Second Day of Placement

Today I was thrown in at the deep end, when the upper KS2 teacher was sent home sick at the very beginning of the school day. I was asked to teach the foundation and Year One class, without prep time or any planning! This really was a sink or swim morning. Luckily I swam. The children are a very difficult group as it comprises of 19 boys and 8 girls. They are very active with emotional and behavioural disabilities, including biting, spitting and screaming. I had two LSA's to manage, and I could not have asked for better help- they automatically let me control, whilst still supporting me through the day.
By the end of the morning the children responded well to me and I was able to successfully manage the class.
When I get back to university I want to research some more techniques to help with behaviour management, they are a tough crowd and need some creative strategies to get them on task. Today I brought in the idea of a happy side to the board as the children only had their names put on the board for bad behaviour. The children responded well to this and I was able to curb some possible bad behaviour as a result. I will definitely use this technique in the future. I did make sure I was in line with their behaviour policy, however I will still check with the class teacher in the morning If it is ok.

BEES2 Placement

We have just found out our final placements and I am very excited! I have been put with reception/year one which is exactly what I need. I am apprehensive as I do not have as much phonics experience as I would like, but that is exactly why it is the perfect placement for me. My comfort zone is definitely within Key stage 2 at the moment as that is where I have been placed previously, so BEES2 will hopefully mould me into a well-rounded teacher.
In preparation for the placement I have read the Ofsted report and it sounds like an ethos I can relate to. Their belief system is based around the individual needs of a child and their success in this area is evident from the support from the parents. Now that I know where I am placed I am able to do some research about the school and the curriculum that I will be teaching.
It is the subject knowledge that I will be really focussing on before I start the placement as I want to be more secure when I come to plan my lessons. (Q14-Q15). In particular I want to become more acquainted with the EYFS curriculum as I have had limited experience of this in practice.

Safegurding and PHSE

This week in EPGP700 we have been studying Safeguarding in more detail. I found the lecture on Safeguarding to be very informative, and it helped me put my role as a teacher into perspective. It seems apparent to me now that there is a danger of teachers becoming so involved with target setting and inspections that they lose sight of what really matters- the children. If we are focussing too much on our own teaching we may not spot the signs of abuse within our classroom. The guest lecturer spoke a lot about what to do if you spot the signs and taking accountability, however we have not had any training on what the signs are. PHSE was a revelation today as it covered these signs in detail for us, we were shown policies which actually had the signs laid out in black and white for us. I have printed this out and put in my file as I have not come across a safeguarding policy which has done this for me yet.

http://www.dscb.info/children-and-young-people/