Placement: Day 1

I feel really lucky to have such a lovely class to be placed with and such wonderful supportive teachers and senior management. As I’m sure you can gather my first day went excellently, and I could not have asked for better. It is beyond intriguing to see what the children of today are expected to, and do know, and it excels almost everything I was taught at school over ten years ago. The children keep up tremendously and in particular their desire and enjoyment of reading is thoroughly uplifting, and it really does translate into their writing.

Today had a primarily literacy focus in order to finish a piece of extensive writing to be completed for the term to meet the school requirements. It was so lovely to see the children not only completing their work, but also editing it, and following on and responding to the comments that had previously been written by their class teacher.

One tough area was the seating arrangements in that some of the children, one pair of children in particular could be very distracting with one another in terms of diverting from the task, however in the same token they were very intelligent and complemented each other well in terms of producing high quality work. To split them up would solve the issue of distraction, however the benefits of the support they give each other far outweigh the issue of them being seated together.

I look forward to trying to get involved with after school clubs and the beginning of a parent’s evening in the near future should the circumstances allow, in an attempt to try to get as much experience of all aspects of the primary education as possible.

I intend to update this blog every few days, however should it be the case that there are not enough points for discussion, I will simply write a post at the end of the week.

Please feel free to like this post, join the discussion in the comments, and follow me!

TES Resources!

I have now started selling my resources on the TES website that I have produced whilst on my course. All of which fall in line with the National Curriculum. At the moment my only resources up for sale are paid, however I do intend to release a free resource very soon. 

In order to try to increase the sales of my resources (sincerely, poor University student) I would really appreciate any and all feedback once you have downloaded one of my resources!

I would also recommend following me on TES so that you can keep up to date with me and see when I have released a free resource!

If you have any questions or input please feel free to comment or to message me directly. If you could like and subscribe that would also be greatly appreciated! 

Assignments

This year I will in total have nine assignments on the following areas:

1. English
2. Maths
3. Science
4. Historical, Geographical and Social Understanding
5. Child Development, Health and Wellbeing
6. The Arts
7. Working in Partnership with Families and Communities
8. Principles of Learning and Teaching (Part A before placement and Part B after)

They have varied in difficulty however one thing I learnt eventually is that the key to the most successful assignment is to be prepared. I took the time to load all of the webpages and books on the reading list and find the relevant information. It is worth noting that I did not read through every page of the books, and that as I got further down the list and had gaps in my knowledge for the assignment, to simply search the books for the terms I needed, and this proved to be very effective. 

As of yet the assignment I have achieved the highest percentage in is The Arts, and I feel this is because this is the one I have enjoyed the most, being able to link three subjects to establish cross-curricular links and creating lesson plans for creative and effective lessons including the creation of a resource. The lowest percentage that I have received is Maths, and I believe that this is definitely due to the lack of time and effort I put into it, that is not to say that I didn’t put in any effort at all, but it is very clear from the assignment itself and the grade I received that compared to my other assignments, they are chalk and cheese. 

Again taking notes before starting my assignment writing the book, and all the information needed for referencing later on, and bullet pointing the information with page numbers incase I wanted to quote directly I found is the most effective way for me to write an assignment. It is so easy to then sit down to begin writing and know that all of the relevant information is on hand, and that if you need to add a little extra, you have the time to carry out that little bit of extra research on the spot. I also find it effective to then label/highlight/type those notes up into separate headings to really make my writing it easier. At this point it is usually more helpful for me to have typed the original notes in order to simply copy and paste them into the relevant pages, however very often I prefer a physical written copy.

Two of my assignments will involve group work, and one will include giving a presentation. In both instances I have had a great experience of working in groups, they have all been great to work with and have the same hard work ethic which is incredibly helpful when you’re working in groups.I also found the presentation relatively stress free in that we presented work we had created ourselves in the form of lesson plans, and so we were discussing our own creations that we were very knowledgeable about, making it very easy to discuss it during the presentation. 

Overall I’ve found that if you’ve engaged with the lectures and the reading lists that the University provides, and prepare yourself well with enough time to complete the assignments, you will be just fine.

If you have any questions or input please feel free to comment or to message me directly. If you could like and subscribe that would also be greatly appreciated!

Updates on their Way!

I know I have been incredibly behind on my updates for this blog and I can only apologise. But if nothing else it should give you a perfect look into how busy a Primary Education course is. It has been an incredibly busy 6 months and I have loved every minute of it. My timetable has been really generous with enough time for me to go away and consolidate my notes and my lessons have all been incredibly eye-opening and beneficial.

Unfortunately for me, I suffered a car accident in October just as my new academic year was picking up traction, and this led to me missing a multitude of lessons and sessions. The University on the other hand were incredibly helpful and supportive and I was able to catch up with little issues. 

We have begun and finished our subject study after the basic modules of maths, english, science etc. It is also up to us to fill out what is known as a PDP in order to record our professional development for each of the teachers standards with observations from lessons, taught lessons, and anything else which we deem to be important, this is to ensure that we have the relevant professional development evidence to be awarded our QTS (Qualified Teacher Status).

My placement beings in just under a weeks time to become familiar with the staff, school procedures and policies and the children in our class. This takes place for two weeks before the half-term, after which we return to the school for our 5 week block-placement to teach a minimum of one lesson a day increasing it to two further into the placement. I have attached my timetable for the first month to this post to give you some idea of what I have studied and the time constraints, but please be aware that this is only of course for Birmingham City University for this year. I have also only provided one month of my timetable as it would take forever to put up my entire timetable for the year, and it changes as my modules are completed and new ones are introduced. Where the timetable states ‘The Arts’ I had a mixture of evenly spread Art, Drama and Music lessons which alternated each week.

If you have any questions or input please feel free to comment or to message me directly. If you could like and subscribe that would also be greatly appreciated! 

A Not So Seamless Enrolment

I suppose it was naive of me to think that I could go through the process of enrolment without at least one hiccup. The University started the enrolment day by inviting us to a lecture to give us some basic information and to inform us of the name of our personal tutors. They also presented a variety of other information and it was worthwhile being in the lecture to hear answers to questions I hadn’t thought of and to really get a sense of what was going to be happening in the coming days.

Unfortunately they didn’t have my letter with this information on, which for me was typical as I have experienced nothing but minor issues here and there throughout my process so far. However in this instance I was partially comforted by the fact that there were also multiple others who also had no letter and fortunately this issue was resolved quickly. In order to receive our timetables we had to officially enrol and this was done by multiple members of staff using computers. I queued for around 20 minutes before getting to the front of the queue, providing my student number and name, and being told that they couldn’t enrol me but didn’t know why, and could assist me no further than sending me two flights up to enquire at one of the offices. They were very friendly and sympathetic to the issues I was facing and recommended I go back down to enrol and ask them to make a phone call should there be any further issues.

The second time I managed to go down and miraculously it was then resolved. Despite the issues, I was finally enrolled and eager to begin my new course!

If you have any questions or input please feel free to comment or to message me directly. If you could like and subscribe that would also be greatly appreciated!