It’s been a while. I had a month off from placement and lectures so I used that month to work and to write my essay. The essay got submitted Monday. Hopefully I’ll get a better result than last time!
The essay ended up being about the use of cooperative learning strategies to ensure engagement in an early stages classroom. It was tough going but I just about managed it. I’d like to make sure I thank Fran because if he hadn’t told me about the originality report we had to copy on to the essay, I would have automatically failed. That would have been far from ideal.
The few weeks at work was very enjoyable. I forgot how much I enjoyed that job before I started university. I used the work emails to send out ‘motivational’ emails to everyone in the morning. It was strange being back at lectures after going back to working full time temporarily.
My brother also made it over for a visit before the end of the break. It was great to see him as it’s been a 3/4 months since I’d seen him. We began planning a trip to Spain for August time so that is something to keep me inspired during the tough few weeks coming up.
Returning to the university Monday, I expected the tutor for our morning workshop to ask us about our essays and speak about the importance of the upcoming placement but not for the first time throughout this year, no tutor turned up. It was not an ideal start to the week.
The lectures were rather uninspiring and it still irks me that two weeks before a final placement which decide whether we go forward to be a probationary teacher or not, we were watching a Powerpoint about another theory. I understand that the theories are important and we will use them throughout our careers but for the hours we were in lectures and workshops this past week, only one hour was dedicated to planning. In that workshop we were separated in to groups and planned a lesson on hygiene. That was useful and gave us ideas for a lesson or two for our upcoming 5 week placement. We should get more opportunities to do that in the course.
The previous placement was difficult and exhausting but I learned a lot about early stages and myself so I while I’m nervous about a 5 week block (and 3 weeks of continuous), I know what’s coming is a 5 week block of intense learning for myself. During the previous placement, I worked each Saturday which ate in to my preparation time so I felt I didn’t get a proper idea of what the workload will be like next year. Thankfully, I’ve arranged with work to have the three Saturdays off prior to each of the three weeks continuous. I believe this will be a better reflection of the workload and give me an idea of what next year will be like, particularly if I get an early stages class. When I was working with a later stage class, I seemed to manage the workload much more easily and working Saturdays didn’t effect me but obviously, the difference between those two stages is huge.
Over the Easter break, I was informed that my visiting tutor for placement was changed so on Thursday I met my new tutor. They seem like a very nice person and was very encouraging about ”being yourself” and assuring me they were there as support and not to catch me out. Hopefully I’ll be able to impress them when they come out to see me teaching in the next few weeks.
This coming week will be rather busy with lectures and workshops AND hopefully I will be preparing lesson plans for placement aswell, I’m going to go and make a start on tidying up my planning folder.
I should apologise for the absence of any posts for the last while. I haven’t had a huge amount to write about over the holiday period but I imagine that the 5 weeks of placement will mean I will have quite an amount on my mind to share with everyone here.
Thanks for reading again!
G’luck, g’luck, g’luck!
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