Placement- Week 1

19/11

My first day of placement- and I have to say, I was nervous. But once I met my class and had a tour from two of the year 4's I'll be working with I felt settled in already. I started the day with listening to a child read and we then moved onto Maths. The children were continuing work on area and perimeter- using long multiplication to work out the area. After long multiplication was explained to me (!) I was able to support the children in small groups and see their progress throughout the lesson. We continued the day with Literacy, in which the children were doing a comprehension test. The last lesson of the day was Science and we observed a very successful lesson on light and shadows. The children were to use torches to see shadows of different objects in the room. By the end of the lesson the children were able to write in-depth conclusions and clearly understand how and why we have shadows. This will impacted on my practise as a teacher in that it is clear that practical experiments are the best way to understand science.

20/11

Today we started the day the same as yesterday- with reading and maths. We continued unfinished work from the previous lesson, however, it was clear that the children were still a little confused of the differences in working out perimeter and area. We moved onto Literacy after break in which I was able to have a look at the work the children had been doing on article and newspaper writing. They continued with work from a previous lesson and were to introduce a quote into their newspaper article. After lunch the children moved onto PE in which they were doing chest and bounce passes. Due to bad weather the lesson was forced to be inside which restricted the lesson a bit. However, I thought the plenary was a brilliant idea- the teacher passed the ball to different pupils using either a bounce pass or chest pass and asked them to tell the class something about that particular pass.

21/11

Today, after reading, we went back to area and perimeter, but the concept was simplified by asking the children to measure in cm rather than mm so as to allow the children to be able to understand area and perimeter better without having to also use long multiplication. The table I was working with were still struggling so I went through it again, breaking it down into smaller chunks. After I'd worked through the first one with them they continued on their own and were able to not only correctly complete today's work- they also corrected the work from their previous lessons. We had a French lesson before break which I really enjoyed. After break we went onto Literacy and worked on independent and dependent clauses in complex sentences and the children worked on their own in the style of newspaper writing in order to continue the topic. After lunch the children has ICT and were working on comic strips using word and were to link Egyptian Gods into a fairytale to make their story.

22/11

After reading this morning, we went through the children's test papers for Maths and asked them to work through and correct their answers. They were able to understand where they went wrong- it seemed that mistakes were made mostly due to not reading the question properly or misunderstanding the instructions. Literacy today was a lot of fun as the children were taken outside to the conservation area after a note was brought into the classroom from the Head Teacher to say a monkey had escaped from the zoo and the year 4's were needed to find it! We made our way down and the children were to look for evidence and ask the eyewitnesses (the teachers, my placement partner and I) questions and get statements from us to use as quotes in their 'Big Write'. The children thoroughly enjoyed this session- as did I. After lunch the children had Music. In year 4 they are allowed to choose a brass instrument to learn and they play very well- even after only 2 months. After this we moved onto DT in which they were making clay mummies. There was enough clay for me to join in- it was a lot of fun!

23/11

This morning in Maths- after some mental maths games- I took a small group of children out to go over area and perimeter one more time. After drawing rectangles on a mini whiteboard and asking them to first find out the area, then perimeter, I planned to ask them to measure rectangles they could find in the classroom (i.e. books, displays etc.) however, we had a fire alarm and I was unable to finish the task. I found this quite frustrating as I could see that the children were really starting to get the hang of it. I now understand just how flexible you have to be as a teacher as anything could interrupt a lesson. After Assembly and break the children started their 'Big Write' using the worksheets of evidence and quotes they had gathered from the previous lesson. I scribed for one child, and after he got his thoughts flowing it was hard to keep up! After lunch on a Friday the children have enrichment in were they move round a variety of different activities such as football, cookery, ICT, art and games. I went down to the school farm with a group of children where they have a donkey, two sheep, two pigs, chickens, guinea pigs and a duck. I really loved it down there, and it is clear the children do too- they were really up for mucking in and helping with all the animals.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my first week of placement. I think I've learnt a lot and am looking forward to next week when I am planning to do a bit of teaching myself (:

- Rebecca Moss