Professional Goals and Reflection on Placement

This is the school which I am on placement at. I have labelled the playground, which has painted lines for sports, the outdoor learning classroom, which has a blackboard and wooden benches and tables, and the bicycle rails, which are the first evidence of learning for sustainability for a fist-time visitor of the school.

From observation of the school grounds and the school environment, I have seen further engagement with sustainable education. This includes an eco-committee which have fairly regular meetings and a board near the main office which is updated with plans and actions of the eco-committee. There are also recycling bins for paper in the classroom. However there are no recycling bins, such as food bins, in the staff room. There is a garden with flower beds which was created a few years ago. However, vandalism of the garden means that it is now littered and unsafe for the children to use. My class are currently studying ‘This Morning I Met a Whale’ by Michael Morpurgo. This book focusses on the damage that humans are having on the natural environment and contains very powerful messages about the need for children to do something to prevent further harm to our planet. If this book is used to successfully capture this theme and to teach the children more about sustainability then it could be a fantastic way to engage them in the subject and make it relatable.

There is a large concrete playground for all of the children to play in during break and lunch time. This is a traditional playground with no green space and with fences all around it. It is safe but it is not stimulating. In discussion with the teachers of the school about this we agreed that they are very limited as the location if the school (in the middle of a town) does not allow for much green space. They also said that there is a forest and a play park relatively close to the school and some of the teachers take their classes to these spaces for structured play or as rewards for good work and behaviour. Although, some teachers said that they find this too stressful and too difficult to organise due to a lack of confidence, the risk assessment forms and careful planning that they feel they would need to do. Outside of the school there is an outdoor classroom. When I saw this I thought it was a fantastic idea as it makes the idea of taking the class outside a bit more structured and possibly not as intimidating. However, upon reflection I feel that the classroom may limit teachers due to limited space and traditional desks and a blackboard. So, maybe it would be a good place to begin and end an outdoor lesson and to congregate throughout, but I think that most of the learning could be done outwith this area. From talking to the teachers about this space, the majority of them reported that they have never used the space because they don’t know what they would use it for. Some of them also said that if they were to use it would be for lessons that they could do just the same indoors, and with the Scottish weather it seems that to do the same lesson outdoors would simply lead to everyone being cold! This highlighted for me that we need to consider the difference between learning outdoors and outdoor learning. For example, taking a lesson in which times of silence and deep concentration are required outdoors is probably not something which I would see any benefit in. But, taking an interactive lesson where collaboration and team work as well as physical movement are required outdoors would, to me, seem like a worthwhile task. There is also a play space inside for the primary one and two classes to use for directed play. This space has various different materials including easels, water trays, sand trays and tools to play with the sand, a tent, building blocks, Lego and paint. The number of materials in this space and the way that they are set out make it a very suitable space for structured play. There is a lot of empty space for exploration and the materials are spread out across the room and organised into areas. There are also aprons for the children to wear and low sinks around the room to allow the children to get messy and explore the materials. My first thoughts when I saw this space was how good it would be for teaching early numbers and graphic knowledge. The tent also makes it a good space for pupils to interact and to take time out if they feel they need to.

My discussion with the pupils about these aspects of sustainable education somewhat surprised me. I spoke to the two members of the eco-council in my class and asked them about their role in the school. They both said that they enjoy being part of the council and I know that they go to meetings once a week (when I am in the class). However, at first neither of them could confidently tell me about their role and about what they do for the school. They said that they are in charge of the recycling bags for paper in each class. I asked if they were in charge of anything else and they said no. I have so far attended 3 assemblies and there has never been any mention or update of the plans and actions of the eco-committee so it seems to be more of an exclusive thing rather than a whole-school approach. However, there are a lot of children who cycle to school. There is no reward system for this, simply many of them enjoy riding their bikes to school and live close enough by that they can do so. I then asked the children about the outdoor classroom to which they said they had never used and some did not know it was there. It seems to be that there are so many opportunities within this school that are not being grasped and from my experience so far, I would put this down to a lack of time and different priorities. I also think that many of the teachers seem to have a lack of confidence to explore these new opportunities and to take learning outwith the comfort and safety of the classroom. There is evidence of sustainable education, but I would say that there is room for much more. I am eager to see how my class progress in their learning using their novel study, and I hope to see that they learn a lot about sustainable development from it.

