Saturday, May 10, 2008

PGCE final placement - Week 2 of 9.


Week 2 is over. Not without its ups and downs. It should have been a great week given that we had a bank holiday Monday but I had to still put a full teaching week in (full according to the requirements of my course so far, anyway). I had an observation on Wednesday which was not the most brilliant, I have to say. Not a good way to ease myself into my college tutor's observation on Thursday. The co-ordinating mentor at the school was fab. I had a bit of difficulty judging where I stood with her, as we hadn't had much contact. But she talked me through the shortcomings of my performance on Wednesday and gave me loads of great tips for how to improve things for Thursday. Thursday, as a result, went well.


The kids really take advantage when I am the only adult in the room, but there are a few who are clearly starting to get keen to please me. I am hoping that this will improve in the next few weeks. I do think they are lovely but I need to tame them a bit for me. They are fine with their class teacher. I am going to try to put a bit more order on morning routines. Every morning they are fighting to (a) give out the fruit, (b) collect the milk and (c) take the register back. I'm going to draw up a rota so that there is no fussing over these items and no charges of favouritism. I'm also going to abandon the traditional roll call type register in favour of going around the tables, chatting to the children and marking them in informally. At some point we will have some soft music to enhance the ambience. The next routines to tackle after that will be over drinking bottles and ad hoc toilet visits. But first things first.

5 comments:

AnneDroid said...

Carole, those who talk blithely about the innocence of children obviously haven't encountered an actual child.

Chin up.

I've just tagged you by the way - see my post for May 11.

orczy said...

My brother is a primary school teacher, and he uses Brian Eno's music at certain times of the day. The longer pieces work better, like "Thursday Afternoon", and "Neroli". He says its get the kids clam and helps them to concentrate.

Holy Famoley said...

Cheers Christopher, I might just give that a try.

lynn said...

ah-hah. Getting the Buggers to Behave.
I have that book. It's a good'un.

Wishing you well with your PGCE

Holy Famoley said...

Cheers, Lynn!