I've just finished two full weeks at a primary academy where I absolutely loved it! I had so much fun, learnt a crazy lot of stuff and made some great friends. I can't wait now until I have time to go back and help out some more!
I got to sit in on, and take my own, phonics groups. These were 10 minute long phonics sessions which all schools are now doing to meet government expectations in literacy. I watched maths lessons and took part in helping the children to finish their own independent maths work. I saw every class (very small school, mixed years in class, only five classes!) and so was able to make a decision about where I would prefer to work. I decided that I really loved the year 3 and 4 class and spent the whole of my second week there.
Luckily for me, I had a fantastic teacher who let me teach four lessons with one group on my area of strength (literacy) and I was able to plan my own lessons, make my own resources and assess the children's progress. I decided to teach using Julia Donaldson's A Squash and a Squeeze. I did an introduction lesson where we looked at book blurbs and covers and then settled on the cover for A Squash. We went over what the cover made us think and feel and whether we would buy the book based on the images we could see. Then I read a text only version of the story - no pictures! - and stopped just before the end. We then made predictions about what would happen at the end of the story and started to make storyboards based on what happened.
Our second lesson was to see if our predictions were right! We finished the story and finished our storyboards, adding our own sentences to them to make our own story. We also added our own ending instead of using the one in the book which the boys found fun.
The third lesson was on punctuation in the book. They had to correct a passage that I'd typed up with no punctuation in and we had a good discussion on why particular punctuation was used. Then we checked their storyboards to see if they had used the very punctuation we had been discussing.... mostly, they hadn't! Capital letters were absent and there was no other punctuation other than a few inconsistent full stops. I reiterated to the boys that they did know what kind of punctuation to use, because they had just told me all about it! They needed to start to apply that to their own writing. At the end of the lesson, we corrected and started to colour our storyboards.
The final lesson was about word classes. I made a few mistakes with this lesson. I made it a little harder because I felt that the previous three lessons were a little easy. However, it was probably to confusing for them. This lesson should really have been simplified and spaced over about two or three lessons. We discussed what nouns were, and then had a competition to find as many as we could. Then we discussed adjectives and had another competition. I had typed some short passages from the book and added some blank spaces where nouns and verbs should go, giving the boys the instructions to fill them in with something else *different* than the words in the book. This confused the boys because they didn't know what verbs were! I attempted to give them an idea (I had already printed out cards with explanations and examples on) but they were confused with the blanks and kept putting nouns in all blanks, including the ones for verbs. In hindsight, I feel I should have just started with nouns and had a worksheet (made by me, of course!) with just blanks for nouns in, before moving on to adjectives, verbs and adverbs. However, the boys still had fun doing this and came up with some really funny sentences!
I really enjoyed doing this - it gave me an insight of the amount of time a teacher will spend planning and making resources for just one lesson. Altogether, it probably took me about 3 hours to plan and make resources for four 50 minute lessons. It also made me feel quite proud of myself. It really is one thing to teach using someone else's planning and resources, but to know that children are getting something from, and enjoying, your ideas and resources really is exciting.
There was a little bad point in the week where I was almost assaulted by one boy! But this was dealt with by the headteacher swiftly and I received a letter of apology from the boy concerned. The incident itself did not bother me, but I did realise at the time that I really don't know how to deal with things like that. There was another incident, where a girl was about to sit on her chair and a boy pulled it away and she fell down with a huge bang, hitting her neck on the chair. I shouted at the boy, and told him it was unacceptable. I could feel I was getting quite mad with him, and I thought I wrong to shout but then a teacher came over and shouted at him! Also, I felt like the children didn't really respond to my shouty voice as much as they did to the regular teachers'. I felt more like the good cop, the one who got hugged more than anything! I think I need to stop getting so emotionally attached to the kids and concentrate on being firmer with them. It is hard though, when you're new and you don't want to overstep the line. I need to be more of a presence in the room, an authority figure. Any ideas how to do this? I thought I'd find it easy, having four children of my own!
On a lighter note, though, I did really enjoy PE which I didn't think I would! It gets exciting when you're watching two teams of 6-8 year olds trying to beat other at Benchball! It was also good to see some of the children who didn't shine academically, shine at something else.
I only left yesterday but I'm missing the kids and staff already! Can't wait until I've got some more free time to go back.
Better get started adding some of this to my personal statement!
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