Digital footprint and Ethics

Hey,

If you have read my post ‘Be a professional’ you would know that I talked about being aware of your image including your online image. You need to remember that anything you have ever posted on the internet will be saved somewhere, therefore when posting always think ‘who will see this’.

Social media is very popular and some of social medias that were popular in 2014 are: Classmates, Facebook, Linkin, Instagram, Reddit, Google +, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube.

When looking at safeguarding it is also good to have the child helpline somewhere with you. Unfortunately, no matter what school you are in there will be some form of bullying. There could be problems with children being abused or neglected. You need to remember that children from any age could be abused including children in care and even in respectable homes. Anyone can be abused or be the abuser.

Although there are those with a high risk of being abused and they are: disabled children, children with a learning disability and children who are more intelligent (high IQ) than others.

There are many warnings for those who are being abused and here are some of them: not wanting to change in front of others and have bruises in places where it is almost impossible to get hurt.

When taking photographs of your class you must first find out the school policy in regards to this. However, whenever taking a photograph you shouldn’t be able to identify any of the pupils or the school at they attend.

Any comments or questions please use the contact box or comment below

Hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading

Amy x

Opie, M (Plymouth University Lecture)

How do we communicate?

Hey,

When you look at communication you first look at the barriers of communication which are: Psychological (biases/stereotypes), Sematic (language/culture differences), Environment (room size, layout of furniture, noise, heating, lighting), Demographic (gender & age), Disability (physical, neurological & learning) and Organisational (established lines of communication).

Then take a look at the many different ways we have to communicate, both verbal and non-verbal. Some examples are: Pictional, written, music, facial expressions, gestures, emoji and antinational. As a trainee teacher you need to know different ways of communication so that if your method of communication isn’t reaching the children you change it and use a different method.

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) professor, Albert Mehrabian, looked at the 7% - 38% - 55% Rule and developed it within non-verbal forms of communication. He determined that messages received in communication are actually mostly received in a non-verbal form.

• 55% of communication is body language

• 38% of communication is the tone of voice

• 7% of communication is the words from your mouth.

Now let’s look at listening actively which is a way of listening and responding to another person which improves mutual understanding.

“In some ways, active listening is characterised more by what is not done, than what is done. This is because real active listening requires the listener to avoid common responses when listening, even internally, and these are very difficult habits to break.” Robertson, K (2005)

I will leave you with that quote to think about.

Any comments or questions please use the contact box or comment below

Hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading

Amy x

 Medway, S (Plymouth University Lecture)

Be a professional!

Hey,


What does ‘be a professional’ really mean? It could be talking about your career or job or even your role. Maybe it means you are experienced in what you do or even that you are paid more in your work place. However, for me it means conduct and how you portray yourself, as being a trainee teacher means you always need to be professional and be aware of your image to others. This means thinking about the clothes you wear to work as well as thinking about your online image.

As a trainee teacher you need to remember that you are always learning and need to stay up to date with the teaching standards as well as what is happening in the government about teaching. You need to reflect every action within lessons as well as always analysing what worked well and what didn’t. When thinking about teaching, 3 skills that you need have come to surface which are: having presentation skills, supporting one another and knowing the ethics for within schools.

The best trainee teacher is considered to: be self-aware, be prepared for uncomfortable events, draw on support when needed, know the importance of paperwork, keep documents filled in, fit in with those in the school both staff and students and not lose their identity within their work.

Any comments or questions please use the contact box or comment below

Hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading

Amy x

Opie, M  and  Bennett, R  (Plymouth University Lecture)

Disney Educational progrmme

Hey,

At the education show I attended two talks regarding Disney being used in education and these were the Lion King and Aladdin. These will be what I will be talking about in this post.

The meaning of this programme is all about the community and self-discovery. The topics that you can get from this programme are: Culture; Drama; Music; Musical Theatre; PHSE; English and Art & Design. There are also resources for both secondary and primary education.

In English, there are comprehension resources that create phrases to use in the children’s writing that has been inspired by the programme. There are film clips available for teachers to use as well as many other resources, but you don’t have to use them all as each one of the resources can stand alone. The lion King has been around for want feels like forever and it is therefore timeless and because of this a great thing to watch and later study.

