I know I have explained a little about my recent experience in a Primary school, however I thought it would make sense for me to offer a little more detail. I know that this is such an important part of getting on to the teacher training course, so it will be helpful for me to articulate my thoughts here, but also for others reading (if you are out there) to see how my experience compares.
I was very fortunate to be able to get some experience in a lovely school in fife, Crossford Primary to be exact. I was offered the chance to work my way through the school, having less time with each year, or to spend all my time with one class. I made the decision to work my way through the whole school initially, as I felt this would give me the best understanding of the differences between each age group (which thankfully it did).
And so it all began with a quick visit in my first week to the nursery class. I have mentioned before that I have some experience working with this age group with the Macrobert nursery, so I had a rough idea what to expect, but it was the number of children and their levels of energy that surprised me most. There was so many of them all ridiculously happy to be playing at their favourite games.
I managed to acquaint myself with one group of cool looking children who were playing with the water games (my favourite of all the nursery games). Overall it was a great experience and I felt already that the decision to come to a primary school was a good one. It was interesting to see how the older children were getting prepared for making the transition from nursery to Primary 1. It was also valuable to me to see how the Nursery teachers structured things so that it was not just a free for all to see who could scream the loudest.
Moving on, I next visited the Primary One class. This has actually been one of my favourite weeks which was a big surprise to me. I had seen the structure of the Nursery, but couldn't really imagine how the structure would work in Primary one, and how lessons would work etc. I observed that the way the teacher spoke to the children, and the language she used set the class apart from play time. The children had individual jobs and responsibilities, and lessons were planned and structured to challenge the children and really get them thinking. There was a fantastic story telling session which was used as a catalyst for a creative writing excercise. I had a great time with the Primary one group and really didn't expect it to be one of my favourites.
Primary 2 and 3 were in the next couple of weeks, and I continued to be surprised with how much I enjoyed the early years. The P2s were such a polite group of children and really enjoyed having me in the class. The progression from Primary 1 was unbelievable, which was really interesting to be able to compare. By Primary 3 the children were working on more complex mathematics and using language that was way above what I had expected. The teacher showed me some of the artwork that the children had been working on, and some of it was fantastic and displayed amazing amounts of creativity and vision.
Primary 4 was an interesting age group, because at this point the children were more aware of my presence as an outside in the classroom. They were playing up, and trying to get my attention in various ways. This was really interesting and really highlighted for me the lack of a male presence in the classroom. Some of the children asked me if I was a Policeman, and a couple of them giggled when I said I wanted to be a teacher, as if it was an unusual thing for a man to want to be.
Primary 5 was great, and I was lucky to get in when they were doing something really creative. The children were designing new front covers for books they had read, and had to write new blurbs based on what they thought the book was about. It was interesting and noteworthy for me how much of an education gap there was between some children at this stage. Some of the children found this task easy and enjoyable and flew threw it with some really interesting pictures and words. A few others found the task almost impossible, and had a really difficult time with it. I found this interesting because a lot of my education experience before has been working with children who are all at the same level, and I thought the teacher dealt incredibly well with working with such a varied class (in terms of ability).
I then visited the Primary 6 group for a while, and I would say this was my least favourite. This, I am presuming, is largely down to the fact that we were very near the end of term by this point and the kids had already switched off for the summer. I did get to see the children doing their final stages of cycling proficiency which I thought was fantastic. I think this is an incredibly valuable thing for the children to learn, and they had all seemed to grasp the rules of the road. I also got to see a Religious and Moral Education lesson for the first time. I was disappointed with this though, as it was just a worksheet to fill out, and the children did not take it very seriously. Perhaps this was end of term excitement - but if I was their age I don't think it would have interested me either! I realise that this sounds harsh but I have tried to view everything with an overly critical eye as I need to reflect on my experience in order to progress, and it is good to see what I think doesn't work as well as what I think does.
I did not get to spend much time with the Primary 7 class, because end of term got in the way. However, during breaks I did spend a lot of time talking to the Primary 7 teacher. I am going to be going back to the school after the summer holidays, and I am going to request to spend an extended period of time with the Primary 7 class (or the primary 1's - I can't make up my mind).
This does seem like a massive post, but I could have gone on for ever, and this is me trying to keep it brief. One of my biggest criticisms would be the lack of use of the Smartboards. In every class teachers have a smart board which is (as far as I can see) a wonderfully powerful piece of technology, but in most instances, it was just being used as a projector. I couldn't help but feel that so many lessons could have been made much more intereactive an memorable if the Smart board had been used to it's potential. I think, for my next post I will do a bit of research into the technology and see if I can find examples of good ways to use it.
So apologies again for the length of the post, but it was really useful for me and hopefully somebody in a similar position will find it useful too. If anyone has any thoughts please comment and let me know.
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