan for this next ICT lesson; which, given that I'm being observed, can only be a good thing.
*sigh*
This last week I've been really diving into taking an active role in the numeracy lessons - I had to plan this week which I did, the week before half term. It was supposed to be a few days of co-ordinates, followed by the start of a sequence of lessons on, um, sequences. However, in the grand tradition of all best laid plans (see what I did, there?) it had to be amended on the fly. Between by MB (my class teacher) being impressed with how much the children were enjoying the main activity on Monday and then being in college on Wednesday the whole week ended up on co-ordinates (leaving me with only three days to plan for this week... which was nice).
Wednesday was... interesting... too. Seems the game is most definitely afoot now, with a great number of fellow students starting to come under varying levels of pressure. Some personal (a big blog shout out to Darren whose girlfriend has been rather unwell), some professional (again, a big blog shout of encouragement to Helen, who had a nightmare of a link tutor visit) but above all, mostly just stressful. Plus, between Darren and myself, I worked myself up into a "bit of a twizz" about my own upcoming link tutor visit (which between us we managed to bring forward by a week). And so I came back to school, still panicked, and it took me until lunch time to realise why I was feeling so jittery and get over myself.
The maths (I think we can call it maths again, as I've just noticed that the newly launched "Primary Framework" talks about literacy and mathematics) went well - very well, actually. My interactive whiteboard (henceforth, IWB) battleships was very well received, the use of the scale map of the acropolis that we've been using (note the cross-curricular links to the history topic) was suprisingly successful and the tangrams were rather fun (only one pupil managing to actually solve a tangram before we gave them the solutions so that they could do the actual co-ordinates work).
ICT on the other hand... eep! There I was... I'd been through the actual introduction, showing the children how to use the drawing package (OpenOffice.org Draw, actually, given that it's free) and then got them seated where we wanted (for the differentiation, don't y'know) and got to the first, brief, point of the main activity - get the children to copy the relevant file from the network into their local folder ready to start work editing... and... then the lesson ended. Yup. Th-th-th-that's all folks. So, just to spell it out, I spent about 30 minutes trying to coach 29 children into copying a file from a shared folder on the network. Aargh!
On the bright side, I have a perfectly good lesson plan for this next ICT lesson; which, given that I'm being observed, can only be a good thing.
*sigh*
Friday, September 29
A week of firsts
So this week I not only led a (very small part of) the weekly staff meeting, explaining and demonstrating the use of shared folders on the school network; I also took my first class (in ICT, as I mentioned earlier) - which went as well as can be expected, all things considered.
There were, of course, things on which I could build. But overall, it was apparently quite passable. My dozen (or slightly more - who's counting?) years of experience as an IT developer do indeed help. Being completely at ease with the software does mean that I can concentrate on other things, like making sure the children are actually working.
So there we go. I survived.
There were, of course, things on which I could build. But overall, it was apparently quite passable. My dozen (or slightly more - who's counting?) years of experience as an IT developer do indeed help. Being completely at ease with the software does mean that I can concentrate on other things, like making sure the children are actually working.
So there we go. I survived.
Thursday, September 28
Currently thinking...
"So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it." -- Willy Wonka
So, where to start? Well, to kick things off, tomorrow I take my first full lesson - the whole class, the whole lesson. That's the bad news - I'm terrified - the good news is that it's in ICT (computing to those of you not involved in education at the moment) so I do at least consider myself somewhat of an expert in terms of subject knowledge.
Today marked my first planning session with my class teacher. Very productive, personally, although I don't know how much use I was to them ;) Also, I had my lesson plan for the afore-mentioned ICT lesson "vetted" - postive feedback, no amendments suggested - so that's all set for tomorrow.
Then, this afternoon, my mentor returns from a training session at the university (on how to mentor) informing me that the course co-ordinator (whom, I think, still forgets that they are no teaching a class of primary children when they deliver any kind of talk) is apparently very impressed with me... something about "intuitive" questions (and "insightful", I think, or was it "relevant" - as usual, when faced with any sort of compliment, I turn bashful and my brain shuts off all cognitive faculties so as not to let my ego cotton on to what's going on). I'm not sure how I get away with these things, but there y'go... intuitive questions, huh? I wonder what that actually means?
And now to go away an obsess about how much I do or don't know ready for tomorow.
*sigh*
So, where to start? Well, to kick things off, tomorrow I take my first full lesson - the whole class, the whole lesson. That's the bad news - I'm terrified - the good news is that it's in ICT (computing to those of you not involved in education at the moment) so I do at least consider myself somewhat of an expert in terms of subject knowledge.
Today marked my first planning session with my class teacher. Very productive, personally, although I don't know how much use I was to them ;) Also, I had my lesson plan for the afore-mentioned ICT lesson "vetted" - postive feedback, no amendments suggested - so that's all set for tomorrow.
Then, this afternoon, my mentor returns from a training session at the university (on how to mentor) informing me that the course co-ordinator (whom, I think, still forgets that they are no teaching a class of primary children when they deliver any kind of talk) is apparently very impressed with me... something about "intuitive" questions (and "insightful", I think, or was it "relevant" - as usual, when faced with any sort of compliment, I turn bashful and my brain shuts off all cognitive faculties so as not to let my ego cotton on to what's going on). I'm not sure how I get away with these things, but there y'go... intuitive questions, huh? I wonder what that actually means?
And now to go away an obsess about how much I do or don't know ready for tomorow.
*sigh*
Sunday, September 17
Post Collegial Blues
A couple of days of lectures ended the week nicely. A bit more on planning (which, actually, did help - and provided some useful outlines on what to put in a lesson plan), followed by what was possibly the most tedious ICT lecture I've ever had the misfortune to attend (and stuggle to remain awake for). At the risk of appearing in any way to be suffering from "professional snobishness" the lecturer was a classic case of the self-taught "expert", ie they'd dabble with computers from when they first hit mainstream, then his initial interests and requirements had been met by various bits of software... which they still use. For starters, having a presentation prepared on Microsoft Word (as opposed to, say, Microsoft PowerPoint) and not even neatly paginated, to boot! I mean, I ask you!
Friday's lectures more than made up for the drab end to Thursday, however, with an introduction to a series on numeracy by a truly inspiring lecturer - honestly, we all had fun doing some fairly elementary mathematical games. Well, I was inspired and that's what counts most for me. Then our final behaviour management lecture (a series I've enjoyed and which I find especially relevant given the "challenging" nature of some of the pupils in my clas) and a rather fun (more of a workshop than a lecture) session on voice management rounded us off nicely.
Ready for next week? Not 'alf!
Friday's lectures more than made up for the drab end to Thursday, however, with an introduction to a series on numeracy by a truly inspiring lecturer - honestly, we all had fun doing some fairly elementary mathematical games. Well, I was inspired and that's what counts most for me. Then our final behaviour management lecture (a series I've enjoyed and which I find especially relevant given the "challenging" nature of some of the pupils in my clas) and a rather fun (more of a workshop than a lecture) session on voice management rounded us off nicely.
Ready for next week? Not 'alf!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)