This programme also has workshops available through pineapple studios. This creates new experiences, confidence and inspiration for their school work. They could gain confidence by trying something new and it is found that many children haven’t done theatre before. You have a choice of workshops, which are: Acting; Music; Theatre and Dance movement. These workshops are for those aged seven and above. Through these workshops you can explore: the story; world and characters. Workshops use development skills such as: Team building; Staging; Confidence and Character work. The outcome of this could be that it makes them try harder to pursue their dreams.

The meaning for Aladdin could be: Class; Trust; Relationships; or Female Empowerment. Through looking at Aladdin you can discover different subjects such as: Costume; Design; Citizenship and Musical Theatre. As I have said before it could be there first time seeing a live performance so it creates an experience, but also by going to London you can make a day of it and will therefore get to explore the city and see different culture as well as seeing it portrayed in theatre.

This website also offers help with teaching plans, if you were to use this Disney programme for your teaching.

I hope you enjoyed this post,

Any comments or questions please use the contact box,

Thanks for reading.

Amy x

Teaching, Supporting and Managing the Neurodiverse classroom

Hey,

When I attended the Education show for 2017, I went to the talk Teaching, Supporting and Managing the Neurodiverse classroom by Victoria Honey Bourne.

What is Neurodiversity?

Neurodiversity is a different way of thinking and the idea that not one way is better to the other. Also, that you don’t need to conform to the way that everyone else is learning as that method may not work for you. We are all different in learning, like we all have different genes from each other; such as, someone might have blue eyes but another person has brown eyes. We all learn differently and that is ok!

What is meant by Normal?

When looking are this question you find that you will discover more questions, such as; what happens when we expect more out of one child than the other, how does this help in defining what normal is. In teaching, you find yourself focusing on labels more than the actual person and therefore are not focusing on what that child needs. How can there be a definition of ‘normal’ if we expect more from one than the other and when we are focusing on labels more than the child themselves.

Neurodiversity is still considered a problem as when teaching a class of 30 pupils you can really only teach in a certain way. When thinking about how not one person is less than the other, there are some benefits such as society and understanding of each other.

We also need to remember that some people think differently and therefore it is only natural to believe that they would also learn differently. To identify those who need extra help a teacher must first use the resources accessible to them to teach and from there they will be able to recognise those who are behind or struggle in the knowledge being taught. There are than resources that can give and extra hand in learning which could be: technologies to help them once they had learnt how to use them; pencil grips to help with handwriting; talking dictionaries to help with both reading and spelling and finally help make children more aware of things around them.

Environments have strong effects on learning so creating a physical learning environment is important in education. This could be: using the resources available; creating routines; creating displays with not too much information that have a visual appearance; communication friendly which is not just for those with speech & language issues and quiet areas.

Now let’s talk about the different teaching habits and what can be improved to benefit those who need a bit more help than the average pupil. Teachers could design worksheets and presentations that show there objectives clearly so that the pupil knows what they need to do and therefore may have a greater understanding of what needs to be done. They should have visual instructions and use clear language in explaining what the pupil needs to do and while doing this make sure to clearly explain new vocabulary that you may come across. Before asking the pupils to do the task give extra processing time so that those with difficulties can fully understand what they need to do.

Now following on from teaching habits I will talk about organisation skills and how being a teacher, you should use them. A big part of organisational skills is about being visual and therefore a teacher should create visual as well as clear instructions and then go through the work needed to be done so that the pupils understand what is needed of them, it helps to break down the work. It is recommended that the teacher writes down the outline of the lesson so that the children know what is to come. It is also good to have a visual timetable in the classroom which you can refer back to during the day as well as breaking down the day with: task boards, tick lists, pictures and writing. Not only should a teacher be organised so that they know what they are doing, but they should also be teaching self – management techniques to their students such as to do lists or using reminders on phones.

Finally, let’s discuss the idea of accepting individuals as this is what I feel is probably one of the most important elements in teaching, as recognising pupils’ strengths gives a way to help the students learn the confidence to make mistakes and learn from them. It is also important to recognise strengths as it creates a different kind of learning that can be creative as we need to remember that strengths are not just found in English and Maths and to not always focus on these subjects so strongly even though they are an important part of learning. You should set meaningful targets for your pupils and have person to person talks with them to help them improve as well as to understand that pupil. A teacher needs to remember that there is no right way of being and therefore no wrong way of learning. Being who you are is what makes you human and different from others as no one is the same.

