Tales of a Newly Qualified Teacher

January 20, 2016

Adventure Aberdeen – Am I Ready?

With our learning from life placement coming round quickly – I thought I would reflect on my experiences I have so far that will help with my time at Adventure Aberdeen.

The main categories of experience I feel that will be of use in this placement are: my first year placement, my work, my experiences from secondary school and university lectures on outdoor education.

My main reason for choosing Adventure Aberdeen was based on my own keen interesting in sports from my upbringing and my work life. I have worked as casual staff for Aberdeenshire Council for over 3 years now as a Leisure Attendant (lifeguard), an Aquatics Instructor and a Coaching Assistance. I had a variety of sporting qualifications and experience teaching sports in different environments outside of a school. This has mainly become apart of my adult life due to my keen interest in sports as a child. I feel that this background of experiences in sports will help me when out on placement with Adventure Aberdeen.

I also have a job as a Sessional Playworker at The Yard Scotland: an indoor and outdoor adventure centre for children with additional support needs (ASN). This job gives me great experience working hands on with children who have ASN in a playful setting and gives me the opportunity to learn about different ASN that I may meet in a classroom. As well as this I feel that this will be useful experience when I go on placement at Adventure Aberdeen as when I visited Adventure Aberdeen before securing my placement I was told of the work they do with children with ASN which means thanks to my part time job at The Yard I will already have experiences of working with children with ASN outside of a classroom.

In my first year placement at university, there were so many things I gained from this placement it would be impossible to go through it all. However, the main things I felt I learnt from this placement was planning and delivery of lessons, organisation, keeping my folio of evidence and about different ASN needs in the classroom. These are all things that I feel will impact on placement at Adventure Aberdeen in different ways.

Throughout secondary school, I feel I gained multiple different experiences that will continue to assist my journey through placement at Adventure Aberdeen. I gained my Community Sports Leaders Award (CSLA) in my sixth year of academy which meant I was also selected for the Aberdeenshire Leaders programme in 2014. This means that I knowledge on a range of different sports, qualification and voluntary experiences through gaining my CSLA qualification and my place on the Aberdeenshire Leaders programme.

The last area of experiences I feel that will assist me through my placement is my lectures in Outdoor Education. Although one of the reasons I chose this placement was also down to the fact we do not have enough time at university to be lucky enough to have many lectures on Outdoor Education. On the other hand, I knew this was something I wanted to be able to include in my practice when I am a qualified teachers and knew this was the time I could use to gain some experience in this area. However, we do have some inputs on Outdoor Education such as the one I blogged about before on Literacy and History, which you can read here, which I will be able to use the information we have been given in these lectures and workshops for my placement. I know this is an area I will look to develop through this placement through the hands on experience Adventure Aberdeen can provide me with as well as through reading up on different ideas I can use.

So far, I feel I have many skills and an array of knowledge that I can use for my placement this year and there are areas that I am looking forward to developing through the experience at Adventure Aberdeen.

January 20, 2016

What is Adventure Aberdeen?

For my learning from life placement I have chosen to go to Adventure Aberdeen. Throughout this placement, we are given the freedom to record our experiences in any form. I have chosen to blog about my time at Adventure Aberdeen so I can include photographs, videos or links to anything I am doing on placement.

Therefore, before I start to blog about my placement I thought I would explain a little bit about Adventure Aberdeen.

Adventure Aberdeen is a not for profit organisation within Aberdeen City Council which works with children ranging from preschool to secondary school for Outdoor Education. Although the organisation is not just for schools and they do packages for everyone – I will mainly be working with children of school age so I am going to focus mainly on what they do with children at school.

Adventure Aberdeen’s mission statement is “We strive to: ‘Inspire Learning through Adventure’.” They do this mainly through Outdoor Education which a huge part of the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland. Adventure Aberdeen state “by immersing individuals (sometimes physically!) into a new natural environment, all the body’s physical senses, emotions and key social skills are used to rationalise the situation and learn.” This is a chance for children to develop their practical intelligence from Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence (1997).

