Chloe Pratt UWS ITE ePDP

Strengths

Throughout my placement it was evident I had some different communication strengths. My strengths were mainly found within verbal communication as I was able to very my pitch and tone when reading a book. This ensured the children were engaged and it brought some enthusiasm into the reading. When reading what different characters were saying I was able to use tone and pitch to show what character was talking. The children loved this and it kept them follow on with the reading. I also had good use of facial expressions, not just within reading but during different lessons and even just when speaking to children and lunch or break times. I ensured I smiled as much as possible which encouraged the children to like me which also helped them to respect me more as a teacher.

Area of most progress

Over the two weeks my confidence grew a lot. At the start of my first week in was quite shy and struggled to participate in conversations within the staff room and with the children. As the time went on and I got to know the school, pupils and teachers better I was able to interact more with teachers and pupils. I also had the opportunity to take a short lesson which got me really involved with the children and they were relying on me therefore I had to be confident to show I knew what I was talking about. By the end of my placement I had no worries getting interacting with conversation within the staffroom. I was also confident in speaking to all the children and offering support to the pupils, class teacher, classroom assistant and the overall school.

Area of requiring progress

From my feedback I can see that I need to work on adding in more hand gestures. I found that I would usually just have my hands by my side or behind my back. This may have been caused due to nerves and during tasks such as reading it was hard to incorporate hand gestures. At the beginning of my placement I tried using hand gestures when talking to the children however I felt like it distracted them so I struggled to continue using gestures throughout my placement. Thinking back my hand gestures may have been overpowering therefore this is why the children were focusing on the gestures more than what I was saying therefore I need to find out different strategies to improve this.

Action plan

I will continue my strengths and plan to work on my development needs by seeking help and advice from my peers, tutors, academic sources and real life experiences.

Group and Leadership

Our workshop was based on a den building challenge where we had to work as a team to create a suitable den with a roof and three sides. Everyone in my group worked as a team to collect resources and to put our ideas together to create this den, therefore I don’t feel that our group had a leader as everyone played their own role. The most challenging part about working in this group was some ideas weren’t conveyed very clearly therefore it left some people unaware of what was going on.

Explaining

When we joined up with another group to explain to each other about how we created our dens, I feel the group explained their process to us very clearly therefore I was able to understand how they found their ideas. The had two main spokespeople therefore this made it more clear as not everyone was jumping in the conversation.

Environment

Being in an outdoor environment made it slightly more difficult to communicate within the group. This is because we had to speak louder than what we would indoors and also using different resources than what we would normally use. The wind was slightly distracting therefore I had to pay close attention when trying to listen to someone speaking. I also had to speak more clearly in order for my peers to fully understand what I was saying.

Negotiation

We were not successful in our negotiation task as it was a very difficult task. We had to convince someone from another team to join our team. This was difficult because no one was willing to give up their hard work in their own group. We tried different bribing tecniques such as ” we’ll give your group this pole if we can have you in return”. Our materials didn’t excite anyone therefore we didn’t succeed.