These are just some of the ways that you could help gifted children engage in the classroom.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this post

Any comments or questions please use the contact box

Amy x

The troubled child

Hey,

I know I am really late with these coming post as they are from the ‘Education Show’ that I went to in March and I know I said that I would post the rest months ago but here they are.

 

I went to listen to the talk ‘The Troubled Child – education for all’ by Joanne Gray. She started by talking about what teaching is about and the misconception that are made in thinking about head teachers and teachers. For example, a head teachers job is not just to fill out paper work and organise what happens in the school but also to deal with the issues that arise with the children that are in the care of the school. There are many things that teaching includes and many jobs that a teacher must do and be, such as: a nurse; a social worker and of course a teacher.

The current education system isn’t working for everyone! We need to be thinking about school is a different way and think of it as part of the community. We also need to start working around the children as education is mainly about that and I feel it is easy to forget.

We need to identify with the children that need something extra to break down a barrier and help enable them to learn. A team would observe the children that the teachers have identified and therefore if the teacher doesn’t identify them than they are missed out by the team and cannot offer support that would help that child. The method for this is for the teacher to build a profile of the child with the school and then bring in professional help (the team).

They need professionals to help gifted children as a teacher’s job is to teach not to deal and help those who need a bit of extra help. They are taken out of timetable to work with the team for about 6 weeks and then they are gradually put back so that there are then zero problems.

Bringing parents in can help so that the parents know what their child is doing in school as well as the teachers being able to talk to them about how their kid is outside of school and what could be done to solve the issues that their child might have.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it,

Any comments or questions please use the contact box

Amy x

Passing the QTS

Hey,

So, I am going to start by saying that I have finally managed to pass the professional skills tests, on my last attempt which believe me was very stressful, especially when you don’t have a plan B.

I would recommend getting a tutor even if it is just for a week, as I improve by 12% in maths and 10% in English which for me was the difference between a fail and a pass. I had a tutor for 2 weeks. However, I understand that some of you would not be able to afford this, so I will go over what I suggest that you should look at, from my personal experience.

Numeracy:

When looking at maths I suggest you focus on making sure you know your times tables as that could be the difference from a mark or not as I found them very helpful for the mental part of the test. I also found that practicing mental questions to make sure you knew how to do them and if not then find out how to helped. Make sure not to do all the questions as you will then need to time yourself to make sure you can answer them in the 90 seconds as that is the amount of time you are given to answer the question once you have listened to the question. Once you have done this it is then just practice. This is the same for the written arithmetic and data, it is all just practice.

I would recommend getting the passing the numeracy book as they included how to answer questions as well as examples. I found that this helped me, I would also use the practice papers given online. Click on the online tests and once you have completed that test it would give you the percentage you got as well as the percentage for each area. This means you could see by how much you need to improve and where, as you need 63% to pass, however don’t worry if you are a few percent off as the practice tests are stricter than the actual test. Using these online tests, it would also give you the answers so that you could see where you went wrong

Another resource is the website called ‘Numeracy ready’ which has about 20 practices whereas the professional skills website only has 4. However, this didn’t help me as my problem was mainly timing and although it does time how long you take, it doesn’t stop after 90 seconds with the mental area which was what I needed it to do, but you might be different to me.

Literacy:

There is not much revision you can do with spellings; I just went over when to use double lettering in spelling as that’s what I found I was struggling with after doing a test (do practice test to find out where you need to improve). This rule was basically that you are putting the words together via sounds like commit – ting = committing or prefer – ed = preferred.

It is the same with grammar; there isn’t much you can do in preparation for this area. After doing my first 2 attempts I found some things that I needed to remember when going into the test. As I am dyslexic I found that when returning to go over what I had already put that I was correcting a write answer into a wrong answer so once I had put an answer in I left it alone. I also found that I kept on choosing ‘should of’ which doesn’t make sense and the reason I was choosing it is because it sounds like ‘should’ve’ but this is the abbreviated version of ‘should have’ and therefore it is always ‘should have’. Another thing I found that I needed to remember was that when looking at: me and the head teacher, the head teacher and myself and the head teacher and I, it should always be ‘The head teacher and I’.  I also looked at when to use either who or whom which I found a bit confusing so really it is either you know or you don’t but I will explain what I found anyway, and that is that if the answer to the phase is a ‘him’ it will be whom and if a ‘he’ it will be who.

