This is my audit of skills and how I planned and prepared my placement. I have updated this since moving placements.

Audit of skills, knowledge and personal attributes
 
Rate yourself (1=Not very well developed; 3=very well developed)

Skills and Abilities	1	2	3
Self confidence		x
Work under pressure			x
Share opinions confidently		x
Teamwork			x
Build social networks		x
Converse confidently			x
Organise and plan			x
Self-discipline		x

 

Recognition	Reflection	Action
Skills already developed	How will I use these	How do I know (evidence)**
Self confidence	I will use this to be confident  in my abilities and if I am not sure what I am doing to ask someone	When I feel confident in my work and what I need to do
Work under pressure	For this placement I will have a certain time that things can be done and a certain time when riders need help.	When I can calmly help riders even if there is a certain safety pressure or other pressures upon me.
Share opinions confidently	When I am working alongside other staff members and volunteers I will be able to share any ideas that I have	When I can comfortably sit in a meeting and contribute my ideas and opinions.
Team  Work	I will use the skills I gained on placement last year where I worked with pupils, teachers, teaching assistants and other staff members. This will be vital as there is many staff members and volunteers at Brae that I need to work alongside.	When I am successfully working alongside everyone on my placement.

Knowledge:

I know a lot of the work that The Brae and Riding for the Disabled do, however, I do not know the daily ins and outs of the running of the riding school. I also did not know that there was a Riding for the Disabled School in Dundee but I had had contact with the one in Forfar previously. I am looking forward to discovering everything that goes on at this organisation.

Personal Attributes:

I would say that I am someone who is approachable and friendly. I am very organized with my work and university life and I hate to be late for anything. I find these attributes to be key for becoming a teacher but I will also transfer them over to my time at the Brae as I think they will be useful characteristics there as well.

 

 

Reflection on experiences to date

Since my fourth year work experience I have taken every opportunity that I can to work with children in a primary school setting. These experiences helped me to work on my teamwork and professionalism skills quickly and helped me to see the school environment.

Since starting university I have continued to improve these skills as well as gain new skills. My MA1 placement helped me to work on my teamwork skills as there is so many different people involved with the daily and overall running’s of a successful classroom. Last year, I also got to work my professionalism as there were several different people in the classroom that I was working in and throughout the school. This will help me at the Brae as I will need to be professional with any riders and carer that come into the school. As well as this I will also need to be professional with the other staff that I will be working with.

I am a very punctual person as well as highly organized. During my first year placement these skills were highly important as I was always at the school early as well as it helped me to run my class on time throughout the day. Being organized is highly important when you are a teacher as you have paperwork for your children’s safety as well as lessons to plan and work to make. These organization skills helped me to keep on top of all of the work and planning that I needed to do. In my learning from life placement these skills will also help me as they will make sure that I am organized and ready before lessons.

Identification of skills and knowledge to be developed

Self-confidence: self-confidence is something that I have but I do not have it in bucket loads. During this placement I want to be able to improve this. I am going to try and improve this skill by meeting and working alongside many people that I will not be familiar with and possibly helping to present fundraising ideas.

Confidence in sharing my opinion: I am never very confident about sharing my ideas and opinions when in a meeting of several people. This is mostly because I can see that these people are more experienced than me. I want to improve this and have the confidence to speak up if I have a helpful idea or opinion.

Identification of learning opportunities

The Brae

• At The Brae a main learning opportunity that I will have is to learn more about horses, what work they do for disabled riders and how to take care of them.
• I will also learn more about how to communicate with disabled children and adults and t
  he different ways that each individual prefers. This relates to the SPR for social justice and being able to be fair to all learners and being able to communicate with disabled children is part of that.
• Brae is one of few that offer Hippo therapy (physio therapy on horseback). Being able to see how this type of therapy can help disabled riders will be a learning opportunity.

PAMIS

• A learning opportunity at PAMIS will be taking part in meetings where there will be several organisations in one meeting. This will give me the opportunity of seeing several professional bodies in one meeting. This related to the SPR as a student teacher needs to have professional commitment for Engaging with all aspects of professional practice and working collegiately with all members of our educational communities with enthusiasm, adaptability and constructive criticality.
• I will also have the opportunity to learn more about disabled children and what different communication methods that they use.
• A learning opportunity will be to improve my computer skills. I will be working with different computer programs than what I am use to for creating Digital Passports and Multi-Sensory Stories.

Record of planning and organisation

 For this placement I had several problems when planning my placement. I was not sure where I wanted to go until Susan spoke about where previous year students had gone for placement. One jumped out at me – Guide Dogs for the Blind. It incorporated a huge love of mine, animals, and a goal I wanted to achieve in this placement – working with disabled children. I started to research the organisation and contacted them about a possible placement there. The organisation were very interested in offering me a placement and put me in contact with the person who organizes volunteers. I then never heard from anyone for the Guide Dogs again. I contacted then again but I did not get a response.

After this happened, I did not know where I wanted to go or what I could do as well as it was not long until we needed to start our placement. In a panic I started to think of different places that I could go for placement. The Brae, Riding for the Disabled was one of the places that I thought of as it still incorporated my animal love and my main goal I had for this placement. I contacted them and got a very quick response saying they would be delighted to have me. I organized a meeting with the volunteer coordinator to discuss what my placement would consist of, what my main tasks would be and to have a tour of the school.