I cannot believe that it has been over 5 months since my last blog post. Crazy!! The life of a student teacher ay?!
At the moment, I am currently on my final (yes, FINAL) school placement. There are 9 working days left which is unbelievable. I have begun to feel like a REAL teacher. I LOVE my class, I LOVE my school and I LOVE being a teacher.
This realisation has lead me to think about what I have learnt over the past 11 weeks. So here’s a few thoughts about my time at the most wonderful primary school.
My class are a mixed year 2, year 3 and year 4 class with 20 boys and 8 girls. No sorry, 6 girls, 2 left! This is the first placement where I have experience such a mixture of children. The first thing I was told on arrival at my school was:
“Don’t worry. After a couple of weeks, differentiating between the three year groups will become second nature.”
I felt at ease with the class immediately and have developed really good working relationships with the staff and the children. My teaching time is spent mostly laughing with the children, learning things from them (like Gorilla’s eating their own poo…) and enjoying my time teaching such lovely kids! They respect me and I respect them.
The hardest thing about this placement isn’t the children, nor the teaching, nor the differentiation. The hardest thing is yet to happen; they final day. I am dreading leaving this school. Three months is a long time to spend in a school without feeling some sort of attachment. In these three months I have watched one child struggle to understand that two letters could make one sound to listening to him reading confidently. I have watched another child struggle to write the simplest of words to writing his own sentences, albeit with several spelling mistakes but still, he is writing independently.
My time at this school has seen me become a ‘good student’. I may only be a good student, but I know I will be an outstanding teacher.
So, I’ve just been looking through some old school friends pictures and felt the odd pang of jealousy. It seems that, after 7 years together in school, they have all kept contact- they go on holidays, they have nights out together, they’ve stayed friends and have remained involved with each other.
I wonder if I had gone to a different school, would my life be different now? Or if I had lived closer to my school, would it have been different? Would I have been in these friendship groups that have stayed so strong throughout the past 12 years.
If I’d gone to a different school, namely one that all my primary school friends went to, would I have had a wider friendship group?
I went to Devonport High School for Girls. A school almost 20 miles away from home. I was up at 6:30 everyday to get the 7:15 bus into Plymouth. I spent my days talking to my classmates, listening to what they had been up to at the weekend with each other, what they had eaten the night before at each others house, what they had planned for the next weekend. As the girl who lived so far away, I was never included. I guess they just assumed I couldn’t make it all the way to Plymouth without my school bus. I never let it bother me, and I guess it doesn’t bother me now. I just wonder how my life would be had I lived closer.
Given the choice, I chose to go to DHSG. It was the same school my best friend was going to and I wanted to be with her. Coincidentally, we ended up falling out in the first months and so I was left making new friends. Even though I was involved in lunch time activities and conversations, I was never invited to birthday parties, shopping days and any other events that would have seemed significant to me back then. I sometimes wish Mum and Dad had moved us to Plymouth so I could have been closer and had the opportunity to be involved. I also sometimes wish I’d stayed at a local school. But who knows whether going to a different school would have changed the outcome.
All I’m wondering is, should it be right for children to be sent to schools miles away from home? Do they get the same opportunities to socialise with their class mates that they do?
From my view, I never did. I wasn’t allowed to join after school clubs as the public bus was too expensive/train station was too far away/expensive to drive all the way in and back just to pick me up. I didn’t get to stay behind at friends houses for tea for the same reasons.
I wouldn’t change it now, but I do wonder if all those people I spoke to in school and considered my friends, would be friends with me now had I been closer. I guess once school finished, it didn’t matter who stayed in contact with who. And that’s the saddest part of life.
We go to school for 11 years minimum and yet those people we grow up with- the ones we are the closest too- drift away from us until one day, we speak to them no more.
On this hand, school did not consist of the best years of my life.
The answer to the question is no. I really am not.
A big assignment for our final year is based on our own visions and values on education. A critical piece of writing which will discuss what education means to us. An analysis of government and initiatives in place today and whether we agree or don’t agree with them.
It’s my final year of University and I am so naive to what I should think about education. I feel, after five years, I still have no clue of what is happening in the world education wise. I know that Michael Gove is our Education Secretary and that he is a Tory. I know we have a new curriculum coming into place in 2014. I know the standards have changed. I don’t know a lot else.
