Category Archives: 3. Prof. Skills & Abilities

Dance in Primary Schools…

Today, we had our first dance input in our Primary Education course…

Now, this is something I had never been interested in or had tried before. I must say though, it was a lot of fun, possibly due to the enthusiasm of the teacher. Obviously due to my huge lack of experience of dance, I was apprehensive about teaching it to my future classes as a teacher.

I must admit, after today, I am far more confident in myself as I now realise you don’t need the experience in dance to teach children. One of the biggest aspects that will motivate children to learn and develop their skills is the enthusiasm of the teacher. If they see you having fun with the lesson, the children will be more inclined to. I believe the inputs we are learning in University will firmly put us in good stead to be successful when teaching dance in primary schools and that my lack of experience in this expressive art will not hinder my progress.

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I haven’t always been the biggest believer in dance as a curricular subject but I do see the benefits it can bring to the children such as:

Can really bring out their creativity!
Helps children develop new skills!
Enables them to work collaboratively and individually!
Improves children’s health (social, physical and mental)

I do agree we should incorporate more dance into schools as after reading the ‘Get Scotland Dancing’ review from 2014, it was clear that other activities were participated in a lot more than dance. Some reasons for the lack of participation in dance are age, gender and simply because people ‘like’ dance and some people don’t.

Another factor to consider is that it was found that young people who are encouraged to take part in certain activities at a young age are more likely to participate in later life and indeed adulthood.

I believe that there may be some challenges incorporating dance into the curriculum. For example, my lack of experience, the pupils may just not be interested, the obvious gender issue and ‘I can’t touch boys/girl’s hands, ew!’ situation. Let’s look at them individually.

I believe I can overcome my fear of teaching dance by reading up on the teaching of dance and have fun, be creative and show my personality in lessons which will hopefully inspire children to get involved even, if like me, they had no interest in dance.

Going back to the gender issue, it has been found that boys are less likely to be interested in dance than girls and at the primary age, certain children may not want to participate as they believe ‘dancing is for girls’ and ‘dancing is stupid’ but I believe dance is for everyone and after today’s interesting start to the day, dancing at 9… I can honestly say it’s a fun experience.

Lastly, the ‘ew boys/girls’ issue, I believe that the only real solution to this is to take part in lessons and try and build everyone’s confidence about dancing with everyone, no matter who they are.

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I have gone ahead and set myself some professional development goals which are:

· To overcome my fear of teaching dance in schools.

· Improve my knowledge of dance by reading up on the curricular area.

· To be creative, fun and show my personality in lessons.

· To overcome my embarrassment of dancing in front of people.

I feel if I achieve these goals , I will be well on my way to being a successful teacher of dance when I am a primary school teacher.

The 2014 Review – http://www.creativescotland.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/26149/GSDLitReviewv2.pdf

Let’s Reflect….on Reflection!

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Reflection overall can help us look at experiences we have had and evaluate exactly what happened and we can learn a lot from them through evaluation. We can also consider why events happened, what caused it to happen and how we can make changes to stop it from happening again. Overall it can help us develop and move forward our understanding.

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Reflection is massively important in life, especially in professions such as teaching. You have to be a reflective practitioner if you are to continually improve yourself as a person, a teacher and as a professional. As professionals, we are always reflecting. We will most likely have to reflect every day as teachers about lessons, children’s individual behaviour and collaborative working with colleagues and other agencies. For example, if you have taught your class and you realise your pupils are not understanding what you are teaching them or just not picking it up as fast as you thought they would, you then have to reflect on certain things: what is the reason for them not understanding: was your teaching of the lesson too difficult for your students to understand? Is it just the kids who need extra support that haven’t quite grasped the concept? If it is your teaching, how can you make changes to improve the children’s learning and understanding? The reason that you have to ask yourself these types of questions is because reflection can’t just be from one person’s perspective. It must be from varying opinions and viewpoints from everyone involved as this will ensure that your reflections have the best chance at making a difference.

We have to reflect in order to make children and young people’s school experience as enjoyable as possible. This will give them a better chance of achieving their potential. This can only be done if we reflect in order to make sure the whole class is learning in the correct way for them personally so that they can engage in learning more effectively.