One of Adventure Aberdeen’s main site for providing learning in the outdoors is at Cromdale Outdoor Centre, their residential base, which is located in Speyside at the heart of the Cairngorms National Park. Adventure Aberdeen can adapted their residential programme to suit every group. After my discussion with the staff at Adventure Aberdeen, I am hopeful that I may get to spend a week at Cromdale Outdoor Centre and work with a residential group.

Adventure Aberdeen have different programmes from preschool, primary and secondary children with different learning opportunities to help meet the Outdoor Learning experiences and outcomes in Curriculum for Excellence which I hope to be able to be apart of throughout this placement.

This has just been a brief post to give some more information about Adventure Aberdeen, who they are and what they do. There is more information on everything they do on their website, which you can access here.

December 5, 2015December 6, 2015

Finale of Discovering Mathematics

My essay is submitted. The last workshop is over and it’s the end of the discovering mathematics module. To round off the module, I thought I would post an end of module blog post.

Was the module what I expected?

Discovering mathematics wasn’t exactly what I expected if I am being honest. I expected it to be a lot more directed at our future in the education profession (even with it being an elective module – I still thought this because it was an education elective) and I sort of thought it would be like our maths inputs from Teaching Across the Curriculum module in second semester of first year.

Did the module disappoint me?

Not at all – even without it being what I expected it to be. The best thing about the module had to be Richard’s excitement and enthusiasm. There isn’t many people who can take demand planning, turn it into a game and have everyone in the palm of their hands.

What did I gain from the module?

Before the module, I thought I knew a fair bit about mathematics. After the module, I realised I only knew the mathematics I was taught in school and mainly from secondary school which I perceived as pointless during and after standard grade maths – there was no relevance to my life which is exactly why I didn’t finish higher maths.

During the module, I realised just how relevant maths is to our day to day life (for everyone) and society. However, I still stand by the fact I think standard grade and higher mathematics is pointless… Who even uses standard deviation really?

The mathematics we discovered throughout this module was maths and music (who doesn’t listen to music?), the mathematics behind pineapples, the mathematics outside the classroom: it is the type of mathematics that is simply all around us. But it is also the mathematics we are never taught about at school. This module has given me a fresh outlook on why we need mathematics which leads nicely onto the next question I had to ask myself…

Where/when will I use this in the future?

The fresh outlook on mathematics that I have gained throughout this module has made me realise just how little relevance there is in learning mathematics out of a textbook for children. Examples in textbooks go on about little Jimmy buying 30 Watermelons (really?).

This module has given me multiple ideas of how to bring relevance into mathematics when I teach – even without the module being directed at teachers.

A particular lecture that stood out for me, for teaching in the future, was the maths and astronomy lecture by Dr Simon Reynolds. I think the majority, if not all, children learn about space when they are in primary school and I have never thought about the space in space. Yes, teachers tend to leave out learning about the space in space – the irony. Dr Simon Reynolds spoke to us about the size of the planets, pictures normally used to convey the planet sizes compared to one another but never about the distance between each planet. This will definitely affect my teaching when I teach a class about space.

Furthermore, in the future (a little bit closer than getting into my own classroom) I plan to take the information I learnt from Will Berry’s input on outdoor education and maths for my second year Learning from Life placement at Adventure Aberdeen and hopefully use this in relation to my placement as Adventure Aberdeen is an outdoor learning centre.

Where is my maths anxiety now?

We began the module with Tara Harper asking us to fill in an survey on how anxious we were about teaching mathematics and how we felt about mathematics (which I blogged about earlier), so I thought after going through the module it would be quite nice to reflect on this.

