Looking back through the blogs I have written during this year of uni I surprised to see that I had actually only written two, and in both cases they were produced after assigned tasks during my ICT module.
Despite finding writing the two useful for my understanding of the topic I suppose the 'set task' format of them kind of put me off writing in my usual style about what I had been learning in general. So I thought it might be good to reflect now on my second year of the BEd, my recent placement and plans for the summer.
Second year of the BEd genuinely seems to have flown by... lots of involvement in the Plymouth Education Society as treasurer and events secretary, plenty of lovely normal student life and then a huge variation in the types of modules looked at, with a big focus on assignments that led me to think about content of these in an applied approach and how they relate to teaching, planning or policy.
For my second year Placement, I was in Exeter at an inner city type school within a year three class. Despite its fair share of behavioural issues and children from a range of backgrounds I would class it as a pretty normal school (or maybe that is just based on my own school experience?). I think it did have a slight reputation around Exeter, but my host family accommodation was in a 'better off' area of the city so their opinion was probably a bit bias. I really enjoyed my time at the school and as always when on teaching placement seemed to learn lots and experience a range of new things.
One thing that I had a chance to get better at during the six weeks was my understanding and use of differentiation. My class contained quite a vast range of levels and each of the ability groups were completely different (and then again within these too). At first... actually make that the whole time I was there... I found the most time consuming part of my planning was deciding how to take the class input into the group activities, pitching at such a range. It was so easy to plan an activity at home in the evenings (without the class teachers' guidance) that took the higher ability group 10 minutes, whilst the lowest ability group would struggle to get their heads round what the task actually was. Through my time at the school, with plenty of advice from the two teachers that shared the class, I became more confident at getting the learning right for each child and also using staff effectively to support or guide the ability groups.
There were lots of other interesting things about the school. Extracurricular opportunities available were set up and run by children (very different in comparison to my first year placement school where every night of the week different staff ran at least three after school clubs). Another was the great range of teaching styles I was able to observe, from teachers the head teacher identified as satisfactory to others which were constantly seen to be outstanding.
Third year placement gets under way after 4 weeks of being back at Uni in the autumn term which is exciting, but seeing as its May that seems like a long way away!
My focus right now is that I am off teaching in the Czech Republic on Wednesday, for seven weeks. I have never really had this opportunity before, but for once this trip was reasonably affordable so I managed to save up the money myself. I am really looking forward to whole thing... first a bit of Praque, then teaching in a 6 - 15 year old school in Plzen and once their schools have broken up for summer I'm off to teach English in a summer school too so quite a variety! No idea what to expect but just hoping to learn and experience lots about learning and teaching in a different culture.
Definitely could have reflected on a million other things from my second year on the BEd but constrained it to this so you weren't reading for years, perhaps another blog post in a few weeks time once I've got my head round Czech life!
@HannahSheltonTT