My Understanding of Academic Skills…

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One of the biggest things I have started to understand about academic skills is that they are completely different from skills that were required for essays in school for example. A much higher quality is expected from you and in order to get good grades in University assignments, it is essential to get the basics right. You have to be able to improve certain aspects of academic skills, these are:

Punctuation; spelling and enhancing your vocabulary; punctuation and grammar and shaping your texts: sentences and paragraphs. Each have equal importance and are all vital in making your academic writing as fluent as it can be and to the best quality.

Punctuation can have your reader understand exactly the message you are trying to convey but it can easily mislead them if you use any punctuation incorrectly. Examples of this can be if certain punctuation marks are inserted in the wrong place in sentences, it will completely change the meaning of the sentence and can make it ambiguous.

Spelling is such a simple concept but it is so important. If you completely misspell a word in your assignment then you will be marked down, irrespective of whether your essay was very good. Also, if you spell a word wrong such as ‘ your’ which has a couple of different spellings, it will change the meaning, which could lead to it not making sense anymore.

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As you are a University student, you are expected to show the maturity of one. One of the ways to do this is to ensure your vocabulary is ever expanding. Thesauruses are always handy when writing an essay, to make sure it is at the required academic level. Never insert bigger words all the way through the essay just to sound better. It will become obvious that none of the words are your own.

Grammar is essential when you are a student and are writing assignments. McMillan and Weyers (2012) state that “it is an integral and expected component of academic writing” and “without it your writing may be nonsensical, illogical or ambiguous”.

Shaping your paragraphs and sentences together is the basis of writing academically for University. They ensure that your whole essay links together and flows smoothly throughout. This will give your marker an easier job and will allow them to easily understand what message you’re trying to convey through your essay.

Overall, I feel that the academic skills are vitally important in giving you the best chance of success in essays and assignments. Master the basics and you will be well on your way to writing an essay that will achieve a high mark.

The benefits of collaborative working!

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There are many benefits of working co-operatively and can be very varied. For example, lots of different ideas can be generated from different perspectives which can deepen the group’s understanding and knowledge of the area that is being worked on. The task can be made easier and can potentially be completed quicker by sharing resources. In addition to this, a wider set of skills can be used effectively during tasks as different members or professionals will have different expertise. As well as this, the group can share different ways of completing tasks to help and support their fellow group members in future challenges they may face. By working collaboratively, you will be able to hear and listen to other people’s opinions and viewpoints. It is vital you acknowledge these as they can widen and develop your own understanding.

For professionals, collaborative working is vital. On the General Teaching Council for Scotland website (find link below text) in the ‘Model of professional learning’ section it states that “collaborative practices underpin models of professional learning”. It is also mentioned many times in the 3 standards of teaching on the same website: Standards for Registration, Standards for Career-Long Professional Learning and Standards for Leadership and Management.

http://www.gtcs.org.uk/

For professionals, the most important aspect of collaborative working is that they have the best interests of the child at the centre of their work. Information will be able to be shared which will give professionals a bigger picture of what they are doing. Ideas can be passed on to different agencies if needed, for example to give a child the most effective help and support possible.

For our professions, collaboration is essential between members of our own professions and the different agencies and this all depends on effective communication. This will ensure that we can change the world of so many children to make it possible for them to achieve their potential, no matter who they are.

Sharing the same visions and turning them into reality is what will transform lives for the better.

Professionalism Word Cloud!

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As part of one of the activities on my online units for my course, I was asked to design a word cloud filled with words that related to professionalism. This is what I came up with:

I completed this task twice with slightly varying words. Unfortunately the proper document wasn’t allowed to be uploaded here, so I had to simply take pictures of both word cloud and upload them instead.

This has made me think about professionalism more and gave me a better starting point to develop my knowledge.

Online Units – Unit 1 (Section A – Activity 2)

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I am currently working through my Online Professional and Academic Units. Although I posted the shorter version of this activity on the section “Personal Audit and Transferrable Skills” on my blog, I thought Id post the full version here.

Activity 2

Complete the audit below, using the information from the table above.

