Lauryn Barclay UWS ITE ePDP

During the last two weeks of school placement I have learned a lot about myself and the school enviroment. I was able to experience every level of the curriculum and allowed myself lots of time to reflect. This experience allowed me to gain new skills and experiences that will help me on my path to be coming the teacher that I want to be. I feel my confidence has grown in many ways from being able to talk infront of groups of children to being able to make conversation in the staff room. However, this experience allowed me to identify certain aspects of communication I need to work on. Overall, this experience has allowed me to reflect on all of my strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths

Over my time on placement I identified many strengths I have. One of my strengths was having good use of eye contact. From this I felt like I was able to ensure the pupils were listening and engaged in the conversation I was having with them. By engaging them I was able to make sure they were gaining the best quality of learning and that any “straglers” to the class were pulled right back in to the conversation. Another strength I identified was my use of body language. From day one in the school I made sure that my body languae showed that I was willing to learn and help further the education of the children. As I was so open this made it easy for children to come to me and ask me any questions they were stuck on. They saw me as a teacher figure when they’re own teacher was out the class.

Area of Most Progress

I personal felt like I most progressed on my confidence. Before going on placement I was very shy and always reluctent to answer questions during classes or offer my opinion. On placement I was able to communication and take the role as a leader in many group situations. I feel that this has helped me improve my confidence and I will no longer be as afraid to speak out infront of others.

Area Requiring Progress

One major area that I require progress in is making sure I use less filler words. Through out my placement i found myself stutter with my words and filling it in with “um” or “like”. I found in many cases this confused children and made it harder for them to understand my explanations. I also dicovered that I found it very difficult to stop certain children “taking over” group lessons. It would always be the same children leading and the same children sitting quietly. This would overall have an effect on the quieter childrens learning.

Action Plan

My action plan is to continue to work and focus on improving my weaknesses. I can continue to grow my confidence by practising speaking infront of large groups even if this is my friends or family. Also, I will try my best to make sure I am confident in what I am saying so I do not feel the need to add in filler words to support me. I aim to also use eye contact and good body language consistenly to ensure children that I get to teach are always engage in the lesson.

During this task in my group there was a few dominant leaders. They were not choosen but figured out by who managed to take control of the situation and get us started off. I recognised a group leader because they were able to tell others what we were aiming to make out of this task and were able to make it clear of everyone’s roles in the group. From this I felt some members of the group were communicating less than others but overall everyone got a say as to how they wanted the task to play out. I found it easy to work with the group I was in and did not face any challenges when it came to communicating with them.

The group explaining got across want they wanted to say very well. It was very clear and easily understood. However, they could have went into a bit more depth, for example, with how they planned what they were going to create as this was not very clear. This could have let me gather a bit more background information on why they designed what they did. Overall, the group were able to convey the main points of their den clearly.

The environment we were in was a lot different from a classroom environment which made communication a bit harder. As we were outdoors there were many different sounds that wouldn’t be heard inside. For example, it was windy, so due to being amongst trees it was made more difficult to hear each other and we had to take this into consideration when explain our den. This also made it more difficult to hear the other group explaining and led to information having to be repeated. Also due to other distractions such as planes and dogs it was harder to focus on the task given.

My groups negotiations were successful. We were able to get another member of another group to come stand in our den for 5 minutes as our mini task. However the most difficult thing was trying to negotiate different items with other groups, for example, the scissors and from this had to work as a team to figure out a way to negotiate with the materials we had for the materials we needed. In the end we were successful in getting what we needed.

My first two weeks at UWS have been full of learning. As I have came straight from High School I was unsure of what to expect. My first thoughts were that it was extremely over-whelming and not what I imagined. However, on the first day everyone was really helpful and I was made to feel comfortable and settled. We were straight into learning. I expected to come in to ice breakers and different simple activities but instead we were given powerpoints of information. As I have worked my way through the first two weeks of University I have gained more knowledge and understanding on the information in the course. I have also enjoyed meeting lots of new people. I feel from this i have widely developed on my communication skills. I am looking forward to the next year of education.

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