At the beginning my maths anxiety wasn’t overly high compared to a few of my friends anyway. I would say if I am being honest, it hasn’t really changed. I am still anxious to get graded on this module. I would however say that I do feel a bit more prepared for teaching maths in school now as I have many more ideas that I can use in the classroom (and I know my friends also have multiple ideas as well that they will hopefully share) and I can now approach maths in a classroom with ideas that will be a lot more relevant to a child’s life.

However, my friend who stated she had “awful maths anxiety” before this module now “definitely feels more confident with understanding more difficult maths such as (the) Golden Ratio and (the) Fibonacci (sequence)” and that this can all be put down to Richard. (Alexander, 2015)

Finally, do I recommend it for next year’s second years?

If this hasn’t already convinced you – whether you love or hate maths, whether you are great or just feel you can’t do maths – this module is for everyone.

Yes it isn’t directed at teaching but you are bound to take lots away from it whether you think you know a lot about maths or you know nothing.

There is no “difficult” maths. There isn’t really any sums involved. You are looking in depth at the ideas and principles behind maths (and no it is not as boring as that sounds) as well as how maths comes into society (it really isn’t just the traditional STEM subjects like I first thought – who knew there was maths in a pineapple?…).

Richard’s enthusiasm and excitement will see that it is another great module next year again I am sure.

December 3, 2015

History and Literacy Outdoors!

Outdoor Education – two words that make any lecture automatically more interesting to me.

For Will’s input when he said we were actually going outdoors today I was as excited as any primary school child! As soon as we were allowed outside, off we went skipping away like little primary two’s.

We literally went off skipping in excitement…

As we only had twenty minutes before we had to be back into the input, we couldn’t go particularly far or find particularly much. However, what I did find that we could discuss was road safety, road signs and markings such as yellow lines – discussing with the children what they thought they meant. I also thought of reading things like bus time tables as this is a skill that is probably going to be relevant to their lives and is also something no one ever taught me to do.

However, after the input I went off for a wonder by myself down to the riverside. I already knew about the poem stanza down at the riverside and this was originally my first thought when Will told us to find something to do with literacy in the outdoors.

I was thinking of this as an upper years outdoor education lesson for history and literacy which could meet all four of these curriculum areas (Scottish Government, 2009):

Literacy (Reading): I can make notes, organise them under suitable headings and use them to understand information, develop my thinking, explore problems and create new texts, using my own words as appropriate. LIT 2-15a (p.31)

Literacy (Writing): By considering the type of text I am creating, I can select ideas and relevant information, organise these in an appropriate way for my purpose and use suitable vocabulary for my audience. LIT 2-26a (p.36)

Health and Wellbeing: I am experiencing enjoyment and achievement on a daily basis by taking part in different kinds of energetic physical activities of my choosing, including sport and opportunities for outdoor learning, available at my place of learning and in the wider community. HWB 2-25a (p.86)

Social Studies (History): I can investigate a Scottish historical theme to discover how past events or the actions of individuals or groups have shaped Scottish society. SOC 2-03a (p.283)

My lesson idea was to take the children down to the riverside with a notebook, first allow them to take some time to write down some words to describe what they seen, smelt, felt etc. I would give them some time to have a read of the tourist signs to see what information they would take about the Tay Bridge. I would allow some time for the children to discuss why they think we need the Tay Bridge.

Some pictures of the information signs for the Tay Bridge

My final part of the lesson would be for them to read the poem “The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay” by William McGonagall (no date) which reads (a small extract from the section of the poem at the riverside):

“Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!

I hope that God will protect all passengers

By night and by day

And that no accident will befall them while crossing

The Bridge of the Silvery Tay

For that would be most awful to be seen

Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green”

I would allow them to take notes from the poem stanza and give them time to discuss the poem. After going back to the classroom, I would have a copy of the poem for the children to read the full version if they wish.

Some pictures of the poem engraved at the River Tay.

When we got back to the class I would take some time for a whole class discussion on what they are learnt from the trip: from what they could initially see, smell, feel; to the history of the Tay Bridge; to McGonagall’s poem.

