Week 3 has been a 4 day week due to Easter Monday being a bank holiday. I’m so used to being in Scotland where most people work and most things are open on a bank holiday but down here in England everyone closes up shop and takes the day as a proper holiday for family time! I think its lovely.
Image taken from Google – this was something discussed at the inset day. We need to ensure we teach in the learning zone and not send children into panic
So Tuesday I turned up to Moulsford bright eyed and bushy tailed, very excited to be going back to the school and found coming back after 3 weeks off, rather a breeze. Tuesday was only an inset day but really productive as the school had booked another teacher from “teddies” school in Oxford – also known as St Edwards – to talk about their skills based curriculum. It was really interesting and gave me some fantastic ideas which I would love to put into practice in the future and highlighted some important points like labeling children, giving the children challenges that are suitable but not in “the panic zone” and how important failure is to children so that they can learn from it. Moreover, as it is a goal of mine to find out about the school from all aspects I attended the staff meeting where, although opened and lead by the headmaster, many of the teachers took part in the discussion by putting forward comments or reminders about certain aspects of the school, their department or their class as well as comments from the bursar, office staff, learning support staff, cleaning staff and boarding staff. By attending the staff meeting I was able to demonstrate my professional commitment to my role as a teacher (Medwell and Simpson, 2008, Chapter 4) which is also a vital part to being a teacher in Scotland according to the GTCS (2012, p. 5) and also picked up on some valuable discussions taking place about the school in the summer term. For example, a discussion was held about the new boys who will be joining at the beginning of this term and it was lovely to see how much emphasis was put into this, to ensure it was a smooth transition from previous schools and happy term for the boys from members of teaching staff and office staff. Another discussion was held about members of staff across the school who would be joining the cleaning department and
Image taken from google – there is a real feeling of teamwork here at Moulsford which I love. Everyone works together and shares any information they can with their collegues.
boarding department which showed me just how vital these role are seen as in the school. Following a whole staff lunch I was kindly allowed to attend the English departmental meeting by the head of English. The meeting was putting emphasis on making English lessons creative and which books children would be reading from each year group. A member of teaching staff from each year group attended this meeting along with a member of the learning support team. There was a huge feeling of shared information and team working which I personally feel is important. I went back home at the end of the day to read Pollard et al (2008, chapter 10) about how teachers should implement a curriculum and found that team working and senior management meetings like the ones I have attended today are key to ensuring a curriculum is delivered to a high standard.
Wednesday was a rather full day for me with classes all day but starting with a whole school assesmbly. The topic for the assembly was faliure after the previous days training for teachers and I wrote more about this in Inset Day – Purple Pens and Labelling Lads. My timetable is set now and I will be doing the same things almost every week and my second lesson on a Wednesday will be in Language where I will be helping a pupil with some additional support needs. This is great experience for me as I be continuosly working with them and hopefully, accross many Language lessons in the following weeks, I will be able to see some improvement in their Language work. To help me with this set of lessons in my remaining time at Mouslford I have read the chapter, providing for special educational needs by Noel Purdy (cited in Cremin and Arthur, 2014, p.372). One interesting piece which I read in this was about individual education plans and how important it is to keep the children involved in their own learning. SEN, Ofsted (1999) found that many primary schools believe that not involving the pupils in the formulation of their IEP targets was a weakness to their own learning. I know that here at Moulsford the children are heavily involved in the creation or their individual education plans and therefore the child I am working with, will be informed in how they can work to help their learning. Furthermore, if I can read this, I will be more informed in how my attendance to the English class can benefit their learning to the highest standard.
Image taken from google – Moulsford understands how important sharing a childs IEP is with them, in turn allowing them to benefit more from their learning
Wednesday continued with my first ever proper music lesson which was with the Year 7’s. They were singing and the teacher has asked if I would like to prepare a song for the boys to sing next week. I am racking my brains but so far have not found anything I deem appropriate for this age group. It is times like this that you realise how much swearing and inapropriate subjects are used in music these days. Moreover, after lunch I spent the rest of the afternoon with the Year 3’s who were doing Language and Humanities. The languages lesson was really active with kung fu punctuation a huge part to what could have been a dull lesson about full stops.
Image taken from Google – I loved this idea of Kung Fu Punctuation!
Moreover, in preperation for my rivers lesson with the Year 3’s next week I was able to prepare slightly more by seeing what level some of the children where at already. This week they were foucssing mainly on Britain and I was able to have some very in depth disucussions with the children about Scotland. Most of the children were interested in the typical Ben Nevis, shortbread, whiskey and Gaelic conversations however much to my amusment a few of the boys challenged my football abilities “as a scottish woman” and were surprised to find I know my way around a football pitch rather well. As funny as I found their suprise, it was nearing the end of the day and I helped the class teacher prepare the boys for home time and even met a few of their parents when sending them out the door.
