progress – UWS BA ePDPs

The last two weeks I attended my first school experience placement. This experience for me was thoroughly enjoyable, yet challenging in pushing me out of my “comfort zone”.

One strength I found I developed over the course of the two weeks was getting to know each pupil in my class (P.2/3) individually e.g. I knew every pupil by their name. I could change my register in how I spoke to the class and then how I spoke to the class teacher. When presenting ‘mini’ lessons to the class I ensured every pupil was involved, I used their names to ask questions when carrying out a “show me, tell me” lesson.

I feel I made most progress when taking smaller groups of students for reading and mathematics tasks. I enjoyed doing these tasks as I got see a variety of abilities within the class as a whole.

One development I have realised I need to work on is my teacher voice/presence. The teacher I was working with could get the class under control by using a simple ‘class call back’ e.g. the teacher would shout ‘STOP’ and the class would stop what they were doing and repeat back to her ‘COLLABORATE AND LISTEN’. Although, when I was in control of the class I found it difficult to get the attention of the whole class at once. I have took note of all the ‘class call backs’ my teacher used and hope to make use of them on my next school experience placement.

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.

Tag: progress

Reflections on Placement

Reflections on Placement