Whilst we were out, I would take pictures of the experiences, videos of the children and what they are thinking. Then when I would get them to reflect on what they have learnt in any way they wish the write it for example in a poem, diary entry, a creative story.

If I was carrying this on for a topic of the history of Dundee, when we were on our outdoor trip, I would perhaps ask the children to take a carrier bag with them and collect things to make a picture of the Tay Bridge for cross-curricular links with art.

As the Magdalen Green is continual mentioned throughout the poem – I would take the children out to the Magdalen Green for them to explore this as it is also a crucial part of Dundonian history. Allow them to go round collecting facts, items etc. for another outdoor lesson on the history of Dundee.

When we were finished the topic on the Tay Road Bridge: I would take the children down with chalk, allow them to add to the information (that they are learnt over the topic) provided at the Riverside on the ground. Documenting this with photographs and videos for the children assessment. I would also allow them to do this down at pavement at Magdalen Green with the facts and information they have learnt about Magdalen and its link to the history of Dundee. They could use the photographs in a portfolio for their assessment.

I feel this overall would be a lot more engage and active learning for the children instead of sitting at a desk with textbooks learning about the history of Dundee. These activities also have a lot more cross-curricular links than sitting reading facts out of a textbook about history.

References:

McGonagall, W. (No Date) McGonagall Online: The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay Available at: http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/gems/the-railway-bridge-of-the-silvery-tay (Accessed: 02/12/15)

Scottish Government (2009) Curriculum for Excellence Edinburgh: Scottish Government Available at: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/all_experiences_outcomes_tcm4-539562.pdf (Accessed: 02/12/15)

November 28, 2015December 6, 2015

Maths in the Outdoor!

I have chosen to blog about maths in the outdoors not only for the relevance to the module, Discovering Mathematics, but also for the relevance for my second year placement where I will be doing Outdoor Education.

Before coming to university, I would never have considered myself an outdoorsy person. I did not grow up in the type of family that went camping or went hill walking at the weekend. However, I have realised my keen interest in learning from the outdoors. I thoroughly enjoyed Brenda’s input on the Swedish curriculum and how they focus mainly on learning and playing outdoors. I am always particularly excitable when there is anything to do with health and wellbeing or outdoor education on our timetable – my friends sometimes think I am mad wanting to be outside in the freezing cold weather that we are having right now but personally I could not wait for Will’s outdoor education lecture!

I have realised I have learnt best when I am actively involved in a task and not just remember facts to reproduce my knowledge in an exam and this is something I have taken away from this lecture before I even think about writing what we actual participated in for the lecture. I believe I am not alone in this feeling and that children need to be actively involved in their learning to even remember a lesson let alone what was taught. Outdoor education has the potential to inspire and involve children in an active learning task.

Anyway I have already gone off on a tangent. The Maths and Outdoor Education input.

From what I have already learnt from this module – maths is literally hidden all around us, including outside. Now, you are probably thinking yes I know that if you cut a tree in half and you can tell how old it is from the rings on the stub. However, there is so much more mathematical possibilities outside. I would never had thought the way a wave spirals as it comes into shore would involve mathematics. Yet, as I have already explained this concept in a previous post, “Creative Maths”, the spiral of a wave meets the golden ratio which links with Fibonacci’s sequence. Maths when you are stood outside it literally all around you – there has been mathematics concepts used for designing and creating any building you can see.

In this particular lecture, we looked at navigation in the outdoors. Something through doing my Duke of Edinburgh I thought I knew relatively a lot about – except I didn’t. I knew the basics and that was all. For the reason that learning navigation is something we rarely do these days – we have GPRS on our phones, Sat Nav’s in our cars. Is there really a need for it any more with the technology we have? Simple answer yes. Although there is a great level of convenience with having a technology item tell us straight away where we are going and how long it will take to get there. There is the slight issue that all of the technology we have relies on the device having power. Our phones rely on having internet connect. What happens if we don’t have this? What I realised in this lecture is there are very limited people that have looked at a map recently or even know how to read a map.

