Since my last blog I have finished the amazing experience of my first school placement, as by the end, with some encouragement from my class teacher, I was able to teach five whole class lessons and lead lots of morning and afternoon registration sessions. From this I definitely found that I learn the most when becoming involved in something to gain from both my mistakes and the things that went well. Therefore, I have thrown myself into things that will hopefully continue to extend my learning and provide me with new experiences.
Continuing with Julia Skinner's 100 word challenge has allowed me to see the huge growth of the concept over the past few months. Schools from all over the place have become involved in getting their classes writing 100 words on that weeks particular topic. Digital learning can be used effectively to encourage a child, showing that the 100WC team, and many other individuals have impacted the young writers motivation by commenting positive and encouraging thoughts on each post. From my perspective it is great to be involved in something that seems to really help children to feel valued in the pieces of writing that they are sharing. It has also given me the opportunity, in my learning, to see a variety of writing from a range of ages and abilities. Interestingly, one thing that I have learnt through this is that sometimes entries that lack grammar or correct spellings can be the most creative and engaging. 100WC is one of the many ways that I have found twitter to be a great network because through my PLN I have met a range of people from educators to specialists that are helping me along my journey in training to become a primary teacher.Another thing that I have become involved with lately is a website set up by JC @JCBarrington called The Student Teacher Resource. At the moment there is a team of about fifteen people of all years and specialisms doing the Plymouth BEd course. So the website is aimed at the idea that during the course people go through a lot of placements in schools and rather than keeping resources to ourselves it would be great to make a place where all of these could be shared for everyone to see. Part of my learning and experience in joining the team was meeting lots of new people who were also passionate about teaching and the idea behind the website, branching out to a group that had different specialisms to myself has given me a whole new network for support along the course as well.
However, there was one thing that struck me in this process, lack of interest from other year ones. As part of the team I've been trying to get other people in my year involved but out of around 200 people only a couple have replied. In my mind, if you are passionate about becoming a teacher, influencing children and the people around you, you would want to also extend your learning and experiences further by taking on as many opportunities as offered? It is great to be part in 'sharing a whole new generation of resources' but through this also having met a whole group of motivated trainee teachers.
Something a little further away from teaching and ICT that caught my interest was an advocacy volunteering role at Barnardos. Although I only started the fairly long training process a couple of months ago I have learnt a lot already that will benefit me in the classroom towards issues of safeguarding and more about a variety of circumstances that a child could come from. This role will take me into schools from a whole different angle, supporting a child and having their voice heard in meetings. Hopefully this will give me a whole new perspective on the mixed backgrounds that children will be coming from into the classroom, extending my learning from the uni to develop my own experiences.
In my very first Life of a Trainee Teacher blog I ended on saying 'So far within my groups I have tended to be the slightly invisible one (as in everyone seems to forget me/my name) so hopefully in starting to blog about my life as a trainee teacher I will share some thoughts worth noticing or generally share how I'm getting along on the course.' and I think that comment has happened. For the first time I been able to get involved in so many things and can now probably say I am no longer the invisible girl. So any support on the blogs and helping me to get involved has been really appreciated.
@HannahSheltonTT