Recognition	Reflection	Action
Skills already developed	How I will use these	How do I know (evidence)**
Self-Discipline	I will use these skills when studying for exams and in general reading for modules or completing tasks independently.	I know I am disciplining myself as I am able to complete tasks and assignments in my own time without anyone reminding me and helping me.
Team work	I will be using this in Working together workshops with my peer learning group to complete our agency visit and presentation. I could also use this when studying with other members of the course.	We have used teamwork to plan our visit to agency and prepare questions to ask for the visit.
Contribute to Discussions	I can contribute in lectures when questioned are posed to us or when in workshops and working as a team to complete tasks or solve problems. I will also be contributing to online discussions with people on my course and my peers.	I have contributed to discussions in workshops every week, conveying my ideas to the group in order for us to complete tasks.
Work on own initiative	Again, similar to self discipline, I will have to be able to complete assignments and tasks without anyone prompting me. As a student I should be able to get things down independently.	I have done this by completing weekly tasks and by reading books of the reading lists. Reading week was a prime example of this as we had no teaching and had to get on with everything ourselves.
Set Personal Goals	Goals can be used in a number of ways but two ways a student can use them are: Setting goals to do each day such as work to get done. The other could be something more long term such as when to get an assignment done	I have set personal goals each day of what needs t be done by the end of that day and that week.
Use Technology	Technology can be used many ways. Laptops and phones can be used to research and use online resources. It can be used effectively for me to keep in contact with class mates and lecturers. Laptops can also be used to complete assignments.	I have typed up all of my lecture notes on my laptop. I have researched for my assignment and completed online tasks on my laptop as well.
Work under pressure	This can be used when having a big workload or having a assignment to hand in.	I have had certain work to do for specific dates which I have managed to complete.
Manage Time	This like above can be used when many tasks have to be completed and reading has to be done. You have to plan when to do certain tasks in order to get everything completed and to the highest standards.	I have managed to plan my work to ensure that everything is completed and is done to the highest quality.
Take Notes	This will be used in lectures, you have to be able to take notes fast or abbreviate notes to have the most effective notes possible.	I have taken notes in all of my lectures and have managed to use different abbreviations to save me time in order to take down as much vital information as possible, e.g. PROF instead of professional.
Make a presentation	This will be used when my peer learning group make our presentation for working together.	I am going to use two types of presentation: Poster for individual part of working together module. Group Presentation for the other part of working together module.
Problem Solve	This can be used in working together workshops when given tasks to do; you will have to work as a team to figure it all out. Also maths assessments to improve our maths and problem solving skills.	An example of how I have developed my problem solving is when I completed the NOMA (National Online Maths Assessment) and achieved 81%.
Generate Ideas	This can be used when researching and planning assignments. Also in workshops when working as a group.	Our working together group had to generate ideas in order to plan our agency visit. I have been generating ideas whilst planning my essay for the Values module.
Organise and Plan	This can be organising and planning what work will be done each day or when you will go to the library or it can be your group planning when to study together. My working together group recently planned our visit to an agency and organised how we were all going to get there.	I have made rough plans for my values assignment essay. I have organised all of my folders into modules and topics. My peer learning group have planned our agency visit.
Computing Skills	This can be done when typing up assignments or lecture notes. It can also be when engaging with online resources.	While completing online tasks and the online professional and academic units.
Listen to others	This can be listening to lectures or other class mates in opinions in lectures or workshops.	I have listened to many other people’s opinions in lectures and workshops to further develop my ideas and opinions.

Recognition	Reflection	Action
Skills to be developed	How I will develop these	How do I know (evidence) **
Share Opinions Confidently	Whenever I have an opinion on anything. Just be confident and believe its right. If it’s wrong, that’s how you learn.	I have now started to offer my opinions both in workshops with my group and online in discussions within the online units.
Acting as a leader	Volunteer to be team leader and see how you get on, if it goes well then great. If it doesn’t, then work on what went wrong for next time.
Be Creative	Encourage yourself to think more outside the box.	I have had to be creative as I have designed my own blog and have made it personal to me. I have already posted interesting posts which are public to read.
Self Confidence	Offer your opinions in lectures and workshops and talk to fellow classmates to share each other’s ideas and discuss.	I have gone and talked to my advisor of studies about some of my worries and that has given me more confidence. I am planning on meeting with people from the academic skills centre to show them my values assignment planning. This will be to give me more reassurance and confidence in my ability.
Build Social Networks	Try and get talking to as many people in your course, from the different disciplines. This will mean you can share ideas in the future and help each other.	I have different groups of people that I talk to in order to help us all be as successful as possible. I have my friends group, my flat mates, people from my education course, my Spanish class group and people from my working together peer group.
Converse confidently	Be confident in your voice and what you have to say when talking or debating anything with one of your peers.	I have been able to share my ideas confidently in our working together groups.
Think Critically	These can be developed by looking at critical thinking exercises in books on reading lists. It can also be done by thinking of questions asked in lectures and developing the answers.	In my online tasks we have been given to do each week for values, they have made me think critically about different topics.
Evaluate Information	Use the skills that I hope to develop with my critical thinking and employ them in order to evaluate reliability of information and sources.	I have used these skills while researching for values assignment and picking out and evaluating information.
Debate both formally and informally	Formally: take parts in discussions in lectures and workshops. Informally: Take part in discussions with peers out of class.	I have had to discuss topics online with peers as well as formal discussions in the workshops for working together. People have different opinions and you have to debate professionally and correctly to develop this skill.
Negotiation	When working in groups with people of different opinions, negotiate with each other to overcome these problems and move forward.
Take Responsibility	Encourage myself to take on different roles in workshops and embrace the different responsibilities that come with these roles.
Take Risks	When doing placements, if you are unsure if your lesson will work, try it and if it doesn’t, go back and reflect on it.

