14.10.2012: One day till Placement 1a

Tomorrow begins placement 1a, and today I find myself wishing my printer was working.... As it is not, I have a lot of documents on my computer that should be in paper format. Guess I will be taking my laptop along with me tomorrow! Despite the lack of printed documentation, I am pretty much organised (for the first day at least!)

I am also in need of buying several hundred books... I could borrow them from the library, however all the copies seem to be constantly out. I know I can reserve them for when I get back into classes (odd system where by if someone else wishes to borrow a book your lease on it drops from one week to two days, and as I live so far from the university and my placement is ridiculously far away, any recalls will have to be patient!) but I would feel bad because I know if I want to take out a book for a week, it means I usually will take a week to read it, and I guess others would too?!?

So, Tip of the week.... I guess I have two:

• Make sure your printer works (at all times throughout the course)
• Save up a lot of money for books, or learn to read dry textbooks at high speed!

Wishing you all a lovely week, mine will be spent on placement with a 'difficult' class. What fun!

S x

12.10.2012: A week of little sleep

I've become a little bogged down in all the work, additionally illness and injury have taken their toll, so have not been able to blog in a while.

Today started out rather stressfully, almost to Cambridge (within 10 miles of our 40ish mile journey, we hit a stand-still. I'm impressed that we had managed this long without a major traffic jam, but today the luck ran out. We sat, with the engine off for over an hour, BUT we were only 15 minutes late for the lecture... All I can surmise from this is that we clearly leave home at least half an hour too early on the average day...

Today, was our last day in University before the first placement. I'm looking forward to being back in a classroom, but at the moment, I'm a little overwhelmed with the amount I need to prepare/sort/read/write/organise etc. We have a placement week, then a three week break before we go back to complete this placement in November. In the 'break' we have two weeks of classes - in which I have a group presentation, and a reading week - which I am going to need! We also have been set our first proper assignment: 6000 words on formative assessment in relation to a certain area of the curriculum. I have science to cover, but am required to make reference to specific examples I see within my placement, so I have background reading to complete right now, but am unable to think about the 'main body' of the assignment until I have started my placement.

There is basically very little time to do anything other than university work, and consequently, I am now finished blogging for today. Back to work I go.

S x

02.10.2012: Sickness and Books

I've spent the last three days with a sickness bug. I went into University yesterday (I had the essay to hand in) and spent most of the day running out of class. So I took today off. I feel somewhat better, but I'm still not completely there. So, I am reading. I have a wonderful reason for reading - its a requirement to create a reading journal... and I set my target at 100 books over the next year. Which actually could be really easy as tiny people's books can be read in 30 seconds flat. But I can't just read them, I have to read longer books for older children too. So I am investing in several book series. And today I have just started Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. What a great way to get over a sickness bug.

S x

29.09.2012: Essay Writing

Essay writing. All day. Now, at half 12 in the morning, I have finally finished my essay! It is, basically not what I want to have written, I'm not even sure it answers the question, but it is done. And ultimately, this essay is not assessed, just a requirement.

Really short post as I have done nothing but type all day!

Have a nice weekend, I shall head to bed to sleep until noon.

S x

26-18/09/12: Matriculation and sleep deprivation

The last few days have been a little hectic, and consequently I have not actually gotten round to writing on here. Wednesday (26th) was PE and Drama. We learnt more about how to organise a PE lesson for different abilities within a group, and a few games to help improve everyone's skills (rolling, kicking, throwing, batting etc) It's good for me to learn, because I never enjoyed games at school - and I hope that I can learn to teach with the encouragement that lacked in my education. Drama was my all time least favourite lesson. It was (and I guess still is) a popularity contest. The more popular people are generally more confident and so gain recognition from the teacher. I did not enjoy drama. I will always remember hating my teacher for forcing me to perform in front of people that I did not like or trust, and I think drama is all about trust in yourself and the audience. It is deeply personal, it is a time when you have to let down your defences because that is the only way to become a character. And if you do that you leave yourself open to be hurt. That is why I hated drama. The lesson therefore was walked into with dread. After the intro, we played 'hand touch' which I am awesome at it turns out, and then we did some improv - which I find really difficult (thinking on my feet.... probably a skill I should learn) and then we did some activities around a scene. The scene was a 'character passage' about being survivors after a long journey, and making this new place our home. No detail of where we were, or had come from, where why we moved or what happened in the journey. And we split into four groups. My group was creating a map of where we had come from, the second group did a set of two freeze-frames with thought tapping of the scene prior to leaving and whilst fleeing. The third group did four freeze-frames depicting the journey, and the final group did hot-seating of the thoughts post arrival. Finally we finished with a conscience alley. It was a lot better than I anticipated, and I actually look forward to the next lesson. I still don't like drama, but I will keep an open mind at least.