During the week beginning the 31st of October I worked with seven class teachers, a Principle Teacher, a Head Teacher, class room assistants, cleaning staff, and a janitor, as well as pupils from primary one to primary seven of a primary school.

I completed eight placement tasks which were based on mathematics and literacy. These tasks allowed me to observe and analyse the effect of different teaching strategies and to see the things that I had been taught about these subjects in practice. While paying close attention to the structure of lessons, I noticed that in spite of the vast amounts of planning carried out by teachers, it is impossible to plan exactly how the day is going to go. I found this to be the case especially in classes where the behaviour of some pupils was particularly challenging or in classes which had pupils with additional support needs. This provided challenges for me as when I was trying to support the whole class, I felt myself spending most time with pupils who required the most attention and not getting a chance to spend time with the rest of the class. I also felt that, in one case, while I was in a class which had a pupil with Autism in it, I was constantly having to remind the pupil to stay on task. This was due to her particularly high academic ability, meaning that she was often not being challenged enough by the work that the rest of the class was doing. I found that these types of things proved as challenges to my ability to always communicate effectively with the whole class and to provide support for all learners.

However, the willingness of the staff in the school to help me, whenever possible, to experience different learning environments and to teach small groups as well as lead whole class activities, gave me numerous opportunities complete my self-assessment forms and to assess myself constantly. Through use of these, along with my peer-assessment and feedback from staff, I have been able to learn a lot about my own communication skills, picking up on my strengths and development needs.

Strength – Throughout the week, I found through my self evaluations, as well as my peer evaluation, that showing expression in my voice through para-language is my communication strength. This means that I am a clear speaker and I show expression through my voice by use of tone, pitch, pace, and volume. I find that to speak with expression comes naturally to me.

I adapted my verbal communication when I was speaking to different age groups. For example, when I was speaking to lower primary classes, I had to speak in a very concise, slow and clear manner, making sure to make my tone of voice easy to interpret. When speaking to pupils further up the school I had to focus on making my voice easy to understand but there were times that I could speak in a more relaxed manner with these more independent pupils. When speaking to staff I made sure to speak in a formal manner at first, before having been in the company of each individual enough to adapt and speak in a more relatable and relaxed way with them. I found that I was able to identify the para-language which was appropriate for each age range and I was always conscious of the way in which I spoke when talking about a pupil to a teacher and when discussing challenging behaviour and mental and social issues faced by pupils.

After reading a story to a Primary 3 class, the teacher told me that my tone of voice and change of volume to suit different parts of the story was very effective. I felt that this, as well as stopping reading to ask the pupils questions about what they thought might happen next, helped to keep them engaged and made the process active rather than passive, so more interesting for the pupils. Through my self evaluation, I found that in all of the activities I carried out with pupils, my change in tone of voice and appropriate volume and pace showed my enthusiasm and helped to make sure that what I was saying had the desired effect on the learners.

Area of most progress – Before going on placement, I would have said that I was confident in my ability to use the academic language appropriate for different ages of pupils. However, I quickly found this to be a communication development need, as I often spoke without considering whether or not the pupils would have been introduced to a term that I was using.

At the beginning of the week, I worked with a Primary 3 class on their mental maths quiz by reading out the questions to them. The questions were focussed on addition up to twenty. When I first began to read out the questions, I used the word ‘plus’, for example “What is fourteen plus three?”. However, it was when a pupil raised his hand and asked me if ‘plus’ meant to take-away, I became aware that I had been using language that some of the pupils in the class were not familiar with. This meant that I had to go back to the beginning and read out the questions using the word ‘add’. This made me extremely conscious of the language that I used when I was working with the pupils as I did not want to cause confusion.

After this instance I made sure to always listen very carefully to the language used by the class teacher and to ask the teacher or to use aids such as wall displays to allow me to get an idea of what the class had already covered and what they may be have been unfamiliar with. As the week progressed, I completed another self-evaluation and a peer-assessment which showed me that I had improved on using language which was friendly to the pupil’s level of understanding.

Area Requiring Progress – Over my time spent in the school, when doing whole class activities, I found it very difficult to make sure that every pupil was involved and that nobody was dominating. While I did not want to discourage pupils who were happy to take part and to share their ideas, I also wanted to try to make sure that non-participating pupils were encouraged. I found that this was a challenge which was limited by my communication skills as when the teacher had instructed me to get the whole class to answer together, it was difficult to see who did not really understand what they were doing, making it difficult to pick them out and so, difficult to communicate in a way which suited them. I also did not want to pick certain pupils out in front of the class as I did not want to embarrass or upset them.