My second attempt of the OLA and NOMA assessments.

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Today, I attempted both online assessments for the second time.

My results were as follows:

Literacy – 83% and Maths 81%.

I improved 3% in literacy and achieved the same score in maths. I was really happy with this, however I believe that I could have achieved a higher score in both tests. This was for various reasons. In the maths assessment, I made a few little mistakes that cost me marks which I should have picked up and a computer error lost me another mark. I could have achieved 87%, possibly slightly higher. In the literacy assessment, a computer error was also at fault for one mark.

I feel like these tests are a positive and effective method of assessing our skills. I also think that they are enjoyable to complete. I will continue to work on the mistakes I made and attempt to further develop my skills.

First Activity of the Professional and Academic Development Online Unit.

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UNIT 1 – SECTION A, Activity

Identifying Skills and Abilities

Activity 1

This activity was to create an audit based on skills you already have. After this has been completed, we can then move on to figure out how to develop each skill. It was an effective method as it has shown me which exact skills are already developed and which I need to work on.

Rate yourself (1=Not very well developed; 3=very well developed)

Skills and Abilities	1	2	3
Self-Discipline			*
Share opinions confidently		*
Team work			*
Acting as a leader		*
Contribute to Discussions			*
Write for Academic Purposes		*
Work on own Initiative			*
Be Creative	*
Self Confidence		*
Set Personal Goals			*
Use technology			*
Work Under Pressure			*
Build Social Networks		*
Manage Time			*
Make Presentations			*
Take Notes			*
Converse Confidently		*
Problem Solve			*
Generate Ideas			*
Thinking Critically	*
Evaluate Information		*
Organise and Plan			*
Computing skills			*
Debate both formally and informally		*
Listen to Others			*
Negotiation		*
Take Responsibility	*
Take Risks		*

How important is learning languages in school? Sehr Wichtig!

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For my latest blog post, I thought I would choose to write about something that I feel very passionate about. The importance of children learning languages in primary school from a very young age. It was actually the topic did a presentation on for my Dundee University Interview, more specifically the 1+2 approach which I believe is vital in young people’s learning. I myself have had a great experience learning languages throughout school. I achieved A grades at both National 5 and Higher level German and am currently studying Spanish as a year 1 elective on my Education course. The reason for my enjoyment for learning languages was that the teacher made it interesting and fun and allowed us to learn in many different ways. I believe that positive environments and fun teaching methods are essential for our future generations and I would love to play a part in that. Learning languages has the power to change children’s lives and will give them skills that can help them be successful throughout school and in their futures. For example, my experience in languages was very effective to use while abroad in other countries.

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I feel the most important thing is to aim to instil a love of learning into children. The world nowadays is hugely multilingual and in order for the children of today to fully prosper as citizens, they must learn the skills that learning languages offers them which will also lead to them having effective communication skills.