I had never thought that I would have considered map reading to be fun. Once we had gone over the basics and everyone understood how to read a map. Will made it into a game – who could get to the next place the fastest. He would be given a set of the 6 point grid references (point A) for the starting position and a second set of 6 point grid references (point B) for where we were going – we had to find out the degree we were “walking” in on the map from point. We had to find who could find the degree the quickest – now we are a group of university students who got very into this and very competitive, very quickly. We all wanted to win.

No one was particular paying much attention to the fact we were having such fun reading a map. It could have kept us entertained for ages. Now with a group of primary fives – potentially it may need to be simplified a bit but I cannot see any reason why they wouldn’t act the same way. It gives them a chance to learn to read maps and actually enjoy it.

I feel this is something I could easily use in my future practice. I could easily take a group of children who have learnt to read maps and allow them to use estimation (another fundamental mathematical principle) to work out how long it would take us to walk from point A to point B using this chart below and compare it to reality of how long it did take us to walk and if we managed to do it in the correct direction the compass told us when we looked at it on the map.

I feel this is a beneficial and relatively easy way to get children engaged, outdoor, actively learning about map reading skills and take it away from constantly looking at a screen for directions and relying on a piece of technology to get us where we need to be.

I am thoroughly looking forward to getting outdoors in my future practice but in the near future for my learning from life placement – I hope to have the opportunity to either put these skills I have learnt into practice or learn even more about it and how it can influence my future practice.

November 16, 2015December 6, 2015

Maths but not as we know it…

What I have realised recently in my Discovering Maths module is that maths is subconsciously all around us in society especially in areas I was totally unaware of. I would never have realised that art and maths had so many links. There is obviously examples such as the ratio for mixing paints, however this module has opened me up to realise that maths is in the art and day to day life around us. I have already blogged about tessellation and how maths links to Islamic art previously. This alone made me think that maths at school was never creative. However, there is more links to maths and creativity!

A pineapple – has a link to maths through the Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence begins with 0,1 and then adds the two previous numbers together so 0,1 then adds 1 onto the sequence, 0,1,1 then adds on 2 to the sequence and 0,1,1,2 then adds on 3, then 5 and so on and so forth. What has this got to do with a pineapple though? A pineapples spiral is linked to the Fibonacci sequence. The layers of spirals increases by two each time, linking to the Fibonacci sequence, which provides the more aesthetically pleasing look of the spiral.

The Fibonacci sequence appears in a lot of nature around of such as spirals in waves, in pinecones, in sunflowers, the list is endless. None of these things I would have begun to interpret into maths before. However, I could see myself using these as intriguing maths ideas in my classroom getting children to look more closely at the Fibonacci number sequence. I would allow the children to have a look at Maths, Art, a pineapple to see if they could figure out the hidden mathematics trying to figure out the pattern before explaining Fibonacci’s sequences and then looking at ideas like the pineapple, to see how it fits into the Fibonacci sequence now they are aware of it.

Some of the ideas that Anna taught us in the lecture I would definitely use in my classroom. Before I tell you which one was the Fibonacci sequence of these two drawing I will allow you to look and decide which you think is more appealing.

CSee4YRXAAACXMP CSee4YMWwAANV9p

The one on the left is before we learnt about maths, art and the link with the Fibonacci sequence and the right is after. The left is just drawing random squares in a square and the right is squares just using numbers from the Fibonacci sequence (for example 1 by 8 or 3 by 3) which is supposed to give it a more exquisite look.

After following the Fibonacci sequence I believe that the Fibonacci sequence may sometimes be hidden into art or subconsciously produced by artists and nature around us but it definitely does, when you are specifically following it, make art seem more attractive. Although, it also took me a lot longer to count the squares to draw it. I feel this would be a more engaging task within maths activity that I could easily use with my middle to upper stage primary school than simply doing number patterns and sequences as well as a great cross curricular link to art.

