Category Archives: Literacy

3.4 Professional Reflection and Communication, Literacy, Mathematics, Professional Goals and Reflection on Placement

First year placement

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During my two week placement I got to explore all areas within a primary school from P1-P6, this giving me great knowledge and experience of working with children of all ages, and I was able to identify a range of different teacher qualities and styles. The main class that I spent most of my placement time at however was one of three primary five classes and with the teacher being newly qualified she was able to help me to the highest degree possible, this making my time at the school very enjoyable. Due to spending a lot of time with this particular class I gained a great bond with all the children and the teacher, this being something I very much had in mind before going out to placement as I think it is very important to be in a happy, friendly environment to get the best outcome from an experience like this.

The different classes that I went in for one hour per day mainly all focused on mathematics and literacy activities, because of this I found it very easy to fill in the work which was required to be done when out on placement. I also found it very rewarding to complete both peer observations and self-evaluations as it was great to see the improvements I made from the first week to the second as I was able to change things that I was doing that I wasn’t fully happy with. However, a main strength that I found I had on placement was that when speaking to the children I was able able to be heard and seen, this being a very important aspect of communication as this leads on to other positive aspects of both verbal and non-verbal skills.

The school’s enthusiasm and interest in the children was great to see and they work with many external agencies to try and make sure the children within the school get the best education and childhood that they possibly can. They work closely with a woman who tackles attendance and children coming into school late, this was very interesting to see as previously I had never known any other school to work with an agency to try and combat this issue. The children also had an area for the children to go to if they were feeling down or wanted someone to talk to, this really opened by eyes to the caring nature that is within primary schools to ensure children always have someone to talk to.

Overall, my first placement was a great experience which I thoroughly enjoyed, due to the warm and welcoming nature of both the children and all staff members, and how the general feel of the school was great to be within. I am also pleased with how well I got on as an individual and how much the children looked up to me as a professional. Due to this I am even more excited about becoming a primary school teacher and the future placements I have to come.

 

2.1 Curriculum, Literacy

Situated Communication Independent Study/Reading Task

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Within chapter five of the ‘Finding out about others: the skill of questioning’ book by Hargie (2011) it explores the importance of questions, as they are incorporated within a lot of interpersonal encounters.  There are many different sections within this chapter, such as ‘Purposes of questions’, ‘Probing questions’ and ‘Types of questions.’ Under the section ‘Purposes of questions’ it gives a range of different examples in which questions are used, for example – teachers when teaching their class and sales workers trying to pitch to members of the public.  The ‘Probing questions’ section discusses how questions can be used to prompt people to reply to what others have asked them.  The ‘Types of questions’ section goes into a large amount of detail about recall and process questions, affective questions, leading questions and open and closed questions.  Research mentioned during this section is (Dickson et al, 1997), in which they concluded during counselling that open questions are more effective.  They backed up this evidence with three bullet points which state their opinion such as, open questions produce accurate responses.  However, personally I don’t completely agree with this statement as I feel as though every question type is effective in different ways.  To back up my feelings about this, I think more research should be done to strengthen their argument that open questions are more effective, as I do not think it is fair to just include one source of research from the same kind of environment.

There are also some arguments within this chapter, especially under the ‘Multiple questions’ section, as it starts off by mentioning that multiple questions can be useful in certain circumstances, however it then talks about how they are “wasteful.”  The word wasteful is then indicating that multiple questions are useful at no point in time – this completely contradicting what was said to start with.  I personally found the first paragraph of the chapter beneficial as it made me grasp the concept of just how important questions are, as one teacher portrayed this through a learning experience.  During a lesson she made a rule that nobody was allowed to ask a question, however she quickly realised communication was vague after that, and the children ended up asking questions unintentionally.

 

References:

‘Finding out about others: the skill of questioning’, in Hargie, O. (2011) Skilled Interpersonal Communication: Research, Theory and Practice. 5th ed. London: Routledge.