Monthly Archives: March 2018

Reflection on Experiences to date

1^st Year Placement – Primary 4

During this 6-week placement I got an insight into the Scottish Primary Education system. I taught group and whole class lessons covering every curricular area. I learnt the processes and stages of teaching a lesson effectively, using engaging and positive techniques. I was challenged with have a class that had three children with learning difficulties and this was a good experience for me as I learnt a lot form them. I learnt how to deal with different behaviours effectively to get the results I wanted and how to build trust between a teacher and pupil. By the end of the placement I felt I had learnt and accomplished so much. My knowledge had grown drastically and I was able to teach a class on my own and deal with all kinds of behaviour, from the start of the day right until the end. My feedback from my tutor and class teacher was all positive and they guided me in the right direction for improvements, alternative ways and next steps.

I was lucky to have a supportive school through my placement, which really helped me improve my teachings. I feel next time I teach I will have a much more vast knowledge on how teaching works and how to teach as this experience taught me so much for my first year of university.

My action plan for my next placement is to use all the knowledge i collected from this placement and build upon it to make my knowledge even deeper and greater.

Nursery Assistant

During the summer after my first year of university had finished I become a nursery assistant for the summer. This was a great opportunity for me as it enabled me to carry on my knowledge from my first year placement into the nursery environment. I was responsible for children from the age of 2 to the age of 5. I got a sense of what it is like to work with the youngest children of the school system and learn what roles and duties it entails. These included; teaching, reading, preparing snack and lunch, doing creative activities, being responsible for outside play, toileting, cleaning and assessing children’s progress.

I had good experience in teaching the age 4/5 there alphabet and linking this to physical activities in the nursery room, e.g. find something beginning with E. I also had a good experience in teaching manners at meal times.

I decided form this experience that I prefer to work with older children had they have more prior understanding and knowledge which aids teaching. Whereas in the nursery it is a lot of play and less teaching. I feel I could have been more involved with the teaching aspect of the job as that is what I was studying at university. If I got this opportunity again I would ask to do more teaching along side the other assistants.

Audit of Skills, Knowledge and Personal Attributes

Connecting Science, Maths & Music

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In Peter’s workshop today we learnt about waves and vibrations. So what is a vibration? Where do you come across vibrations? And what happens during a vibration?

A vibration is the forward and backward motion of an object in a regular pattern. Vibrations can be so fast that you cannot see them. Vibrations start of big and become smaller and smaller unless energy is provided to keep the waves big. These vibration make sound occur.

Vibrations are detected by the ear. Once the sound travel to our ear, our ear drum vibrates and these vibrations are passed through the three small bones (called ossicles) to a spiral structure called the cochlea. Signals are passed from the cochlea to the brain through the auditory nerve, and our brain interprets these signals as sound.

We come across vibrations in every day life. A major vibration you would find it to communicate without is your vocal cords! Your vocal cord vibrate when you speak to make sound. In school when you ping a ruler or elastic band over an object you can often see the vibrations, the waves going backwards and forwards. If you go to a music festival and stand beside the huge loud speakers you can see and hear the bass vibrating the speaker. You can see and hear vibrations when they are at low frequencies.

Sound travels outwards in oscillations (backwards and forwards motion), in all directions, from the equilibrium point. The air around the equilibrium point creates the sound waves. Sound travels in longitudinal waves. Waves are made up of compressions and rarefactions. Compression happens when molecules are forced, or pressed, together. Rarefaction is just the opposite, it occurs when molecules are given extra space and allowed to expand.

Sounds waves need a medium to travel through, they will travel in a gas, liquid or solid – not empty space. The vibrations shake up the particles around them and these particle create a domino effect for the sound the travel. You can experiment with these three forms by making string telephones, talking underwater and putting a drinking glass to a wall.

To make something louder you need to add more energy to it, the term amplitude can be used to refer to loudness. Amplitude is the maximum height of the wave from its resting position – the greater the amplitude, the louder the sound. Pitch is to do with the frequency or number of vibrations per second. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz). The closer together the waves are and the higher the pitch. On a guitar sting, the shorter the sting the higher the pitch will be as the vibration have less material to cover therefore the pattern of oscillations is more regular.

At the end of Peter’s workshop we got to experiment with vibrations and Beth, Beth and I experimented with music.