Over the past two weeks I have been on placement. I was placed in a primary one class and I loved it.

A strength that I have is that when I am speaking to the children I always speak loudly and clearly so that I am heard by everyone. I vary my tone and pitch when speaking and have a calm manner with the children.

Another strength that I have is that I always demonstrate positive body language. I use hand gestures to express myself and facial expressions to show the children how I am feeling. I always smile at the children but would have an upset/cross face if a child wasn’t behaving.

An area for me that requires progress is my confidence. I always doubt myself and my abilities. This at times results in me using stalling words such as ” ehm ” or ” so ” before answering a question or giving instructions, even though I do know what to say. My plan of action to try and prevent me from using stalling words  is to stop and think about what I am about to say before I say it and I am going to try to be more confident when answering the children’s questions.

I found certain aspects of the observation checklist easy to identify  and other parts tricky. It was easy to see certain qualities in the teacher e.g enthusiasm and tone of voice,  however it became more difficult to  know whether the teacher used gestures to enhance their teaching all of the time or not.

My partners notes were similar to mine as we both agreed that the teacher is enthusiastic about what he is teaching as he varies his tone and shows expression. We both believed that the teacher could improve by using more open body language to address the class. The teacher sometimes speaks quite fast and doesn’t always speak loud enough so to improve he could project his voice more and not speak as fast.  I didn’t find anything from my partners notes surprising and I didn’t find anything from the video surprising.

Feedback is constructive and offers both positive and negative aspects whereas judgement is purely forming an opinion about someone without taking into consideration all factors.

From this observation task I have learned how important feedback is as it allows us to be aware of what we are good at and what we need to work on.  By giving constructive feedback it allows individuals to strive for better next time if there are areas for improvement.

I am really looking forward to going on placement but I am nervous too. Going on placement will give me so much more confidence and I know I will learn so much.

Today we focused on the importance of communicating effectively with others in different settings. We went outside and were put into groups and were given the task of making a den.  Within my group we didn’t agree to have a set team leader however there were a couple of people who informally took the role of leading the group. They had a clear idea of what to do and how we were going to do it. They were confident and conveyed their ideas clearly to the group. They were very organised and effective negotiators when it came to trading resources with another group. Having a leader was good as having someone who was confident in what to do helped everyone come together and try their best as a team. The most challenging thing about working in this group was that I didn’t know any of the people beforehand however this challenge was a great ice breaker and has helped to get to know some other people on the course.

I think the group explained how they made their den to our group very well. It was clear that everyone was involved and knew exactly what they had done and why they had done it. They spoke very clearly and were very enthusiastic when describing their den. They were effective communicators as they made eye contact with everyone in my group and had open body language. Their facial expressions showed that they were interested and enthusiastic and this made us curious to find out more about how they made their den. In my opinion this group did not appear to miss out any of the 5 P’s.

The environment had an impact on our communication . The background noise and the wind lead us to have to speak slowly and clearly in order to be heard by other members of the group. When explaining our den to another group we had to project our voices due to the surrounding noise. Today the conditions were not too challenging so communicating wasn’t difficult but under different circumstances in order to communicate effectively we would have to speak loudly , slowly and clearly to be heard by others. To make it easier for the listener we could gather everyone in a small circle to get their full attention and make sure there isn’t anything interesting going on behind us that could potentially distract people. When listening I was distracted by the noise at times but tried my best to stay engaged.

Our negotiations were successful as we were persuasive and confident when discussing trading resources with another group. The most challenging thing about negotiations was coming up with reasons why switching a resource would benefit them as much as it would benefit us.

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