“In today’s global, multi-cultural world, it is more important than ever that young people have the opportunity to learn languages from an early age. The ability to speak different languages will equip Scotland’s young people with the skills and competencies needed in a 21st century global marketplace.” – Dr Alistair Allan, Minister for Learning, Science and Scotland’s Languages. (2015)

The delivery of an earlier start to language learning in primary school will be challenging for schools and teachers. Although all pupils at the moment are entitled to learn a language from P6, there are concerns that some primary children do not have access to an additional language due to staffing, training or funding issues, or other perceived curricular priorities. There are also particular issues in very small primary schools, especially in rural areas, where there will only be a small number of teachers with responsibility for delivery of the whole curriculum. Without ongoing training, many primary teachers do not feel confident in teaching a modern language and some do not volunteer despite training. Nevertheless, there is evidence of staff in some primary schools working successfully with children on language learning from the beginning of primary or earlier. Other questions that will have to be answered are

Do existing teachers have the skills and teaching resources required for language tuition?
Are teachers equipped enough to help young people’s development? If not, how will the training occur?
The choice of which languages children learn. For example, which languages should kids be learning to benefit them in later life, their careers and help Scotland flourish economically.

However, there is no doubt about the many benefits that will come from language learning from an earlier age. It will undoubtedly help Scotland become a confident, multilingual country. Some ways in which language learning can further benefit Scotland would be more effective use of technology and regular use of native/fluent speakers to engage the children and stimulate their interest in learning new languages and other cultures.

Practical uses of foreign languages in school that I have seen first hand are:

register taking
date and weather
lunch routines
staff greeting each other
PE ‘warm ups
distributing resources
classroom commands
praise
use in assemblies

Overall, All language learning is valuable, it stretches us intellectually, giving us insights into other cultures and customs, broadening our view of the world, opening up new trade and business opportunities and enabling us to communicate with others. It is my firm belief that language learning is vital in helping children achieve their potential and broaden their horizons no matter who they are.

Die Sprache kann die Welt verändern!

My First Values Module Workshop – My Opinions!

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On Tuesday 20^th September, I had my very first workshop of the Values module. I found this to be a very interesting and fun first workshop of my University career. It felt like I was going into the unknown, but everyone was in the same boat as no one knew what to expect.

We first got split into two groups and went to two different rooms. Once there we were placed at tables based on numbers from 1-4 which is a basic method which would most likely come in very handy in our profession of being a primary teacher. I myself was in group 3. We were told to introduce ourselves to everyone and get to know people. Each group was handed an envelope and were told whatever was in the envelope was all we could use to make something that could be given to a new student of Dundee University as a guide. This instantly made us excited to see the contents of the mystery envelope and made the task relatable straight away as we were all new students too. Our first reaction when opening the envelope was that of surprise of what we had or indeed the lack of what we had. All we had was pieces of paper, a pencil, a pen, a few paper clips, rubber bands and post-it notes. We all had the same thought which was, how are we going to make something useful with these materials. Having a quick look around we noticed that some other groups had a lot more than us. This made me think already that there was something about this task that didn’t meet the eye. While the groups were working, it was clear to see that the lecturer was full of enthusiasm for the ideas that groups 1 and 2 had and on the other hand didn’t seem to care much about the other two groups. As a group, we all noticed this and began to wonder what was going on and why the task had been made so unfair for us. Again, after everyone’s ideas were created, each group took it in turns to present. During each presentation, groups 1 and 2 were greeted with praise while my group were just told to sit down after we presented and the lecturer was sitting checking the clock and not even looking at the group talking when group 4 presented.

After all the presentations were over, we were all informed that the lecturer was told to act the way she was for a very good reason. It was all done to show us about inequality in society. I believe that the whole task was set out very cleverly and really did make me think that this does happen in real life. It gave me more knowledge and understanding of how people do live in society, ranging from the wealthiest more well off people (group 1) and the most deprived people (group 4). The materials we had were to represent how much some people have and how little others have. This was very evident during the task as group 4 would try and trade with other groups but soon realised that the things they were offering to trade were already on the table of the other groups so there was no point. This can be transferred to people that have so little that they try and steal just to make ends meet and put food on the table. It’s horrible to think but its true that some people haven’t got enough to survive when others have enough to last them a lifetime and longer. The society we live in is not a fair one when there are people in countries who have nothing, not even clean water, something that in this country we take far too much for granted and even thinking about that sickens me. This task was to broaden our understanding about not only this sort of inequality, but inequality in Education and the effects it can cause. Through my experience, I have seen that some children will simply not have as much as their class mates and it does make you stop and think what could be done to stop this horrendous issue. The answer of course is not simple by any stretch of the imagination and that is the harsh, sad but very, very real truth.

Overall this was done incredibly well and I feel like it will help me throughout this module.