Category Archives: edushare

Why do we need to be qualified to teach dance in primary schools?

Leave a reply

I found that this was the first question in my mind when I saw our dance workshop early on in a Friday morning. I never would have thought that as a Primary Teacher, this would be a requirement as part of the curriculum. I do not particularly look back fondly upon the many hours of mandatory social dance throughout my secondary and primary school careers but as a teacher, I can try to make a difference to the attitude to social dance and maybe make it slightly more enjoyable for the children being taught by me. I feel like I fully understand the need for enthusiasm when teaching any subject, especially for those that the teacher may not like themselves because pupils can be impressionable and will pick up when a teacher does not like the subject they are teaching.

Image of dance workshop in school

Therefore why do we need to be qualified to teach dance in primary schools? Well, after looking up the subject, I now understand why it should be included in our curriculum. Here are a few reasons:

Dance can link to other parts of the curriculum

Dance is seen as fun even by the least enthusiastic of pupils, and if you provide a lesson plan which links to the current class project as either an introduction to a new topic or reinforcement of the things that are being learned in class, you may in turn be able to increase enthusiasm for the project and dance itself.

It is a simple way of getting children to expend energy outside the classroom

This seems a simple reason to teach dance but it is an effective way of ensuring that children have burned off energy before they sit down in your classroom and take part in a lesson.

Dance encourage pupils to be creative

Instead of expressing themselves through the standard approach of writing, children are encouraged to be creative and show how they feel through body language and movement. Ken Robinson displays the view that schools squander creativity and I feel that dance is a way of bringing the creative element in to schools.

Dance provides a good team building exercise

Dance can be a form of collaborative learning, and some forms of dance can easily be used as team-building exercises. Group dancing also allows you to see which kids are possibly being left out so you can target your teaching more effectively and provide support for that pupil and help them to become more involved and part of the team.

What it means to be an enquiring practitioner

5 Replies

For me, an enquiring practitioner is a professional who is able to adapt the way they teach or learn based on critical research in to what works and what does not work. It is someone that is capable of reflecting upon their own previous teaching/learning and think critically about how they could better themselves. This evaluative process is intrinsic to being an enquiring practitioner.

The benefits of being an enquiring practitioner are that you are able to develop and improve the curriculum along with other teachers which would stop the curriculum from staying set and rigid and would mean it is constantly being modified to improve upon it therefore providing students with a better education over all. If this is the case for the curriculum then it enables general improvement of the educational institutions themselves and means that every school will not necessarily be teaching the same curriculum. It also provides teachers with a capacity for self-improvement in terms of the way they plan lessons and teach the curriculum. Being an enquiring practitioner would also mean that a teacher would be more likely to take constructive criticism and use it to refine their own lesson plans and style of teaching.

The challenges of being an enquiring practitioner I would imagine would be it would be difficult to align your way of thinking if you were not used to the process of enquiry and evaluation as it is difficult to challenge your own assumptions. Some would also argue that enquiry is fairly limited as it is contextual as even if one approach works in a school somewhere, it does not necessarily mean that the same way would work in a different place. The process of enquiry can also be rather slow as there is no real fixed end point as you can steadily continue to improve yourself for an indefinite period of time. Many classroom practioners who use enquiry can get off topic but the enquiry needs to be connected to teaching or learning.

I believe that if I want to be a successful teacher and continue to improve my teaching style and ability to educate that the process of enquiry and evaluation should be at the core of my planning and practice.

Benefits of Active Learning and Co-operative Working

Leave a reply

The Benefits of Active Learning

Active learning is the process by which students engage in their learning in order to prevent the occurrence of passive learning which is when the mind does not fully absorb what it is being taught as it is working in an automatic fashion. Learning actively helps pupils to fully understand reading and writing and retain this information for longer. Rote learning would be an example of a learning style which does not promote active learning and only helps students to have short term retention of information. There are many benefits of active learning over passive learning, for example, it aids in improving a student’s critical thinking abilities as they are not just learning for their exam. They have a more deep, insightful understanding of subject matter enabling them to think critically about it and even pick flaws in the arguments presented to them rather than just accepting  information unquestioningly. Active learning can also serve to increase enthusiasm and motivation in students and also teachers that use active learning styles. To be able to truly complete a task and feel that you have independently been able to finish it makes an activity feel like more of an accomplishment for a student. Teachers gain confidence as students are more stimulated by their teaching and incorporating active learning into their teaching can help to improve results. For all these reasons, I believe there should be more of an emphasis in the curriculum on assimilating active learning techniques into lesson plans.

