The other day we had our first tutorial, for this we were put into 5 different groups. Each group was given a packet of resources, everyone would later come to find out that the resources in these packets extremely varied – some groups had lots whereas other groups had practically nothing. We were instructed to create something (just using our packet of resources) that someone just starting university could use. For this task I was in Group 5. My group was given roughly 4 paperclips, a sheet of plain A4 paper, 2 sticky notes, 2 rubber bands, 2 pens and finally a pencil.

To begin with we were pretty dumbfounded as to what we could make using our very limited resources, and our spirit was crushed even more when we looked to our left and seen that Group 1 probably had more resources than the other 4 groups put together. But, as a group we soldiered on and managed to come up with something – based on our limited resources – that could be deemed pretty useful. We decided to make an essentials kit which consisted of the pens, paperclips and sticky notes. (Genius, I know). The group as a whole was pretty pleased with our finished product as we didn’t have much to work with, there really was an overall sense of achievement. This was until we got feedback from our lecturer. She seemed very disinterested in the product we had created and it almost seemed like she thought what we had made was a joke. At this point I was feeling a little worried thinking the group must have done something wrong as other groups were getting compliments etc on their products, meanwhile we were getting basically overlooked. The lecturer then had to go round and score everyone’s finished product, my group ended up with the lowest score of all. A measly 1 out of 10. After receiving this score you could tell everyone in the group felt a little upset, we had tried our best and it just didn’t seem good enough. The atmosphere in the room was a little uncomfortable at this point, the groups who scored low were a little unsure of what to do and you could tell the groups who scored higher didn’t exactly want to celebrate what with the rest of us feeling down.

This is when the lecturer came clean with the class about the whole purpose of this activity. She had been given instructions to treat all of the groups differently, the group with the most stuff (Group 1) was to be given lots of attention and support and this was to diminish as she went along the groups – ultimately leaving Group 5 with no support whatsoever. We were told the purpose of this was to show what it is like in a classroom sometimes. Some kids have nothing, whereas some kids have lots and prosper as a result. The lesson behind this was that you can’t treat children differently and must try and divide your attention between you’re class. In addition to this, the message was that when we do become teachers we need to be able to identify when a child may need a little more help than others and we need to be prepared to work with this child to help them reach their full potential – not just ignore them. This was very eye opening as I realised this type of thing happens more often than not. When I look back at my education I can remember times in the classroom when the pupils who were doing well were given more praise and attention than they probably ever needed, while others were left in the background which I now know first hand is not a nice feeling. Overall, this was a fun first tutorial and I feel I learned a valuable lesson for my future career.