Thursday was very quiet with me meeting teachers across the school to arrange my lessons for the next 3 weeks, so rather exciting for me! I did attend 3 lessons today though and a assembly about cricket, which was great as I love cricket (I know its weird because I’m Scottish but I can’t help it) and its cricket season at Moulsford so I am definately going to try to attend a cricket tea at some point before I leave! In regards to my lessons, the first of these was Year 4 maths. The children were learning number lines and playing games and standing at the front of the classroom to make themselves a number line. Doing a physical number line with the boys meant they were actively engaged and participating in their lesson and I really liked one of the boys techniques of remembering what to do when rounding. This was 5 to 9 climb the vine, 0 to 4 to the floor. Me and the class teacher were both very impressed with this and both expressed our wish to use this again. As the lesson ended the class teacher had some time left over so played a “guess my number” game where the children had to guess which number the teacher had written on their wwhiteboard in only 20 questions. This meant that the class were using mathematical language which made me think back to the mathematics and science module I took earlier in the year where making maths fun and using mathematical language was actively encouraged by the lecturer in order to
Image taken from Goolge – this was the rhyme one of the boys said in their maths lesson on Thursday. Fantastic!
make their learning significant. Furthermore, 90% of pupils in Scotland feel that the mathematics that they are learning in school is significant to them outside of school (Scottish Government (Scotland), 2014) which means in Scotland teachers are teaching mathematics in a fun and engaging way. I feel that these statistics would be similar here as every mathematics lesson I have attended has been engaging and relevant. My day continued with another fun Latin lesson – I am certain I’m starting to pick up a few words. Break and lunch followed, with a history lesson about King John after with a lot of question and answer for the assessment methods. I will be with the Year 6 history group until I leave and look forward to seeing them continue on with this subject with the magna carter being a heavy feature.
Image taken from Google – Completely throwing it back to the absoloute classic magic key books which I learned to read with (so they must be old!)
Friday was my last day of week 3 at Moulsford before the weekend where I spent a morning with Year 3 doing reading and Science and an afternoon with pre-prep doing games (P.E.). The first thing I was doing, was listening to Year 3 readers individually with the class teacher. I really like to do this because you can have a quick conversation with the children about their book and get to know them a bit better. Reading here at Moulsford isn’t done with reading schemes but in Year 3 the children can choose their own stories. I have never seen this done, the schools I have previously attended have always ran with reading schemes. The difference in the two ways that the schools in England and Scotland encouraged me to go away and read some of Primary English: Knowledge and Understanding (Medwell et al. 2014). I found that although reading schemes can be extremely useful in helping teachers reach their children’s experiences and outcomes and equivalent in England, sometimes they can not be particularly interesting or have controlled grammatical and vocabulary structures (Medwell et al, 2014, p.141). Moreover, I personally feel that by giving children the opportunity to learn how to read by allowing them to choose their books the children will be more likely to pick stories they think they will like and therefore enjoy reading, which may give them a positive view of reading in the future. The difference between the way Moulsford teaches reading and Scotland does really interest me as you can see the difference between the children I taught this year compared to last year and the children at Moulsford definitely enjoy reading more. Furthermore, after my previous post which mentions the negative effects of labeling children, many reading schemes such as the Oxford Reading Tree and Read Write Inc do in fact encourage children to be put into reading groups with their books for differentiation. As much as teachers may like this, surely it is better for the children to learn from books they have chosen where they are not feeling pressured to go onto the next book or be in the “top reading”?
Science followed with lots of interesting expeirments taking place about soil. Some exciting question and answer games took place with an active true and false game which I really liked and discussions in pairs. Following this, the children had brought in their own soil and were putting it into a table under appearance, texture and moisture. This was great for me as next week I will be taking their science lesson where they will be continuing this and growing some broad beans. My afternoon was spent with pre-prep in the games hall where the children were playing active games running around and the discussing the skills they were practicing after. This was something that I compared with giving children their success criteria in Scotland which we know is important for their future development. I am really enjoying games lessons and intend to observe a couple more lessons next week and write about the way that Moulsford does games here compared with Scottish education. Although it has only been 4 days it has really been a busy old week for me here because I have observed loads which can be seen in this reflection alone! I am really excited for next week where I will be teaching my first lessons on my own and also seeing the boarding side to Moulsford!
References
Cremin, T, and Arthur, J. (2014) Learning to Teach in the Primary School. Routledge:
GTCS (2012) The Standards for Registration. [Online]. Available at: http://www.gtcs.org.uk/web/FILES/about-gtcs/standards-for-registration-draft-august-2012.pdf (Accessed on 17th March 2017).
Medwell, J and Simpson, F (2008) Successful Teaching Placement in Scotland: Primary and Early Years. Exeter: Learning Matters. Chapter 4.
Medwell, J. Wray, D. Moore, G. Griffiths, V. (2014) Primary English: knowledge and understanding. London: Learning Matters
Ofsted (1999) The SEN Code of Practice: Three Years On. The Contribution of Individual Education Plans to the Ihe Raising of Standards for Pupils With Special Educational Needs Ihe Ihe . Available online at: www.ofsted. gov.uk/resources/sen-code-of-practice-three-years (accessed 20th April 2017).
Pollard, A., Anderson, J., Maddock, M., Swaffield, S., Warin, J. & Warwick, P. (2008) Reflective Teaching. (3rd ed.) London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Scottish Government (Scotland) (2014) Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy 2013 (Numeracy) [Online]. Available at: http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0044/00449212.pdf (Accessed on 24th February 2017)