This has also drawn my interest more into art, as normally I am quite a numerical person and prefer to be surrounded by figures over pictures but the link is something I feel I could delve deeper into to develop my knowledge in art, which is currently quite limited, but still be interested in how the picture came to be and how the Fibonacci numeral system influences it.

November 16, 2015December 6, 2015

Deadly Maths

I could probably guess that maths has ever seemed to be a life or death situation before to many people. I also hadn’t seemed like that to me before our Discovering Mathematics input with Dr Ellie Hothersall. Nevertheless, to doctors that is exactly what maths is. This is another place and job in society that I never thought of linking mathematics to. However, being a doctor means using mathematics to potentially save someone’s life and using mathematics incorrectly means they could potentially make a fatal mistake for their patients.

Doctors use maths every day and every day the maths they do affect the patients they treat. Dr Ellie Hothersall taught us just how much maths doctors us on a daily basis. They are constantly monitoring patients and plotting all of the information they take into several forms of graphs to make sure the patient’s health is improving.

However, one of the most important aspect of their job that they use maths for is prescribing our medication to us. As patients we trust that our doctors are prescribing us the correct amount of medication and telling us correctly when to take the medication and how much medication to take at any time. This can take a lot of mathematics to work out when and how much of a drug to take.

Michael Jackson’s doctor was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for giving the world famous singer an overdose of an intravenous sedative (Graham, 2013) (Unknown, 2011). Jackson died in 2009 (Wikipedia, undated) after allegedly being given too much intravenous drugs including Propofol (“a fast acting hospital sedative” (Unknown, 2011)) which his doctor gave to him to help him sleep. The overdose of drugs – if it was not on propose which has never been proven – would have been a miscalculation of a prescription from his doctor leading to Jackson’s death.

This shows a fatal miscalculation of drugs can lead to someone death. This has happened many times and to ordinary people as well – a doctor in America was charged with murder after killing three of her patients when she prescribed fatal overdoses of drugs they were already addicted to (Gerber et al., 2015).

Although this is not normal practice and these show extreme examples – it goes to show how essential mathematics is to a doctor in their day to day practice. Without their ability to do mathematics there could be a lot more deaths due to overdoses.

There is goes to show that maths is a crucial aspect of the medical profession and it is critical that doctors understand mathematics to continue to prescribe us with medication because if the medication is prescribed wrong it can be a fatal error.

References:

Graham (2013) ‘No I didn’t Kill Michael. He….King of Pop Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2512469/No-I-didnt-kill-Michael-He-did–massive-overdose-using-stash-What-really-happened-night-Jackson-died-Dr-Conrad-Murray-doctor-jailed-death-King-Pop.html (Accessed on 10/11/15)

Gerber et al. (2015) California Doctor Convicted of Murder in Overdose Deaths of Patients Available at: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-doctor-prescription-drugs-murder-overdose-verdict-20151030-story.html (Accessed on 10/11/15)

Unknown (2011) The Drugs Found in Michael Jackson’s Body After He Died Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/15634083/the-drugs-found-in-michael-jacksons-body-after-he-died (Accessed on 10/11/15)

Wikipedia (undated) Death of Michael Jackson Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Michael_Jackson (Accessed on 10/11/15)

November 5, 2015December 6, 2015

Why do we use a base 10 number system?

Easy peasy question many people might think. We have ten fingers so it can be a tool to help us count. However, how many teachers told you as a child to not use your fingers to count? I remember hiding my fingers under the table from around primary five upwards to count.

