UWS BA ePDPs

Introduction

On the week beginning the 31^st of October, I had my week of placement in a local primary school and had the privilege of seeing first hand, the many different challenges that come about when it comes to being a teacher. 

At the start of the placement I felt very nervous, and was not quite sure what to expect as I was getting prepared for the week ahead. But as the days progressed, I began to feel more at ease and could observe the situations which were within the placement tasks that we had been asked to complete. The tasks were useful, as they allowed me to observe real situations within a classroom and gave me a greater understanding of the potential obstacles that I could face later in my career. 

One of the most important things that I learnt during my placement week, is that no matter how much you plan for something, you can never plan enough. This showed me that organisation and structure is a key asset when it comes to being a teacher.

Strength

I would say that one of my personal strengths that I discovered more during placement was my variation of pitch and tone when it came to communicating with individuals during the week. I learned that it is necessary to be able to distinguish between communicating with an individual one on one, in a smaller group or when talking to the class. The evidence that I can use to support this idea is that when I spoke to the teacher in private I spoke with a quiet tone and slightly fast pace, whereas when it came to speaking to the pupils in a smaller group I spoke with a much clearer and louder tone and spoke at a much slower pace; to make sure that they understood the activity which was being discussed at the time.

I feel that the way in which you communicate is very important as if you speak too fast for a pupil then they may not understand what is being said. Also, tone can affect the clarity of your speech and thus must be at the right level to help get across the point you are trying to make. 

Area for Improvement

Whilst on placement, I learnt that as an individual, my facial expressions are one of the areas that I feel I could work further upon. I noticed this especially when it came to working within smaller groups, during their activities. I felt personally that I was not using enough facial expressions when it came to getting across both positives and negatives, as they tend to help stress points further. I have never been one to portray my personal feelings using expressions well and tend to just say what I feel instead. 

Action Plan for Improvement

My personal plan is to try and use more facial expressions with other older individuals and gather their feedback. From there I could transfer the skills that I start to strengthen and put them into practice, with the younger individuals from my coaching back in Glasgow, as it will allow provide me a similar situation to teaching in a classroom (although it may not be quite as intense).

Conclusion

This placement was a real eye-opener into what the world of teaching is like and even though it was stressful at times, it gave me a proper feel of what I will be experiencing in my later career, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time. It allowed me to reflect upon my skills and what I need to further improve upon to advance myself as an academic. I feel that if we had more time than a week, then it would allow us to be able to make further observations and learn more about ourselves, however, I understand that it may be difficult to arrange for more than one week. Overall placement has me excited and ready to continue further into this course and the challenges that may come with it.

Reflection on Placement

While on a one week placement in a primary school I was able to engage and learn from the children and staff at the school while I observed staff teaching and children experiencing lessons which allowed them to experience new activities. I was also able to interact and engage with the children during the lessons.

I was placed in a Primary 6 class in the school where I got to know the children and teacher and begin to see the children’s abilities. It was evident throughout the week that the children were very intellectual however some were able to complete tasks to the best of their abilities whereas others struggled to stay on task as easily. I was also able to learn from the teacher during the week who gave me a background into the children’s learning in school and also observed myself to give me feedback on my strengths in communication and also my areas of development. Some children worked better on computers while others were able to work well writing the activities down. During the week the children engaged in many language and mathematics activities where I was able to see the clear benefit of a partner helping another child can allow both children to learn and understand as the child may explain the concept in a different way from the teacher or another adult and this may be easier for the other child to understand and in result grasp the concept.

STRENGTH

Through these experiences I was able to see that a strength of mine is that my pace and structure while speaking with the children is clear and concise which allows the children to fully understand me and take in the information or instructions I am giving them well. I was able to see this through the children’s responses while I was on placement and also with my teacher feeding back to me that while carrying out a group activity I came down to the level of the children and spoke to them in a clear and concise manner which made it easy for the children to understand what it was I was instructing them and asking them to do.

AREA OF DEVELOPMENT

During placement I was able to identify that my main area for development would be maintaining good eye contact when communicating; I was able to identify this as during a group lesson in the IT suite where I was asking the children to log onto their learning websites I was instructing them how to do this and talking them through the steps. However, I recognised that while doing this my back was to some of the children sitting at the group behind me and although they were able to hear my instructions I was not fully engaging and communicating with them by making eye contact with this group of children.

ACTION PLAN

In order to work on this and improve my eye contact while communicating I will work on ensuring to keep my position in the classroom and in the room for the audience I am presenting to that I position myself so that I can see everyone that I am communicating with and am able to make full eye contact with everyone to engage my full audience and communicate well. To conclude, by improving my eye contact and working on my positioning in the classroom I can ensure that I am communicating fully and engaging my audience in the lesson and it will also allow them o engage with myself and the lesson.

The disasters topic allowed an interesting look into a variety of case studies giving me a far greater understanding into the different types of disasters, real life examples of disaster and the kind of work that goes into preventing these disasters and into recovering from them after they have taken place. I found Andrews practical science workshop particularly interesting as it offered me a wide range of ideas of potential science experiments to take into case rooms. I feel in the future I would definitely like to use the baking soda volcano with a class to show the impact a volcano can have on an area and equally I was very interested in the activity involving looking into the geology of rocks. While it was particularly disaster focused it was still an interesting activity that I feel children would engage with although with that experiment in mind in particular I would have to be mindful of pupil safety certainly where the use hammers or acid was concerned it might be wiser of this experiment was conducted as a demonstration rather than allow the pupils free rein. These experiments are also incredible useful to give children a practical way to engage with task on recording information, note taking and measuring an taking results. The lectures were also very useful for highlighting the importance of showing children these disasters but not doing it in such a way as to scare them. Before these lectures this was not something I had overly considered but I am now aware of the importance of treating the topic with care. It was also very interesting learn via each case study the difference between how an economically developed or a less economically developed country can react to these disasters and then in turn how places such as Japan have such a good infrastructure and ways of dealing with events such as this that it can make these disasters feel far more controlled than perhaps they would in an LEDC.

I found the micro-teaching and presenting task particularly useful as it sourced me to engage with one specific disaster far more than I would have other wise and then via the presenting process allowed us to share our research and learn far more about each individual kind of disaster than we would have other wise. I particularly now have a wide knowledge of case study on the typhoon Hiayan which hit the Philippines with a diameter of 300 miles and caused major storm surges along the coast line some reaching as high as 15 meters. I also felt this task had particular benefit as it wasn’t assessed so it felt as though we had more free rein to experiment with different ways of presenting and different ideas with out having to worry as much about having to get a good grade out of it. It was good to have a chance to present with out the pressure of it being an assessment.

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