Reflections on Placement.
On the 29th of October I embarked on my first placement as a BA Education student. Throughout my two weeks within the school I gained valuable skills and learned a lot from class teachers. I also became more aware of current education strategies and how they work in practice. I feel this has been a very rewarding experience and has made my determination to reach my aspirations of becoming a teacher become even greater.
Skills
I feel that on placement my communication skills lay in varying my tone and pitch to adapt to the situation or the individual who I was talking to. I was able to vary my tone in order to interest pupils in the tasks that I was leading and I was able to control the group through changing my tone again if I needed to provide a clear instruction or get the pupils to focus and listen carefully when they may have been drifting off task. When praising pupils my tone of voiced changed to one of joy and when supporting pupils my volume lowered in order to make myself more approachable and I used a caring tone of voice in order to show my willingness to attend to the pupils needs.
Area of Most Progress
I feel that my time on placement really helped me to develop my confidence in communication with the adults who worked within the school. At the beginning of placement, I was nervous and didn’t tend to join in on much conversation between the other members of staff that I had not yet been introduced to. I feel that the majority of my conversation within the first couple days was with other students within the school and although I was communicating with the other members of staff it was only very little amounts. However, within a short space of time, I began to feel less nervous and got to know all members of staff through engaging in conversation. All staff members were very welcoming during my time on placement and I feel this contributed greatly to me overcoming this nervousness in such a short period of time.
Area Requiring Progress
I feel that the area which I still need to work on is one particular aspect of my body language. I naturally tend to stand with my legs crossed. This could convey myself negatively due to making me seem less approachable to both pupils and staff as my body language is closed. It may also convey nervousness or convey me in a way that I’m not willing to participate and therefore is an area which I wish to develop in.
Action Plan
In order to overcome my area for improvement I am going to focus on becoming more aware of how I am standing in comfortable situations within my day to day life and try to undo the habit of crossing my legs. Hopefully, this will help me to omit this fully.
