Rebecca Frew UWS ITE ePDP

I thoroughly enjoyed my two week placement experience; I gained a lot of insight into the teaching profession and learned all different aspects of the job. I was placed in Primary 1, where i spent the duration of the two weeks. The class was filled with twenty pupils; each different in terms of skill and personality. The pupils were a joy to work with; they made me laugh and surprised me with their abilities. Everyday was a learning day, not only for the pupils but for me too! I enjoyed asking the classroom teacher questions about things I was interested in or wanted to clarify. The teacher was a great inspiration to me; she was kind and approachable and all of the children in her class looked up to her. The classroom teacher was extremely understanding and patient; children with oral language problems and behavioural problems were treated fairly and were always offered extra assistance.

I was warned from the beginning that Primary 1 involved a lot of arts and crafts – this definitely was the case! I helped the children create a carriage out of paper mache; I painted a castle made out of cardboard; I even had to squish my hands into the smallest of scissors to cut out various different activities. These may seem like easy jobs, however it became apparent just how heavy the workload is. I witnessed the endless planning for weeks in advance – often my classroom teacher was stressed at the idea of being slightly unprepared. The teachers regularly had staff meetings after school hours which meant a lot of their marking and preparing had to be done at home. I realised that organisation is truly a key skill to become a successful teacher. On the other hand, the positives definitely outweighed the negatives. From only observing a snippet of classroom life, I seen how rewarding the job is. There seems like no greater feeling than knowing what you have taught has made sense to classroom full of five year olds.

In my school, the infant area had recently adopted a new teaching method. The Primary 1s would come in sharp at 8.50AM for a ‘soft start’ – this meant that the children would play for the first twenty minutes of the day. After this, the children would be split into their zones where they would learn through play. This approach seemed very odd to me – the children had no writing books and rarely ever sat on their seats to do work. Most of the time they were playing games which did involve the use of some literacy and numeracy skills, but not many. Due to this, I found it increasingly difficult to complete a few of the placement tasks as the levels of literacy and maths were quite limited and basic.

Overall, i thought that placement was fantastic. Each day was exciting and enjoyable. It has made me feel driven to be successful in this course. It was devastating to leave on Friday, the experience was amazing and I cannot wait to do it again!

Ciaran and I generated mostly the same answers. We both thought that the teacher in the first video had the tendency to ramble which could result in unfocused children. However, we agreed that all members of the classroom could see and hear him. We both agreed that sometimes his body language was closed off by folding his arms etc.

I was not majorly surprised by the videos. However, I found it interesting that the teacher in the last video recorded her lessons. From my point of view, this is a very useful technique – you would be able to take note of certain areas for improvement and identify strengths within yourself.

I did not find the evaluating tasks too hard. This is because I could pause the videos and have time to prepare answers to evaluation points. I will probably find it more difficult to undertake this task on placement as it will be difficult to be observing all that is going on. Also, I would not want to offend the person I’m working with.

If I could take one thing from the videos and use it in my placement, it would be the way the Year 3 teacher demonstrated his engagement with pupils by crouching down to their eyelevel. This demonstrates positive communication and is an effective way of getting a student to focus.

I am looking forward to going out on placement and gaining more experience as a student teacher. I’m excited to test the waters and observe real classroom scenarios. It all does seem a bit daunting at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll settle in nicely after a couple of nerve-racking days. I’m looking forward to viewing different teaching techniques and getting to know the pupils in the classroom.

Throughout ‘Finding out about others: the skill of questioning’ (Hargie, 2011), it is apparent that the main aim of the text is to inform the reader about the importance of questions. Before reading, questioning seemed like a simple and easily used technique. However, it is evident that it is more complex and intricate than it may seem. Main themes throughout the chapter include what questions themselves are; the comparison of different question types; and the effects of questions on certain groups, such as children and patients.

One example of a claim which was made is the idea that patients are less inclined to ask their doctors questions during consultations. West (1983) found that in 773 questions recorded over 21 consultations, only 9% came from the patients. Research has discovered that this is due to fear of seeming ignorant and unknowledgeable (Roter and Hall, 2006). Morrow et al (1993) showed that patients were a lot more inclined to ask their pharmacist questions – indicating that people feel that pharmacists are more approachable.

One argument presented in the chapter is the idea that answering questions and the skill of questioning is present in every form of social interaction. Especially for children, it is vitally important that questions are taken seriously and heard. Without this key listening, children my feel stupid and irrelevant. This could hinder their future learning and relationships.

One part of the chapter which I disagreed with was the area surrounding process and recall questions. Studies have shown that process questions are asked less regularly than recall questions; this has conjugated some mixed feelings. It is argued that process questions are beneficial for creativity and increased scope – researchers believe that children should be faced with these questions more often. However, I disagree; I believe that both question form is as important as the other. Children should be asked both question types; this would ensure all thought processes to take place efficiently.

Throughout this chapter there were some words which I did not understand. I noted them down and looked at their definitions in a dictionary. I have now defined these key educational terms for future reference.

Reading this chapter has truly opened my eyes; I was unaware of the vast amount of different question types. I will now be more aware of the kinds of questions I am asking, particularly when on placement.