I have my own thoughts on education and what it should be for but I know that my view is just one of tens of thousands of peoples. I believe education is there to give children the opportunity to learn, no matter what their needs may be.
I really feel that I do not know enough. This is where you can help.
If you can help educate me politically, please comment. Or tweet me @MissJButt.
I wonder how many people reading this blog post are reading from a Smartphone. Or how many people reading this on their laptops have a Smartphone. I do. Or I did!
I had an iPhone 3GS a couple of years ago. It never left my side. I would wake in the morning and do a routine. Check Facebook, check Twitter, check my e-mail and play ‘Temple Run’ or ‘Draw Something’. I found in a day I would check my Facebook or Twitter a couple of times every ten minutes. To see if someone had wrote on my wall or to generally stalk the 398 “friends” I have on Facebook to see who had split up with who, who was going out with who, what people were doing that evening or day. My iPhone kept me up-to-date with the latest happenings going on in other people’s lives and with the world when I occasionally checked my BBC News app. It contained 43 apps from ‘Gina the Talking Giraffe’ to ‘Tiny Wings’, ‘Instagram’ to ‘FatBooth’ and ‘Soundhound’ to ‘Soundcloud’. My life basically revolved around me exploring the apps on my phone.
I did have some educational apps such as the app for the TED and a children’s app for my boyfriend’s nephew where a story would be read to him if he touched the screen. I didn’t have a chance to explore other educational apps as I was too engrossed in the phenomenon that was ‘Draw Something!’
By the time moved on from ‘Draw Something!’ I had broken my iPhone, dropping it on the floor and thus killing my phone. I went back to my old Samsung Wave until it was time to upgrade. I upgraded to the Samsung Galaxy S2. This was basically the same as the iPhone, just bigger and lacking iTunes. That was probably the app I missed the most as I was always listening to my music. Instead, I bought an old iPod of a friend for £40 to get over missing that!! My Samsung Galaxy was immediately filled with all my favourite apps from my iPhone. ‘Instagram’, ‘Lil’ Kingdom’, ‘Cut the Rope’ and ‘Angry Birds’. Once again, after several months of no smartphone, my life was once again revolving around apps and how easy it was to connect with friends.
This lasted just 6 months before my cackhandedness saw me dropping my phone and smashing the LCD screen. This wouldn’t have been a problem to fix except for the fact the LCD screen for the Samsung Galaxy S2 is £150. Ouch.
So here I am once again using my old Samsung Wave with no android, just plain on 3G and Wifi and a memory capacity that my 2gb memory card laughs at! Smartphones are fast becoming the norm. I wish the days of the Nokia 3310 never ended! Snake was the only game I cared to play!
I haven’t written a blog in a while. Which got me thinking about time.
Where do I find the line for time to myself, time with my friends, time working and time studying? This year has been a real page turn for me. Having failed my second year in 2010 due to a mix up of hand in dates, I wanted to prove to my lecturers in my third year that I could achieve at least a 2:2 in my written assignments
On top of assignments to do, I also had a job. Not just one job, but two. I work for ASDA seasonally and Animal every Saturday. Worried I would not achieve the grades I desired, I chose to work for ASDA seasonally so that I could continue my studies throughout term time.
As well as two jobs and assignments, I needed time for myself, time with my friends and family and time with my boyfriend. While writing assignments, my boyfriend would study for his navy exams or my friends and I would gather in the library for a study group. This was really great as I got to concentrate on my written work as well as socialising with the people I cared about.
On top of all this, I am an active bandswoman. Having been part of St Pinnock Brass Band for well over ten years, regular practices and concerts meant that nights were taken up with music instead of assignments and socialising.
With all of these things going on, I still managed to achieve not a 2:2 in my assignments, but a 2:1 in EVERY SINGLE ONE!! I had exceeded mine and anyone else’s expectations.
What I am trying to say is that no matter how “little” time you have for everything in your life, there is always time for something. And if you really put your heart to something, you will achieve it.
Today is 3rd March 2012. Today I learnt to teach Music the ‘Orff‘ way….
