During my time on placement, I spent the two weeks within a composite Primary5/6 class. I found that working with this age group was challenging yet very rewarding as you could visually see them making progress with their learning.
Strength
A strength that I felt I displayed was maintaining eye contact and body language when talking, or when someone was talking to me. I felt that this was an important thing to do, especially when working with a child in the class who has autism. Through maintaining eye contact, I showed him that I was listening and interested in what he was saying. When appropriate, I would crouch down to meet the eye level of the pupil to show that I was engaged in what they were saying. I feel that this was a positive thing to do as it showed that what they were saying was important and that my full attention was on them. By doing this, I wasn’t towering above them and coming across as being intimidating and instead attempted to be viewed as approachable.
Development Weakness
A development weakness that I need to work on is my use of language. I found myself often using ‘Scottish’ words without even thinking about it, assuming the children would understand. However, in the class there were 3 pupils whose first language was Polish and therefore, they were unaware of these words. An example of this is using the word blether. In order to improve this, I should engage with the level of English within the class and spend more time in thinking if the language I am using is understood by all members of the class.
Action plan
When next on placement, I plan on gaging my audience in order to decide if using Scots words is appropriate for all pupils. This will be beneficial as it will allow all pupils to understand and be involved in conversation as much as possible.
