New teacher's diary - Febuary 2008
Steve Rivers (PGDE: Primary student)
I am now back to Moray House again after the 'middle' placement, a P5 class of (only) 21 pupils. On paper, this should have been a much easier task than many of the other PGDE students on placement who had classes of 30 or more pupils, but this wasn’t the case, or didn’t seem to be to me. Several times I was reminded by the children that I was a student and 'learning to be a teacher' to which I had an inward laugh to myself at their cheekiness. However, they were certainly correct, there was lots to learn. The five-week placement led up to the final week (after I had coped with my tutor visit in the middle) in which I was required to plan and teach all lessons for the class for the whole period. For me, this was the most enjoyable period as I felt some ownership over what I was doing and over the class, although I’m sure the class teacher supervising me made sure that the children knew who was really in charge!
One aspect of teaching that really stood out in the class I was teaching was the need to cater to all the learning needs of the pupils in the class. This may sound glaringly obvious, however, understanding a range of special needs in the class such as dyslexia, Asperger syndrome and ADHD, and tailoring my teaching of the whole class to cater to a very wide range of reading, writing and mathematical abilities was a very challenging task. To be honest, the placement was extremely hard work in terms of both planning and 'paperwork' and also in terms of the direct teaching. At times I doubted whether this huge workload really indicated that this was the career I wanted to pursue. Having successfully completed it though, I feel a return of my previous confidence and certainty, and having learned such a lot, I look forward to my next placement in a few weeks.
Being back at university is no respite, however. A solo presentation must be performed this week and then an assignment completed prior to the next placement in May. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that the PGDE is all drudgery though; in the past two weeks my Silver Learning Team have created puppets and a giant mosaic style painting, acted out a monster movement drama, played different types of ball games, and written a piece of imaginative writing in exactly the way that we would like our pupils to do it. I mustn’t complain too much!