January 21, 2019
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Comments Off on Starring Role in ICT
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 […] Continue reading
January 21, 2019
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Comments Off on Semester one, over and done.
So here we are, second week of January after surviving the first semester of my first year at university… and how do I feel? I feel pretty good to be honest. And following receiving my results I am feeling OK with my progression so far, although there is definitely plenty room for improvement. For the […] Continue reading
January 21, 2019
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Comments Off on The Structure of a Drama Lesson
The video lesson was structured into 10 parts. The first section was establishing an agreement- the rules and aims of the lesson. The video used the 3 Cs (concentration, cooperation, and communication) which I thought was an interesting idea as they provide the children with a structure and set of guidelines that they need to […] Continue reading
January 18, 2019
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Comments Off on Relationships
Suzanne Zeedyk is a current theorist who explores the study of neuroscience. Zeedyk explains how important the pre-birth stage is as well as the development outside the womb and stressed that development of the brain doesn’t stop when children are aged 3 within her Youtube clip. Suzanne Zeedyk believes neuroscience helps babies brains function properly … Continue reading “Relationships” Continue reading
January 15, 2019
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Comments Off on Teaching Across the Curriculum – Health and Wellbeing
As part of the health and wellbeing inputs I have watched some videos surrounding early years development and relationship building. The first video discussed how babies brains are very flexible in the fist stage of their life and the experiences they have here shape what kind of pathways are made in their brain for their […] Continue reading
January 13, 2019
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Comments Off on Making Dance Personal
Dancing is definitely not one of my strong points – sure I’ll dance around to music I like, but dancing on a professional level, I cannot do. I used to be told that the noises I made thumping around while dancing could be compared to those of an elephant running in a herd. Anyway, when I […] Continue reading
November 7, 2018
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Comments Off on Can Mathematics be Beautiful?
Maths, beautiful? Before I would have never of put these two words in the same sentence. Now I will say maths can be beautiful. After allowing myself to really understand how this can be and how maths can make things more pleasing to the eye I can put maths and beautiful together. The Rule of […] Continue reading
November 7, 2018
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Comments Off on Stepping into the light of modern languages
I have always felt guilty whilst visiting other countries that most of the natives can speak conversational English, when I can barely speak a word of their language. I believe this has allowed English speakers to become lazy and too comfortable in their own culture. We should explore different languages and cultures to fully engage …
Continue reading “Stepping into the light of modern languages”
October 26, 2018
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Comments Off on Thinking Fast & Thinking Slow
According to Kahneman (2011), our thought process is determined by two different systems – impulsive/automatic and thoughtful/deliberate – also considered as system 1 and system 2. He makes apparent that for the majority of the time we should be using our system 2, however, this is not what happens. In fact, the reason we don’t […] Continue reading
October 22, 2018
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Comments Off on Do we ‘Place Value’ on our understanding of Mathematics?
During my time on placement, the aim of one of my group lessons was to teach the children who were ‘struggling’ all they needed to know about place value in one 30-minute slot. Simple right?… Armed with white boards and place value blocks we headed to the group study area where I could begin my […] Continue reading
October 22, 2018
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Comments Off on Me and My Maths Anxiety
Throughout my journey to being where I am right now, training to be a primary school teacher, I have had to persevere and overcome some hurdles on the way. The biggest and baddest of them all is MATHS. I tried to ignore it and avoid it but when the choice came up for me to […] Continue reading
October 9, 2018
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Comments Off on Makey Makey🕹
On the 26th of September we had a lecture with Derek. No one knew this lecture would lead to us being Derek’s most successful ‘Makey Makey’ class throughout his time teaching this module. Derek firstly spoke to us about using technology in the classroom, its benefits and purposes for real learning. He then introduced the […] Continue reading
October 8, 2018
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Comments Off on Storytelling in Music🎼
Today we had a music workshop with Sharon. The workshop started with Sharon showing us how to introduce music to children through using your body and vocals for making sound. The advantage of this is that there is less mess and disruption than if you were to get musical instruments out in the classroom. This […] Continue reading
October 7, 2018
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Comments Off on What is a Number?
We come into contact with numbers every day. Time, working out how many portions of dinner we’ll need to make or simply “hey what’s your number?”. But have we ever taken the time to think, what is a number and why do we even use them? My first question is, why does the number three […] Continue reading
October 2, 2018
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Comments Off on Can a raise in attainment within mathematics be created and maths anxiety destroyed?
Discovering maths has really opened my mind and has got me thinking about how I want to teach maths in my future classroom and what kind of teacher in maths I want to be. After one of the discovering maths lectures it allowed me to begin to ask myself a series of questions around the […] Continue reading
October 2, 2018
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Comments Off on Engagement and Motivation: A Guide Written by a Dummie
After a lecture focussed on the use of fieldwork in the teaching of Social Studies I began thinking about the lessons I have taught in previous placements and how they could be improved. The Social Studies Principles and Practices document (Education Scotland n.d) states that skills such as exploring, investigating, discussing and presenting are a […] Continue reading
September 28, 2018
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Comments Off on Maths Ability Groups: Good, Bad or Ugly?
After learning about the cognitive and affective domains with regards to learning in an input in my Discovering Maths module, I have been thinking about how maths groups based on ability and their seemingly neutral names may be affecting the way children feel about mathematics. Do ability groups still have a place in a modern classroom? Are there other options? We should have ability groups because… It is almost […] Continue reading
September 28, 2018
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Comments Off on Fieldwork
This morning myself and my friend took a trip to the Discovery Boat. I went there with two aims in mind; to learn more about the history of Dundee and to evaluate what it would be like to take a class there. As a child I remember visiting the Discovery Boat multiple times however I […] Continue reading
September 28, 2018
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Comments Off on I think; therefore I am
Walking out of Tuesday’s ‘Values’ module, I felt an ironic sense of negativity that I joked about to my peers. After a two hour lecture on biological discrimination, I felt bad as an atheist, straight Caucasian male. Once I had left the company of human communication, I delved a little into my own thoughts as […] Continue reading
September 28, 2018
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Comments Off on The Power of Yet
Recently, through an input on math anxiety, I discovered the saying, “the power of yet.” Since this input this saying has really stuck with me. During my first year placement whilst teaching mathematics, specially time, one boy – who was more intelligent than he let on – decided through frustration and panic gave up on … Continue reading The Power of Yet → Continue reading