With punctuation, I found that it was just practice so I went online, on google and found images of paragraphs without punctuation so that I could practice adding the punctuation where it was needed. I also went over the rules of commas with clauses, you know, how you need a comma of both ends for additional information unless it is at the end on a sentence and then it ends with a full stop.

Finally, Comprehension, this is probably the one I struggled with the most due to the wording and therefore it is just practice so I recommend practicing it the best you can and find the answer to see if you got it right. If not, I recommend reading the text again to try and understand why you got it wrong before looking at what it says in the answers for the reasons for why those certain ones were chosen.

Thanks for reading, I hope this helps anyone taking the professional skills tests,

Any questions or comments don’t be afraid to use the contact box

Amy x

Coming Up . . .

Hey,

Just to let you know that I have officially passed both my Numeracy and Literacy professional skills tests, which are tests you need to pass to become a teacher. Now that I have passed them, I only need to find somewhere to live and I will be ready to start my course in September. This also means that I can catch up on my blog, over the summer as well as going on holiday and enjoying myself.

So here are what is to come on my blog:

Education:

• Passing the Professional Skills Tests (QTS)
• The Troubled Child
• Teaching, Supporting and Managing the Neurodiverse Classroom
• Disney's Educational programme
• the 3 R's ; Reading, Writing and Radio
• Out of Our Minds
• The Meaning of Art for Children

Media:

• Beauty and the Beast (2017)
• Descendants 2

Life:

• Camping
• Family Fun Day

Any comments or questions please use the contact box

Amy x

Holy Spirit

Hey,

I know I have been away for a while, but I have been busy, which I am sure you all know the feeling of. Anyway, this Sunday just gone I went to my old Church ‘Knights Meadows’ for the first time since I have been back from Plymouth and this service was about the Holy Spirit and how we need to be renewed in it.

Psalm 117

“Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love towards us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures for ever. Praise the Lord.”

Today Pat spoke about a programme they do called ‘Open the book’ where they go into a school and share the stories in the Bible. They would ask the children to get involved by making sounds that relate to the story in some way. For example, in this story; being the wind, fire crackling and being upset towards what the members of the class that are representing the disciples said.

For this service, the reading was told in a way that they would present towards the children when they go into a class at schools. The story of this service was ‘The Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost (Acts 2)’.

When reading this story, it also reminded me of a verse in the Bible;

John 15:26

“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father – the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father – he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.”

I feel that the Advocate is the Holy Spirit that was sent from the Father to help us spread the word of the Lord and the truth about who he is and what he has done for us by sacrificing his life on the cross, so that our sins were washed away.

This story is about when the Holy Spirit came and filled the disciples so that they have the strength and words tell everyone about the Lord and if they say sorry their sin would be washed away. They therefore shared the word of the Lord with the help of the Holy Spirit, who was the helper Jesus promised.

At the end of the story reading they would reflect on the storying meaning and then prayer where they would ask the kids to say ‘Amen’ if they want to make it their prayer, but they would not force them to become Christians and share the belief in God: son, Father and Holy Spirit. We can’t make them Christian but we can teach them about the Lord.

The speaker this week was Roger who spoke about the Holy Spirit that was sent to empower us. He uses the example of a car to show this because when a car is empty it needs refilling with petrol as we need to be refilled with the Holy Spirit. However, it is not important when you are filled but what happens when you get up after being filled with the Holy Spirit.







Roger went on to talk about the fruit of the Holy Spirit which is Hope, Peace, Love. Love is the work of the Holy Spirit. He also spoke about how the Holy Spirit is a gift from God.

Galatians 5:22-23

“But the fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Forbearance, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Against such things there is no law.”

I came across a new song ‘Send the Fire’ in this service which was specific to the meaning of the story which was about Pentecost.

I also was reintroduced to the song ‘For Power of your Love’ by Geoff Bullock, which I found really inspirational, about how God if lifting us up in his strength which allows us to have the strength to continue in the path that God has given us as well as the strength to complete the task set ahead for us whatever that may be.

Thanks for reading,

Any questions or comments please use the contact box

Amy x

All children to succeed with a learning Environment

Hey,

This talk was spoken by Fiona Barr who is a part of WHISPA. Whispa looks at the children that are considered to have a problem when they are just different and learn differently to others, and how different environments can help the children learn. They also look at what the perfect environment for all children could be as sitting in a classroom all day isn't the best thing.