When I was in the Primary 4 class, I was asked to teach the pupils their seven times-tables by writing them up on the board and gradually rubbing off the answers, while getting the pupils to chant the calculations. I found this a particularly difficult activity to make sure that everyone was involved and that nobody was dominating and although I attempted to solve the problem by splitting the class in to groups to chant it and by saying things such as “This time you need to be much louder because not everyone was participating last time! It doesn’t matter if you’re wrong, just have a try. The loudest group wins!”, there were still pupils who did not try and pupils who just shouted even louder than they had been before.

I identified this as a development need through my self and peer evaluations as both highlight this as an issue in my communication which I need to work on. This may be because I did not know the pupils well enough to use all of their names and be able to pick out people who I knew were struggling to understand it, meaning that I could not individually target questions at them. However, it may be because I do not know how to communicate effectively with all types of children in a way which will challenge, yet encourage them and I felt intimidated and nervous at the thought of possibly doing the opposite.

Action Plan – In order to develop the skill of encouraging all pupils to participate and none to dominate, by promotion resilience to failure, through effective verbal and non-verbal communication, I will make sure that after some time of pupil discussion and participation, that I take back control of the activity in hand, to try to help all pupils to stay engaged and none to get too carried away. In order to encourage non-participating children to take part, if they appear to be struggling with an open question that I have asked, I will go back and ask them some closed questions which relate to the open question and which will help them to build confidence and at least try to find the wider answer. If the answer given by a pupil is incorrect I will use probes such as ‘Accuracy Probes’ and ‘Restatement Probes’ as discussed by Hargie (2010), to encourage them not to give up trying to find the correct answer and to teach them to be able to accept being wrong and to move on from it.

I discussed my lack in confidence in this area of communication with a teacher and she suggested that I work on using eye-contact and facial expressions as a means of showing pupils that I am aware of their lack of participation and to make sure that every pupil is engaged and feels included. I found that this method only worked when pupils were looking at me.

A strategy to ensure the involvement of every pupil is to promote critical thinking through inquiry and collaboration (Lange, 2014). Stacey Lange believes that as educators we should encourage pupils to ask questions about what they are being told and that they should be given time to do this. This would involve using spoken language and body language to promote a comfortable environment in which pupils feel comfortable enough to ask questions and to inquire further in to what I am saying. For pupils to link their knowledge to something else, they must understand it, so by asking them to come up with questions or links to other knowledge, it could be argued that each pupil would be forced to learn and to try to take part. She also discusses collaboration as a strategy. She talks about how collaboration allows for pupils to share ideas and to build an understanding of a topic, leading to the development of critical thinking skills and in turn, involvement in a task. This would also help me to prevent certain pupils from dominating as it would encourage them to share their knowledge and to explain their understanding to their peers, helping all pupils to become more equal with their involvement. For myself, as a communicator, it would involve the use of clearly stated instructions with language which all learners will understand and constantly bringing the pupils back to my control as, especially with younger learners, the independence of working with a group may be too much for them to handle and cause for them to go off task.

In conclusion, through working within a school community and being welcomed by staff and pupils, I was able to learn a lot about different communication strategies and about myself; how I communicate with both proffessionals and school pupils. This evaluation of my own practice has allowed me to see that I am a competent user of para-language and should play to my strengths, using this as effectively as possible. It has also allowed me to pick up on things which I communicated in an ineffective way and in some cases, to make progress on these over the course of the week. Although, I require to continue to work on my ability to use language and non-verbal communication to take more control over the learning of pupils and to make sure that they are all equally involved. I will attempt to improve on this communication skill through the range of strategies mentioned above.

References

Hargie, O. (2010) Skilled interpersonal communication: Research, theory and practice, 5th edition. 5th ed. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Lange, S. (2014) Strategies to promote critical thinking in the elementary classroom. P21Blogazine. [Online]. Available: http://www.p21.org/news-events/p21blog/1435-strategies-to-promote-critical-thinking-in-the-elementary-classroom [Accessed 7 Nov].

Sustainable Development Serial Days Tasks

Reflections on Placement