What about topics that we use in maths that don’t use a base ten system? Time. Time uses a base 60 for minutes and seconds. Time uses a base twelve system for the hours. Why don’t we count in any of these base systems? This is why time can be very difficult for a child to learn. When counting they have only ever used a base ten system and then when we introduce time anything familiar goes out the window. They are now introduced to counting in 60’s for each minute, for each hour. Another student on this elective discussed whether or not we should still be teaching time because of this (Dunne, 2015) – her opinion gives for an interesting read.

So apart from having our fingers as a tool I thought I would have a look into other base systems and the advantages of using a base ten system in this post.

As already discussed briefly in a previous post (“Our Number System”) there have been numerous different number systems which count in different base systems. The Sumerians “developed the earliest known number system” which had a base 60 system. The base 60 numeral system came from two tribes merging together as one used a base 12 numeral system and the other used a base 5 system and the lowest common multiple of both systems would be 60. Their symbols for their number system are below:

A base 60 system would perhaps make teaching time a lot simpler than a base 10 system. It would make sense for the minutes and the seconds but would also be very confusing still for the hours. On the other hand, this system has a lot of symbols which could be quite challenging for children to learn.

However, a base ten system does have a number of benefits. The base 10 system allows for simple explanations of hundred tens and units etc. Using a base two system such as the Arara tribe in the Amazon would get very repetitive and confusing rather quickly but on the other hand using a base 60 system it would take a long time until you exchange it for another to start again. A base 10 system has the benefit that it is big enough to not be repetitive but small enough that you are not continuously counting before exchanging.

This has given me a profound understanding of why our base system has come about. The benefits of the base ten system and why this is simple, as well as complicated when it comes to things like time or angles, for children to learn to count. Although there are many different types of number systems that are not just out normal base ten system or the roman numeral system that we teach children which I could use to broaden children’s knowledge, in my future career, on the different types of number systems such as showing them the yan, tan, tethera… video below as a different type of number system (a base 20 system) used for counting sheep more commonly used in the early 20^th century but still used by farmers now.

References:

Dunne, J. (2015) Is it time to scrap time? Available at: https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/jennysjourney/2015/10/25/is-it-time-to-scrap-time/ (Accessed: 4/11/15)

November 2, 2015November 5, 2015

Learning to Unlearn

When I first heard the phrase “learning to unlearn” I was immediately thinking what on earth. Why would we want to unlearn? Where can the benefit on unlearning things? However, it turns out there are lots of benefits. Driving is an easy one – we learn bad habits, become lazy, stop checking mirrors not long after passing our tests and it only takes one accident to make people think I need to go back to my standard of driving when I passed my test. This is unlearning. It is unlearning bad habits.

Something crucial that I took away from one of our lectures from Professor John Baldacchino on “Learning, Education and schooling” today was that we constantly drill many things into children that they are losing their individual personality and their ability to interpret things differently or as Professor John put it – we are teaching children to think to a standardised model. I began to question why we teach children to be this way. Professor John compare this to art and when we go into an art gallery as a child we are told what to see in a painting. We are told what the painting must be. Why can’t we allow children to use their imagination of what a picture may be?

My former flat mate and fantastic artist drew a picture for one of her briefing which I have included underneath. I will not immediately include the briefing or title of the picture and allow you to imagine what this picture might represent.

hair

I am sure there are many ideas of what this picture could mean or represent. This picture is a self- portrait. Although when I think of the word self-portrait I assume it means a picture of the artists face and what they look like. To me (and I also assume many other people would think this as well), that is also standardised thinking, it is what I have been taught or told the word self-portrait means. On the other hand, Claire has done exactly what we spoke about in our lecture today. Claire has unlearnt what she has been told a self-portrait is. She has not gone away and spent hours perfecting a drawing of her face. She has taken a new meaning to self-portrait. The drawing itself and Claire’s thought process behind the drawing has inspired me to stop being so conformist and thinking everything for face value.

