When I was on placement I learned alot more about my own communication skills and I had lots of opportunities to put what I had learned in the Situated Communications module into practice.
I really enjoyed communicating and engaging with the children in the class. While on placement I took small groups for literacy and numeracy tasks, worked with children who were struggling with their work, supported children with ASN and took groups of children for art activites. All of these expereinces helped me to develop my communication skills and gave me an understand of how to communicate effectively with a variety of children. From my self and peer evaluations I am able to see what some of communication strengths and weaknesses are. Some of my strengths when working with the children were active listening, speaking clearly and at a good volume, varying my pitch and tone, demonstrating positive body language and showing an interest in the children.
While on placement I had 4 literacy tasks and 4 numeracy tasks to complete. I found it hard to complete all the tasks as I was in a Primary 1 class for the 2 weeks. The Primary 1’s were just starting simple addition and were just starting to learn how to blend sounds together to create words so I found for some of the tasks that the children were not at the acquired level that I needed to observe. My placement tutor sat down with me and we went through the tasks I had to complete. She tried her best to add these elements into lessons and activities for me to observe. For the “Making Maths Relevant” task I planned and carried out my own activity with the chidren.
My two main weaknesses that were highlighted during my placement were behaviour management and communicating effectively with staff and other proffessionals. I found behaviour management difficult as some of the children didn’t see me as an authoritative figure at first. Also 2 children in the class had ASN and often displayed challeging behaviour which some other children in the class joined in with. I could see that I was getting better at behaviour management as my placement progressed as the children were listening to me and showing me respect. I think that behaviour management is a skill that I need to keep working on so that I can become an effective teacher.
My main area requiring progress is communicating effectively with staff and other proffesionals. I have always struggled with talking to people that I don’t know very well. I think this is because I overthink about what to say and how to join in with a conversation. I don’t have much confidence when communicating with people. I was able to communicate well with my placement tutor and with other staff if it was on a one to one basis or only with a few other people. What I really struggled with was communicating in the staff room. When the staff room was full of people I stayed mainly quiet and didn’t really join in with conversations. I felt quite nervous and this was shown through my body language e.g. wringing hands. I know that communicating with staff and other proffesionals is an essential skill that teachers need so I need to really build up my confidence in this area.
To help myself become a more confident and effective communicator I am going to read “Acting lessons for Primary Teachers,” by Tauber, R and Mester C, as this book will hopefully help me to gain the skills to be able to act confident in situations that normally I wouldn’t feel confident in. I will also put myself in more situations that require me to talk to different people and this will help me to gain more confidence with my verbal communication skills.