The Benefits of Co-operative or Collaborative Learning

There are many benefits of co-operative learning and team work whilst working on a task. One potential benefit is the fact that it gives a platform for healthy debate between cohorts to take place. Debate can give wider depth of knowledge to everyone in the group as it gives perspective on both sides of the issue. Co-operative learning can also help students to learn their roles they naturally fit into, whether that be a leader role or more of a thinker/contributor. It also means that students can learn to work with all sorts of different types of people. Working as part of a team can also help to build upon a student’s interpersonal skills as they have to learn how to communicate their points eloquently whilst still respecting the opinions of others. The fact that students have to share their opinions should also result in an increase of confidence as they have to be sure in their opinions so they can debate their point with well-founded evidence within the group. Group dynamics at an earlier stage can also be helpful as working as a team often reflects what the workplace will be like and reinforces the skills that are needed to be an effective worker. A group is also a chance for a student to get feedback that they may not get if they are just working as part of a class under the supervision of one teacher as it is impossible for a teacher to give constant feedback to every one of their students. However, within a group, ideas and opinions are constantly commented on.

A Teacher’s Presence on Social Media

1 Reply

In a world that is so wired in to social media, for a teacher, it could be difficult to maintain a professional front. In a way, all professionals have to keep an element of professionalism in their social media, but most of their problems can be solved through setting their accounts as private before heading in for a job interview so their prospective employer does not get to see any of the embarrassing or inappropriate content that could potentially lay therein.

For a teacher, they could be under constant pupil scrutiny online whilst remaining blissfully unaware of this fact. As soon as a child finds out the teacher’s first name, there is the potential that they could locate one of the teacher’s accounts whether it be on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media site. This puts the teacher’s career at risk due to the fact that their social life should never really cross into their professional life. Whilst reading the GTCS code relating to social media, I discovered that they frequently use the phrase “fit to teach”. The GTCS state that, “Maintaining the public’s trust in the individual teacher and in teaching as a profession sits at the heart of being fit to teach, and this can be undermined not only by behaviour occurring in a teacher’s professional life, but also within their private life, including activity online.” (GTCS Professional Guidance on the Use of Electronic Communication and Social Media). The phrase “fit to teach”, whilst seeming reasonably subjective, is held by the GTCS as an ethical standard by which all teachers must adhern to. It seems obvious that a teacher must be fit for their profession but the GTCS determine whether they are by putting a teacher in front of a panel to see whether they have let the two sides of their life cross over in an inappropriate way. In their code, the GTCS say that another thing which is central to this concept of fitness to teach is “sound judgement and due care” on the teacher’s part as to what they post online. I believe that the carefulness in the way you frame yourself in the classroom which is integral to professional conduct should automatically transfer over onto what you post online.

There are many obvious things that have resulted in disciplinary measures before according to the GTCS, for example, sending inappropriate messages to a pupil to try to establish a relationship with them and sending indecent images. However, there is certain actions that could be taken by a teacher accidentally online that can result in punishment from the GTCS, like “using inappropriate YouTube content in the educational setting”. This famously happened to a primary teacher in Dundee when they clicked on a Mr Men video on YouTube which was at the top of the search list believing that this was the preset video for that lesson. It turned out to be a more inappropriate video that showed extremely graphic images which frightened the pupils. This was supposedly an innocent mistake and it goes to show how easy it is for a teacher to slip up with access to thousands of videos on YouTube which can often have misleading thumbnails.

However, there are also many opportunities afforded to teachers by social media. Careful use of YouTube allows teachers to make their lessons more stimulating and can enhance potentially boring subject matter for young children. Social media could be used as a platform to keep parents up to date on their child’s learning in between the traditional parent’s nights. Facebook and twitter can also be used as an outlet to share educational ideas and to arrange meetings with other teachers to share lesson plans and there have been various websites set up to do this.

In conclusion, as long as social media is used carefully and responsibly by educators, I believe it can enhance primary education greatly. However, it is easy for an educator to be caught out with their social media account being public especially for those that do not fully understand the internet.

Why teaching?

2 Replies

I always assumed that the role of a teacher was solely that of an educator; an authoritative figure that is supposed to help prepare you for your tests or exams. However, upon reflection I realised that a teacher plays a much deeper role in a child’s development than I felt they did as I progressed through my academic life. In my first two years of primary school, I misbehaved constantly and caused trouble for myself and others around the school. In the second year, I had an incompetent teacher and I now believe this contributed to my early development in a negative way. In fact, I do not think that either of my teachers in the first two years knew how to deal with me or control my behaviour in a way that meant I was not a distraction in class. It was not until my third year that I had a teacher that was truly able to understand the way I learned and was able to manage my behaviour without being too stringent with disciplinary measures. The fact I felt understood and that this teacher was different from every other teacher I had before brought the best out in me as a young child and set me on a better path than I had been heading in the previous years.

As a child in her class, the thought never crossed my mind that I would one day want to become a primary teacher but in hindsight I see this as a major reason for my wanting to pursue a career as an educator. My third year teacher is also the type of classroom practitioner that I want to be, a professional that is able to influence a child’s development in a positive way without having to resort to traditional, lazy disciplinary actions and make an impact enough to set a child on the right path for life and give them the start in life that every child should be entitled to. Therefore, the possibility of me being able to eventually make as much of an impact is what led me to teaching.