Over the past two week I have been on placement in a primary school. It was a very challenging yet extremely rewarding experience and I feel like I progressed greatly in the short time.
Something I think I did well over the course of the fortnight and I would consider a strength would be how well I was able to adjust my register. Being aware of who you are speaking to is vital when needing to change your tone and language. When speaking to Primary 2’s you wouldn’t use the same formal language you would speak to the head teacher with or the tone you would speak to the Primary 7’s with. Adjusting your register is very important as you would seem condescending speaking to another teacher in the tone and pitch you speak to the youngest children in. This is something i think I managed to do well over the time in school.
The area I think I made the most progress with over my time spent in the school would be my confidence with taking groups of children and leading activities. In the beginning I found this quite difficult as I was unsure how to approach it but as the weeks went on I became much more confident with this sort of task and enjoyed taking the groups out.
An area I think I still need to work on is ensuring I always show open body language. Often I found myself crossing my arms or holding my fists which displays closed body language. This is something that I definitely need to work on as it is something I will be marked down on in the future.
I worked with Tayler to discuss and compare our feedback checklists. We both agreed with that his strengths were that he spoke very clearly and and at a suitable volume for the classroom setting. In addition, we both agreed that he maintained good eye contact with his pupils throughout. An area of development for the teacher would be to help expand his pupils answers and responses to help support their learning. There were no surprises when comparing my checklist with Tayler as we had very similar results.
I found these tasks fairly easy due to being given the feedback checklist. It made it really clear how to answer and helped me notice positive and negatives things in the way he presents and teaches.
Feedback can be a very positive experience if the person giving it is being critical to help you improve. Without the intentions to help you better yourself then it is just judgement which doesn’t help anyone thrive.
If there was only one thing I could take from these tasks it would be that there are good ways and bad ways to give feedback. Feedback is a great tool if given in a way that helps expand learning and not just put you down about what you’ve done wrong. I will take this with me on placement in future years and onto the career when giving feedback to pupils, whether that be homework or class talks.
I am excited for placement but also very nervous. It will be a great experience and can’t wait to see all the theory we have been learning in practice.
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