Linzi Dodd UWS ITe ePDP

During my time on placement from the 30th of October until the 10th of November i realised many strengths and areas of development which I perhaps would not have encountered without this experience. My first strength of my Placement experience was working one on one with a child who required a lot of additional support with his class work. Throughout my time in the class I built a relationship with the pupil which allowed me to engage fully and support his every need. I also tried my best not to tell him the answers, instead I consistently encouraged and with a little push he began working more as an individual with full confidence. With the pupil I could adapt my communication to suit his individual needs such as using basic words and speaking very slowly to make sure he understood what was going on all the time. An area of development for my time on Placement would be to speak with more confidence while working with a larger group whether its for learning or play. This area of weakness let me down twice during my time in school meaning none of the children got the best from the experience as they were always talking over one another being very rude and I showed a lack of authority. This was the case for a more challenging group of boys within the class who consistently challenged me as the ‘student teacher’ making me feel truly out of depth. I then began to lose motivation for this sort of activity. My action plan to improve this for next time would be to establish control before beginning the activity which would make sure the children listened from the very beginning and know what to do. Also mentioning briefly the result of what will happen if they don’t follow the rules will ensure they don’t carry on. A method of regaining attention after a distraction will also be useful for me such as “hands on top its time to stop”.

While on Placement I think I interacted with both the classroom and staffroom very well showing intrigue in everything that was going on and taking on many learning opportunities while out at school. My ability to do this was my previous experience in the Primary School situation as a volunteer in High School and the extra volunteering I have carried out in my local community such as Brownies and Youth Clubs. The only obstacle I felt was a challenge to my time in Placement was working with children with behavioural issues as it was something I had never previously come up against and I did not feel the support was there in this respect.