27th: Science and Music today. Music is always an odd one for me. On the one hand I love songs, and singing (I'm not sure I can sing, but I enjoy singing!) but in the other hand, I really can't play instruments.... I guess teaching music therefore makes me feel rather nervous! We started with warm up music games, which seem pretty simple - and were rather fun! Next we learnt different techniques for building up children's confidence with beats and rhythm, as well as pitch and harmony. Science was all about making the subject interactive - we did junk modelling to create the inside of the human body.

Thursday evening, was also matriculation. So, nice pretty dresses, lovely meal, and a strange ritual of Latin/Anglo Saxon (?) words whilst drinking wine from an African Horn.... Only at Cambridge.

28th: Today (because now I am caught up) is, as always English Friday! Poetry to be specific, we learnt different techniques to encourage and entice poems from our class, and a huge array of poets to read up/teach. One great resource is: http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/home.do It is definitely worth some time - there are recordings of poets performing their work and interviews about works, and just thousands of poems! We did write our own poem (a group work) taking elements from the different games/lesson ideas we had been taught. Ours is a haiku, and I hope you enjoy it!

The wild cake robots

Blotted out the summer sun

darkness envelops

S x

25.09.2012: Maths and a million things to do

Tuesday, my first Mathematics lecture. I'm pretty certain some people will not be successful teachers, not because they don't know their subject matter, but more because they know too much and seem to have forgotten that they are training to teach CHILDREN.... Proving through trigonometry might be fun, but if you present that to a 5 year old they would laugh, and an 11 year old would be scared from Maths for LIFE. (Little rant over)

I actually really like maths, its always been my strong suit, and I had really great teachers that made it fun. That is my aim for when I teach - to captivate the children's attention, and get them interested in investigating, and just being able to see the real-life applications. After all, how often do you hear adults say 'I never used algebra in real life' but they do without even realising it. And it is this generation of people that put children off the subject as much as those who expect too much/make it too number-y! Maths is FUN. Fact.

This afternoon, we had a lecture about everything we need for our first placement... which is basically a tree's worth of forms to fill in and read and understand and process and edit and print and sign. It basically means I have even more things to do (like another 20 things on my to do list) and less time than I thought to write my essay!

One good thing though, some of my books arrived today! Whoop. Textbooks to help me!

Best be off to do all my jobs!

S x

24.09.2012: Reading, Poetry and Twister

Today has been another really lovely day - first day of my lift share (which made the journey go SO much quicker) AND, after we got to class we had to do an observation session.... which involved playing with children's toys :) I observed first - the rest of the group played with brio trains, and then it was my turn to play... and we played Twister! Which is the best game ever. Fact. And finally, we made a jigsaw puzzle (which is harder than it seems when there are four of you making it!)

This afternoon, we had a talk (well performance) from Tony Mitton - a childrens poet and picture book writer. He is a really lovely man, and his poems are really good - for all ages, Early Years right through to Secondary. If you are studying Early Years definitely check out his picture books, and some of his re-telling of classic stories (generally in poem form) as they are a great way to get children into the idea of rhyme with a story that they will generally know. If you are interested, check out his website at: tonymitton.co.uk

So that brings me to know, I have a lovely collection of books to read - mainly Harry Potter at the moment, but also The Diary of Anne Frank and Gangsta Granny by David Walliams. But first, I need to read a lot of text books/journals for my essay (oh yes, I still haven't actually started it)

Have a great night,

S x