Who is ‘Orff’? (1895-1982)
Carl Orff was a German composer best known for his work Carmina Burana. He founded a school for movement and dance in Munich in which he was determined that the students, musically trained or not, should be involved in creating their own dance music rather than relying on a piano accompaniment which was the traditional practice at the time.
Working with students of dance and gymnastics, the only available instruments were in various forms of drums and untuned percussion. Although he started with these, it was not long until his students were improvising tunes, in pairs on the piano (even though they had never played the piano before).
To all trainee teachers who are interested in teaching a successful music lesson, music specialist or not, I would highly recommend attending a workshop on the ‘Orff Approach to music’.
Why? What have I learnt?
I have learnt how to teach a classroom of children effectively about music. At the start of the day, I was sceptical. We were running around the room, singing a song we did not know, something I did not think would be important. In fact, what I did not realise at the time, I was learning different rhythmic patterns. The only way I can show you is through video:
You will notice, the rhythm, ‘Paa, Paa, Pa pa pa‘ followed by the rhythm, ‘di di di di di di di di di di di di di‘. By doing the dance with the rhythm of the music, the children are becoming aware of a pattern; they become more rhythmically aware. This dance works in both double meter (crotchets/quavers) and triple meter (triplets/12:8 time). After doing the ‘Snake Dance’, we were sat in a circle and made different rhythmic patterns using ‘body percussion‘. We also changed our voice. For example, we would say ‘Paa, Paa, pa pa pa” in different pitches and also clapped on the second ‘Paa,’ and clicked on the fourth pa. You do NOT need to have percussion for each thing you say. It is also important that you keep your rhythm in four. Children will often stray and create a rhythm with 5 beats. This is not wrong, but it may confuse them later on. One thing to watch out for with this is whether the children notice or not.
This particular lesson could be taught to children in KS1 as long as you keep it simple. I learnt through this that you do not need to keep everything too simple, you can challenge children in KS1. They will work and they will try new things. Especially if you incorporate movement and dance into the lessons.
Following on from this, we learnt to make ‘Rhythm Phrases’. These looked like this:
The triangles stand for ‘metal sounding’ instruments, X’s for ‘wooden sounding’ instruments, O for drums and T for together. Each line represents an 8 beat phrase. This particular rhythm chart we produced was for a year 3/4 class. We thought this would be suitable as there was not a lot of variation. However, you will notice that the wooden instruments carry over to the second phrase for 2 beats. We were told that this would be confusing to children of this age as they will be used to ’4-beat phrases.’ Therefore, this rhythm chart would be much more suitable for a year 5/6 class. Although we may find something easy, the children may not.
The next part of the workshop involved using ‘Ostinati’. Here is an example of this (and a particular favourite of mine) :
At around 1:11, you will notice a change in the piece. Again at 1:27. These are called ‘breaks’. Having a 3 minute song with the same ostinati would become repetitive and boring. Therefore, you need to add a new idea or a break. This was something I did not know before today. If I had been teaching ostinati to a class, I would have quite happily listened to the same thing over and over again. After this learning, I know now how to engage the children more. The teaching of ostinati can be used as a continuation project in both KS1 and KS2 moving the rhythms to instruments (or in the Potter Puppet Pals case, voices).
The rest of the afternoon was spent putting more movement into music:
Before putting dance to the music, we ‘drew’ what we saw when listening to the music. My drawing looked like this:
My drawing was to the right. I envisaged dancing in circles at the beginning, being calm. The second, I saw angry crows and the third I saw a waterfall. The fourth a sword fight and the fifth, I personally saw a battle during the ‘American Revolution’! Or a scene of celebration. The drawing to the left was another person’s attending the course. See the similarities between the two. This will be common in a primary school. Although we had different imaginings to the way we would dance, we still saw similar patterns when illustrating what we had seen.
The main thing I learnt from today was that to do the ‘Orff Approach’, the teacher is not necessarily needed.It is fluent and flexible. It starts from the learners and what they bring to the group. You may have a plan but this might (and probably will) change when the children come to do the task you set. This approach is also very much inclusive. Children with SEN, severe or moderate, will be able to express their emotions through movement and music. Words are not needed. All ‘Orff’ teachers will have a different approach, but they all have the same vision- the learning comes from the children.
I can not express enough how much I will value this experience. I will be taking everything I have learnt into my teaching when I finally get back into a classroom.
