3.3 Pupil Assessment | Kat Writes

For me, primary school was so long ago that I find it hard to recall details of learning rather than all the time I spent with my friends. However, I do have a few memories of some aspects of learning reading, writing and listening although not so much on the talking but I guess that comes hand in hand with the other.

My memories or reading begins with being read to when I was younger by not only my parents but my big sister as well. When in school I have vague memories of being in reading groups for different abilities and being taught to sound out the words. How ever, due to having dyslexia I wasn’t the quickest reader but it is something I still practice to this day by reading whatever I can whenever I can. Also I still clam up when I have to read out loud as I fear my dyslexia will make me sound like an idiot.

I have more memories when it comes to learning to write. One of these is the Magic Pencil programme that we were always so excited to watch, seeing the TV being wheeled in was always a sign of a great lesson ahead. As well as the Magic Pencil I remember being taught cursive within school. We would have to copy text out in cursive which again I really didn’t get along with, but to this day I do still write in cursive, even if my handwriting is completely illegible. I also have memories of before starting school my mum writing my name out and then me copying it out in an attempt to learn how to spell my own name before starting school.

And finally listening. When it comes to listening I don’t have any specific memories. I just remember being taught from an early age that we should always listen and respect the teacher, and coming from a long line of teachers this was drilled into me from a very early age. So as a result I always did my best to keep quiet and listen and pay attention to what the teacher would say.

Fourteen days into the semester and I have already been introduced to my first handful of subjects with many more to come.

The first subject I had for this semester was ICT, taught by the very enthusiastic Sharon Tonner-Saunders.

Within the first class we were introduced into the world of animation and how we can teach this ourselves within the classroom. Sharon broke down the class in a way that made everything straightforward and was still interesting to us adults but was so simple to do that younger children can also understand and enjoy it. Sharon explained what onion skin animation is and how we can teach this in a very simple manner with one sheet of paper, and also discussed how we could explain it further from there. This developed into us doing an onion skin style stop animation to Bernstein’s Mambo. This was fun and challenging to ensure the movement of the object moved and appeared in time to the music that was playing.

The second class with Sharon was as equally enjoyable where we once again did stop animation with play dough models. But before we started filming, Sharon had us created a quick story board of what we would be filming and how we can do the same when teaching our own classes in the future. Whilst teaching us these activities we did, Sharon also stressed the importance of keeping the class relevant to the Curriculum of Excellence as well as meeting the expectations and outcomes for ICT.

As enjoyable as I found these lessons myself, I do however have some reservations about teaching this to young children. I worry that equipment may be used incorrectly and it way be difficult to watch a full class of children work on this at one time. This task may perhaps, therefore, be better suited to smaller groups at one time to ensure that everything can run smoothly and hopefully without any hiccups to equipment or pupils

To entertain you I have included the videos we have created, although I do apologise for any sound errors there may be.

I also must stress that I, nor does anyone else involved in making the videos own any rights to any music but I do believe them to be copyright free as that is what I searched for when looking for music to use.

Reading, Writing, Listening and Me

Starring Role in ICT