It is hard to believe that the end of second year is creeping up. With the first week of placement complete, there are only 5 weeks left until I am half way there to graduating! I have entered this placement with an optimistic attitude and am feeling less worried. I would put this down to the fact I am going somewhere familiar. I know the layout of the school and whilst some things have changed, the daily routines are similar to when I attended the school as a pupil. Of course, I was still my usual anxious self on the first day. My head was buzzing with questions like “What will my class be like?”, “What if the children or staff don’t like me?” and “Will the staff chat to me much in the staff room?”. However, I had absolutely no reason to worry! After day 1, I was already feeling a lot more confident that this placement would be more enjoyable and less daunting than my upper years placement last year.
My main learning point in first year was that implementing behaviour management strategies is crucial. I had a rather difficult class last year who tested the patience of myself along with many staff. I found it extremely difficult to gain their respect and ensure their behaviour did not affect their learning. It felt like no matter what I tried, some pupils just refused to listen to anyone. This year, behaviour isn’t a major issue. Whilst I still need to use behaviour management strategies, I don’t believe it will be as difficult to maintain pupils’ attention and already think they have more respect when they are asked to do something. As it is getting closer to Easter, they are beginning to get tired and less willing to do work but they have still got on with their work when prompted. Last year, several pupils questioned the class teacher and myself on what the point was in what they were doing and refused to complete the work.
Class Details
I am working with a P2/3 class this placement. This is my first experience of a composite class ever as I have never been a pupil or teacher in one, adding a new and different element to my teaching experience. There are 27 pupils in the class which is manageable. I was shocked and petrified when I was told that 19 of the pupils were boys, meaning there were only 8 girls. The reason this scared me so much was that I have worked more with girls this age through my involvement with Rainbow Girl Guides as a leader. I have always found girls easier to work with as they warmed to me more than the boys. However, I am very much ready for the challenge of working in a less familiar situation. I think this ratio will help improve my confidence when teaching boys and I may even surprise myself with how I get on with them.
There is a fully qualified female teacher and a classroom assistant who is also a fully qualified female teacher. When I heard that I would be teaching in front of not just one but two qualified teachers, panic started to kick in. Not just this but one of them had taught me when I was a child- I was so afraid of messing up in front of them! My worries were diminished after chatting to the class teacher and meeting the classroom assistant and I know that they are very much wanting me to feel at ease and ask them for support at anytime.
The class features a wide range of abilities with 20 P2’s and 8 P3’s, meaning differentiation is likely to be a focus for this placement. I had experience of differentiation with my class last year as they had 5 different mathematics groups and 4 language groups. I imagine this will be a different kind of experience with differentiation as they are so much younger than my P6 class in first year. As the children are only 6 or 7 and some are not achieving the level they should be, a high amount of support is required. This seems like it may prove difficult as I can just imagine 15 pupils needing help at once but adapting to this is all part of the learning curve!
Behaviour Management
The behaviour management strategies are quite familiar to me from placement last year and attending this school as a child. The methods used include the class teacher raising her hand and the child must raise their hands too. Once they have their hand in the air, they know they should zip the lips and listen and look at the teacher. This was used in my placement school last year. Sometimes the class teacher claps twice and the pupils know to look at her and be quiet. A new technique for me is the use of an egg shaker to quieten the children down.
Within the past fortnight, the class teacher has noticed the noise levels getting to an outdoor level and introduced a noise level meter. This goes from 0 to 5 with 0 being silence and 5 being outdoor voices. If children reach a 5 within the classroom, the class teacher takes away some of their playtime at break or lunch. So far this has proven effective. At first I found this technique quite confusing as I was unsure of what each number represented, however, after some clarification I am now confident with using this technique. A system which has been in place since I was a pupil is the Yellow and Red Card system. A pupil is usually given a warning before receiving a yellow card and another warning before moving from a yellow to a red card. Often, a red card will result in a visit to the headmaster’s office.
A whole school reward system that has been used for years is House Points. There are four houses: Exorna, Dunboe, Benone and Mussenden. Pupils can earn house points through excellent work, sporting and academic achievements and good behaviour. Each month there is a focus on what children can do to earn house points e.g. March is all about good behaviour. I have tried to use as many of these strategies whilst teaching. Thankfully, I have not needed to use the Yellow and Red Card system as pupils have considered their behaviour and changed their actions when prompted.
Week 1
This first week of placement has been exhausting! I have found it hard to get back into the routine of waking up early and spending the whole day in school. Thankfully this year I have been able to leave school before 4pm everyday as my class finish at 2pm so I am able to do some planning and work from 2-3pm if there is not an older class coming for Religious Education.
