Reflecting back on my university placement, the week went by extremely quick. From the first day of university finding out the date that placement would begin, did not seem to long ago either.
Fast forward seven weeks I had discovered my placement school and was fretting over printing out the required eight placement task and hoping I had printed enough placement handbooks for staff who required it at the school.
Monday morning came I was immensely apprehensive as my placement school was dissimilar to the primary school that I attended and also where I gained my work experience at. But I was eager to get started and to embrace this new challenge… and the placement tasks.
As the week evolved I observed in many classes and also introduced to interesting teaching methods that contributed to completing the placement task. I was engaged in self/peer evaluations and school assessment that helped me to discover strengths and areas for improvement in my communication.
Strength
My most notable strength was the way in which I used voice to speak loudly, clearly and variation of tone when carrying out group work activities. This allowed the pupils’ to understand the task and also show my enthusiasm when explaining the task.
Area of Most Progress
My area of most progress during the placement was my engagement with staff. Initially during the first couple of days while in the staffroom I was rather quite, but as the week progressed I felt more comfortable in this setting and began to interact with staff more while in the staffroom.
Area Requiring Progress
It was evident after evaluations that my area that I need to improve is my overall non-verbal communication. When explaining tasks to groups I would use limited amount of body language and often would hide my hands.
Action Plan
This placement highlight to me that I need to become more confident with teaching staff and to improve my non-verbal communication. My next steps for next placement is get more involved with staffroom discussion. In terms of my non-verbal communication my next steps is to use more hand gesture when speaking to friends and family so I become more adjusted to this method of communication.
