As a child I have always enjoyed education, learning and school. By becoming a teacher I would love to pass on this enthusiasm to inspire others with a passion for learning. Growing up with younger siblings has allowed me to express my passion for education. This was one of the main parts of my life which sparked a great interest into teaching and education. As they were growing up I would set up activities and use my creative mind to help further their learning, this includes; helping enhance their counting skills not only in English but also in French and Spanish, help them learn the alphabet and make up various different rhymes to help them, I also helped with their writing skills and allowing them to understand the ways in which letters and numbers are written and how to write very basic words and lastly learning different colours by using practical items such as skittles as a fun way of learning. Helping younger brothers to understand the very basics of literacy and numeracy is of course nothing in comparison to teaching a whole class, this I understood therefore I took it upon myself to see if teaching was something I was interested in, this led me onto taking my fourth year school placement in a local primary school.

In my Third year placement I mainly worked with primary one to primary four. During this time I embraced the many different ways to learn. My first activity which was also conducted for the rest of the week was helping out in small reading groups; this was the part I most enjoyed during this placement. I tried to make this part of learning more exciting by fully exploring all aspects of the book by holding discussions after an important part of the book, asking questions to ensure understanding and engagement which was really enjoyed. The reason I enjoyed this so much was seeing the way in which all the children were so happy and active in their learning and many asked me to do this over and over again with different books, this meant I could expand their literacy awareness and spread my love for books and reading onto them.

As I really enjoyed my previous placement this made me realise I was really keen to become involved more greatly in education and this made me want to become a teacher which has made me take part in another placement which was an Italian club, I didn’t know any Italian but I wanted to take this as a challenge and see the ways in which another language is taught, I was really inspired by this teacher in particular as the children became very engaged quickly and had learned the basics of the Italian language by the end of the block.

Another lesson I really enjoyed being involved in was numeracy, I really embraced the passion of the teachers who would try their best to explore every aspect of teaching. I really enjoyed watching the children help each other to learn, this was done through group work which I see as a very successful way of educating young children as this can help them further their own understanding but also others in their peer group to understand.

The last part of my experience which helped me realise I would like to do teaching is when I had the opportunity to stand up in front of a class and teach. I wanted to be able to see what it was like to plan and carry out my very own lesson. At first I was extremely nervous but as I got into in I became more confident. I planned the lesson around the importance of exercise and healthy eating. I created my own activities which were said to be informative, fun and educational.