One Week Down

It's the Sunday after my first week of my block placement, and I'm so happy to say that I absolutely adore this school! 

My last post was a little down in the dumps, but I'm fine, really. I've got a focus for my assignment now, and I think all I really needed was to just get me into school to remind me of why I'm doing all of this! 

The last school I was at wasn't particularly welcoming, so I was a little wary that this might be the same, but my mentor, headteacher, staff, and the children are all so incredibly lovely, it already feels like I'm a part of the school! 

I've been involved in a lot of group work in this first week - I've never taught an entire class before, so this is a good way of easing myself in - particularly focusing on Maths and English. They started column addition this week, and it was interesting to see the different ways that I would have taught it compared to how my mentor did. We spoke about it afterwards and decided that both methods were completely fine, so if a child didn't understand her way of doing it, we could try my way. This proved to work quite well in the remaining lessons for the week! 

My class have swimming lessons every week, and also visit the local care home fortnightly, which was so lovely to see! The children read stories to the residents, and you could see just how much the residents enjoyed the company of a child, if only for half an hour. This gave me an idea for an English lesson involving the new John Lewis advert, The Man on the Moon. The children could acknowledge how the man would be feeling lonely, and then link it to the residents that they have read to. They could then write a letter in the form of a Christmas card to a resident, and give them to them in the last week of term. I've already discussed this with my tutor, and with a little work, she thinks it has the potential for a great lesson that the children - and residents! - would really enjoy!

It looks as if this week I'll be easing myself into teaching by doing some starter activities, which I'm nervously excited for, so watch this space! 

A Block In The Road

Starting this course, everyone said I would hit a block at some point. This week is the one. 

Over the last week or so, we've been bombarded with information about our assignments. We have a written assignment due in April, and a 15 minute presentation in February. The essay doesn't scare me so much, as I've spent the last 3 years writing essays for my undergrad course, but the presentation petrifies me. 

We need to come up with a topic surrounding either English, Maths or Science, and come up with 15 minutes worth of talk around it. I knew I wanted to do Maths, as it's the subject I was least looking forward to teaching, but the one I'm most enjoying now I've started the course. I've been searching a ton of different sources to find inspiration for my topic, but nothing has stuck out whatsoever. I know that February is a long way away, but is it really? This course is so full on, that while we're on placement (in just one and a half weeks time!), we'll be observing, planning, teaching, assessing and doing directed tasks. Throw research, reading and planning for a presentation into the mix, and you've got yourself a recipe for stress. 

If I could at least have a question in mind before I start my placement, that would put me in the best position I could be right now. 

I think the pressure of assignments has just put me in the wrong frame of mind this week. In our Maths session this week, I just couldn't get a grip on the concept. We were doing fractions, and for the first time on this course, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. One of the questions was "Is 3÷4 the same as 3/4?"

The rest of the class had worked it out, and were discussing how they worked it out, and even once they had moved onto the next question, I was still trying to figure it out for myself. No matter how much I looked at the question, I just couldn't do it. 

It took me 10 minutes before I realised that if you divided 1 by 4, you got 1/4, so multiplied by 3, the answer was 3/4. 

I've never felt so trumped by one question before, and it really put a downer on how great I'd felt about Maths since starting the course. 

I know this is just a block in the road, and that it'll pass pretty quickly, but right now I just want to get out onto placement - a change f scenery and a reminder of why I'm doing this is exactly what I need right now! May my rollercoaster be heading upslope soon!

Owl Pellets and Mouse Skeletons

This week's Science lesson was about classification and identification. We began by discussing how this concept could be used from Early Years to Year 6. We were given a tray with different items in it, and we discussed how the different age groups would classify the items into different groups.

For Early Years, it would be as simple as soft and hard items, whereas in Year 6, it could be transparent and opaque.

We then moved on to a late KS2 activity. We read part of White Owl, Barn Owl, and discussed what and how much an owl would eat. Much to my initial disgust, we were then provided with an owl pellet in pairs (an owl's regurgitated food - the sludge-like substance is the fur and feathers it could not digest!) to dissect and pick out the bones it had eaten. 

Once I got past the initial gross-ness of it, I found myself really getting into it, and was fascinated when we discovered skulls! The picture above is from 2 pellets, and we found 5 skulls!

Our task was then to identify what animals it had eaten. We were given a sheet to identify each bone to the correct animal, and even managed to put together the skeleton of a mouse!

This is something that a Year 5/6 class would find extremely exciting, and would benefit their learning by identifying each bone of the animal! I will definitely be keeping hold of this idea and embracing it when i have my own Year 5/6 class! 

Algebra Doesn't Have To Be Scary!

Algebra in secondary school, for me, was surprisingly something I quite liked! The letters didn't scare me, and it was something that I just got. I think I was one of the only people in my tutor group that didn't partake in the intake of breath when the word algebra was mentioned. 

In simple terms, algebra is pattern spotting. Now that doesn't sound so scary, does it?

We were shown a brilliant example of how algebra can be used simply in a Year 2 class, with the use of link cubes. We created a dog out of the cubes, and noted how many cubes made up each body part. We then made another dog, adding an extra cube to each leg and torso, and one more dog, again, adding an extra cube to the legs and torso.

We then created a table, noting the differences between each dog, then extended the sequence. The children would notice that there was a pattern between the dog number, and the amount of cubes that made up the torso and legs - the number of the dog was the same as the number of cubes. 

We would then be able to ask the children to estimate the amount of cubes that made up each body part for dog number 99, etc. 

I absolutely loved this concept of introducing algebra, and we could introduce the formal algebra (x, y, etc.) in Year 6, where we could ask them to work out how many cubes Dog n would have.

To introduce how different patterns can be interpreted, in pairs, we created and extended our own patterns. I placed down 4 different coloured cubes, expecting my partner to extend the pattern with the same coloured cubes in the same order. However, she extended it in her own way, by using the same colours of the pattern, but using everyday objects of the same colours. 

This threw me off a little as I wasn't expecting it, but I loved the concept of patterns being interpreted and worked out in different ways. 

This is such a great way to introduce children to the idea of algebra, without jumping straight into the unknown and throwing in letters from the offset.