The class have circle time every Monday morning which has been a new experience for me as P6 did not do circle time last year. A toy bear called Boyd is held by the person who is speaking. I believe that circle time is an important part of the classroom routines as it helps improve self esteem (Burns, 1982). On Wednesday morning I led circle time with the theme of Friendship. We passed Boyd around and said our name and our favourite colour as a way of getting to know each other better and to demonstrate how we need to get to know our friends in order to be a good friend. I then asked pupils to tell me what they liked about the person to their right to show the importance of encouraging one another and building others up. Finally, we played a game where one person leaves the room and two people swap places. The person who left the room must guess who swapped places, encouraging pupils to look out for one another. To finish off circle time, I asked pupils to describe how they were feeling using the weather e.g. happy=sunshine, angry= thunder and sad=rainy day. This helps to keep a track on how pupils are feeling and check up on those who constantly describe their feelings negatively. If I were to do this again, I would not give the example of thunder as the boys liked the idea of thunder even though they were not feeling angry that day.
At the moment the focus in language is looking at different phonics such as ‘ee’ and practicing their handwriting and writing sentences using one word e.g. went. I taught a lesson on ‘ai’ within words which allowed me to develop my skill of creating new resources through a booklet. I also made use of ready made materials such as Jolly Phonics to introduce the learning.
The children responded well to this lesson with great listening from start to finish. I only had to bring a few pupils back onto task. Most pupils were able to complete the set tasks and move onto colouring in as an extension activity whilst some pupils were only able to fill in the blanks and write sentences for some of the words. Several pupils required support during the activities especially with their sentence construction and the crossword. As they are only P2/3, most of them had not met the concept of a crossword before and many ended up confused and doing it incorrectly. I should have explained it in greater depth to ensure all pupils understood that some words go across and some go down with one letter per box.
Working with Children in Smaller Groups
This week has involved a lot of observation and supporting pupils as I am new and don’t know the pupils’ needs and routines well enough just yet to teach them as a whole class too often. I have led group work outside of the classroom such as spellings with Primary 3’s which has allowed me to see what level they are at and ensure they all get a chance to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. One thing I realised during this was that I was forgetting just how young pupils are compared to my 11 year olds last year. I asked pupils to write the sentence “The cloud looked like candyfloss”. This was rather silly of me! They attempted the word ‘candyfloss’ but some struggled significantly. I need to remember to match the pupils’ level and needs. I have taken reading groups which has been interesting as some pupils are working at a Primary 1 level whilst some are exceeding expectations. It has been a great chance to relive my childhood as they still read The Magic Key books! One thing I have noticed through these reading groups and spellings is that it is important that pupils who are off sick are given the appropriate support to catch up when they return. We must ensure that they receive the same level of support as the pupils who were there during the initial teaching of a topic. Additionally, I was reminded of how much children can surprise us. I was reading with a girl who had been off on Monday and she was struggling with words such as ‘put’ at the start of the book and by the end she was able to say ‘water’ without any help. Children can really take us by surprise!
Working with Other Classes
I have had opportunities to work with pupils in the Primary 5/6 class as 3 of them were sent to my classroom as their teacher was preparing for ITV news and the Mayor of Coleraine’s visit on Thursday for our Plastic Smart Campaign (You can read a bit about it here- https://news.causewaycoastcommunity.co.uk/business/first-plastic-smart-award-presented-to-hezlett-primary-school/). They were working on adding and subtracting fractions and converting them. As it was quite a difficult topic for them, they required some support especially the P6 who was completing a harder booklet. On Friday, we had a plastic smart day which involved a litter pick for all classes around the school except Primary 5/6 who went to the beach. I joined them for the morning to collect rubbish on the beach. It was shocking how much litter we found. On the walk down to the beach, one girl counted 54 bottles! I believe that days like this encourage pupils to consider where they put their rubbish. It has been amazing to see how passionate they are about it especially after being on TV!
Outside of the Classroom
Our class went to the computer suite to use a program similar to paint to draw an Easter bunny. Interestingly, it seemed that although many children are familiar with technology, many struggled with using a mouse. This may be due to the increased use of touch screens rather than a mouse. Nowadays, it is not uncommon for specialists to come into the school for subjects such as Physical Education. This was the case for my class when they played football in PE on Thursday. I quite like the idea of this because I believe that as primary teachers, it is important for us to be interested in all aspects of the curriculum, however, we cannot be experts in all aspects. By bringing in a specialist, it takes some pressure off the teacher and allows them to have some marking time or build a rapport with their pupils by joining in and having some fun with them.
Final Thoughts on Week One
With one week over, I was feeling quite tired and ready for the weekend. I am much happier this year but I am still unsure of teaching being the right career for me. It will obviously take time to fully determine this as I cannot know until I am teaching the pupils more. I feel as I get to know the pupils more, the more I enjoy working with them. I need to try and get over the idea of feeling judged when I teach as I know deep down that the teacher and classroom assistant are there to help me not judge me! Week 2- let’s go!
References:
Burns, D. (1982). Self Concept Development and Education. Sydney: Holt Rinehart and Winston.
