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Working Together Presentation

At the beginning of semester 1, we were put in to groups containing primary education teachers, social workers and community learning and development workers for our Working Together module. We worked together throughout the semester, attended an agency visit together to Armitstead Child Development Centre and met up every week, ultimately working towards our end goal of presenting a 15 minute presentation about our agency visit and how we worked together as a group. I was very lucky to be placed into a group of people who were very hard working, and each individual put in an equal amount of effort and time. We all brought a different perspective and experience to the group, and I thoroughly enjoyed taking time to sit back and listen to their entertaining, but very real stories.

Although I had no problem with speaking within my group and sharing my experiences and thoughts, the thought of the upcoming presentation was always at the back of my mind. I have never been a confident speaker, and am not the type of person to speak out during lectures and voice my thoughts or opinions. This is a confidence issue that I have always had, and is something that I am working towards overcoming, although I know this is not something that will be solved overnight. Going into the presentation, I was extremely nervous, even though I was confident that my group had worked hard to produce a good presentation, and we had rehearsed together several times. This nervous feeling did not go away until after the presentation was over, however as I delivered the presentation, I did begin to feel more at ease and my confidence did grow slightly. I personally feel that the fact that it was a group presentation was both a positive and negative thing, the positive thing being that I had the support and reassurance from my group members, and the negative thing being that if I had not delivered the presentation to the best of my ability, I would not only be letting myself down, but my group members as well.

On reflection of the presentation, I do feel that I delivered my part of the presentation well, and did not let my lack of confidence get the better of me. Although presentations and voicing my opinions during lecture are never going to be my favourite thing, I do believe that I need to challenge myself by doing this, in order to become a more confident individual.

Resource Workshop

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My first seminar for our Values: Self Society and the Professions module was an eye opening experience.

On arriving at the seminar, we were separated into five different groups, and each group were given a large brown envelope. We were asked to come up with a tool which would be useful to a 1^st year university student using only the materials contained in the envelope. On emptying our envelope, we soon discovered that we had been very fortunate with what we had received, as we had a large variety of materials such as coloured pens and pencils, coloured card and paper, rulers, rubbers, paper clips and post it notes. After throwing around several ideas, we shortly decided that the best use of our resources would be to create a personalised timetable.

We presented this to the rest of the class, informing them that our timetable was colour coded, had a small map of the campus, had post it notes for reminders and social events, and even had an emergency pack which contained everything a pupil would need when taking notes in a lecture. We were very pleased with what we had produced as it was very bright and eye catching, due to the amount of resources we had been given. We were also showered with praise, which indicated to us that we had done a good job. However, on listening to the other group’s presentation, it soon became clear to us that each group had received less and less, and when it came to the last group they had received next to nothing. Despite this, they had put in their best efforts but were still shot down, and told their idea was, pretty much, rubbish. It was then that I realised that there was more to this task than meets the eye.

I am embarrassed to say that we did not think to offer the other groups any of the resources we were not using, as were so caught up in the excitement of making our own timetable, which resulted in us ignoring what was going on around us. As a class, we then discussed the purpose of the task, and how important it is to be aware of your surroundings, and how, as teachers, we should never discriminate against a child for any reason, and every child should be given equal opportunities, regardless of their upbringing or lifestyle.

I think the seminar was a fun but effective task, as I will now always be extra careful that I am giving each child the same equal opportunities, and be extra vigilant that I am sharing my time equally between all my pupils, both on placement, and throughout my professional career.