Claire has taken her briefing to do a self-portrait and instead taking into account the factor in her life that make Claire, Claire as an individual. Claire (who I am not going to attach a picture of yet – I will let you imagine and take as much as you can from her drawing just now) believes that the thing that make her an individual and what she has convey in the drawing is her ginger hair and her love of tea. She has incorporated two big things her life and used this to show herself in a self-portrait. This to me shows Claire as a person and not just by the way she looks.

On my first year professional practice I had done an art lesson on portraits. The art lesson wasn’t just to get the children to draw pictures of their peers. There was a message behind the lesson after getting to know my class. When I was planning for my lesson – I shared it on facebook for others on the course which I captioned “In an attempt to inspire my class that art can be for everyone and there is no wrong answer in art, my wonderful flat mates” (yes one being Claire) “and I (one art student, one English student and one teaching student) have drawn portraits… to show them there is always a range in abilities in art like any subject so we shouldn’t be disheartened. I have a range of abilities in my portraits to show them… and a range of abilities in acrostics… to try and show them we all have our own talents but we should always at least give it a shot, like my very willing flat mates have” who have also agreed to let me put them into my blog!

All of the portraits that were drawn by my flat mates, my class and myself were of course from the standardisation of thinking a portrait had to be of another person’s looks. In fact so standardised that the portrait only included their face not even a portrait of what the person looks like from head to toe.

If I were to do this lesson again, after reflecting on what I have learnt about standardised thinking and learning to unlearn. I would more than likely do a series of lessons: firstly getting them to do the same exercise again with the “standard portrait”; then have a brain storm of what else we think portrait could mean; and then have them create a portrait without anything to do with the person or their own face/look and see how differently we can show a portrait of someone.

(Big thank you once again to my willing flat mates for letting me including their personal art into my blog and lessons!)

October 17, 2015

My French Phobia

As a teacher I probably shouldn’t be as worried about as many subjects as I am. Maths, French, English… However, in French I have always had a big phobia. I remember missing my first few lessons of French in primary six and forever feeling permanently behind since then. I have never really known the French alphabet or the basic numbers confidently. French has always been one of the few subjects whilst studying that I haven’t enjoyed. A subject I have had to force myself to do any work for. At the same time being one of two subjects that I had to study for almost daily to even attempt to pass my standard grade credit exam for.

All of this fear and anxiety was transported back into my body the second I walked through the door of my first French workshop at university. I was immediately greeted by a cheerful Carrie saying “Bonjour!” as I entered the room and there I was fear struck and transported back to second year at academy. I wanted to turn round and run straight back out of that room.

Carrie had set out the room to be in small groups. I had managed to sit in a group with someone confident in French. I began to slouch in my chair and try to avoid eye contact with anyone. I felt although I did not belong. I hadn’t spoke, read, written or even thought about French since passing my standard grade and I was no longer obligated to do it.

However, even though there were a few things I did not know in the lesson, I felt the workshop went quite well. At first I was very reluctant to join in with saying things or doing the actions that Carrie had prepared for the words. I would sit quietly saying the words I knew and avoid saying anything I didn’t until it came to the point Carrie would watch to make sure we were all joining in. I began getting more and more involved in the workshop when we were all one big group.

The minute we were spilt into five and more eyes were on me, I felt uncomfortable and anxious again. I felt people were actually listening to me and probably judging how bad I was. However, listening to people saying they were uncomfortable and also had the same experiences as me again made me relax a tiny bit more. Then once again, Carrie then changed it to focus more and more on the individual – in a group of twenty five. I was panicked. This was the worst. However, once I had over exaggerated this. No one told me I was wrong. No one embarrassed me. Carrie handle the class perfectly.

Even if I was completely rubbish at the French, I came out of the workshop feeling more comfortable, confident and ready to go back next time. Carrie had not only taught me some French, she taught me how to teach French in a fantastic way without even saying it. I compared the workshop to my primary and secondary education: I automatically knew what kind of teacher I wanted and did not want to be when it comes to my turn to teach French which is always a successful outcome in a education degree.

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