Creating this environment, you first have to understand complex people. Right now, you are probably thinking, 'what the hell does that mean?' You have to understand the pupils' health and have acceptance of it. You have to have engagement in what they (the child) likes and they interests. The child needs security, they need to feel safe. They also need meaning and achievement for what they have done. The child also needs a physical environment whether that be indoors or outdoors.

One of the main issues of teaching is that we are quick to judgment about what a pupil is doing. We do not look at the complex. An example is that maybe a child is playing with some pencils and you think they are not paying attention, so you remove them, but really paying with the pencil is when they are best engaged.

Behaviour is communication

When assessing a child you need to look at many things that are: Health, Hunger, Thirst, Emotions, Stress, Anxiety and Sensory processing needs. Change the environment to help not the person, meaning don't try and change the pupil. 'Our bodies are our homes', don't try to normalise the child but accept they are different and embrace who they are. 

Example:

All that was wrong with this person is that the adults didn't recognise that they were object dependent. The teacher tried to remove the objects to change a normal environment but that wouldn't help this child engage and learn.

Look at me, I am a person.

Communicate with me,

Accept and Respect me.

Children learn by experience so let them play so they can repeat the action. We need to focus on what we need, not what others THINK we need.

Dr. David Whitebread (Senior Lecturer in Psychology in Education - 2012) said:

"Play in all its rich variety is one of the highest achievements of the human species, alongside language, culture and technology. Without play none of these achievements would be possible."

We need to teach the children how to be independent so they can develop on their own. They need loving support which can be done by creating an engaging environment. This doesn't have to mean a desk, it could be the natural world. Nowadays we don't spend much time in the natural world which is ridiculous as there is so much to learn from it. 10% nowadays is spent in the natural world but probably like 20 years ago, it was 40%. Now there is something very wrong with that.

To know love and who you are, you will succeed.

www.whiispa.com

Any comments or questions please use the contact box,

Thanks for reading

Amy x

Secret Storyteller

Hey,

This post is about the power of ‘Secret storyteller’ which is a programme at Greenways Primary Academy Milton Primary School where each week, a parent comes in and reads a story to the kids but obviously the kids don’t know who, This talk was done by Melissa Mifllin who started it and has a vision of where it will go.

Before I talk about the programme itself I am going to share a quote that was used in this talk, which was from The Guardian, an article in 2010, Pie Corbett Said:

“Children who are told stories are the ones who first form abstract concepts across the curriculum – in other words, being read to makes you brainy …

The best writers in the class are always those who are avid readers and those who are read to …

It may be parents have lost faith in this idea (reading to their children), but education is a way out of poverty.”

Parents are not reading at home to their kids as in the past maybe due to technology or being busy, and this programme is a way of getting parents into the school and they found through this project more and more parents were coming in, even dad’s which helped with the age gap of the reading ability between genders. Through this project, they found that children were going home and asking their parents to come in and be a secret storyteller and that even one parent took the afternoon off work to come in and read a story to the kids. “My child is always asking me if I can be the Secret storyteller.”

Melissa spoke about how she found it important to have both the children’s and parent voice as well as the teachers’ so a board was created where thoughts and pictures of the story and event were placed there. This meant parents and visitors of the school could come in and see what happens in the storytelling time. It’s also went into the newsletter that led to the community getting involved. For example they had a priest come in and started telling Bible stories. This project involves everyone: Parents, children, teachers, community and church. It even links into their home life. For Example when a parent came in and read ‘Tiger came for tea’ and there was a section where the book spoke about what the tiger had the drink and the children started to talk about how their dad’s drunk that at home.

The impact of this has been great. There has been an increase of 24% between the age gap due to this programme and I have already spoken about how it has effected the community, but I feel that after hearing Melissa’s talk that it has brought the community together more.

The next step is to introduce it to higher levels where they would have a class book and a parent would come in and read a chapter from that book. Another step that they are thinking of to do next is to look at doing different cultures.

In this talk a quote from Sir David Carter was handed out which I think is inspiring so I felt like sharing it:

“Schools should look for guidance from teachers in other institutions that have been in special measures. I think there is as much, possibly even more, to learn from teachers who have gone from special measures to good as there is form the ones that have gone from good to outstanding. Also, outstanding schools can learn from schools that have been in special measures. Yet at the moment the badges in our system don’t reflect that. The system that we live in, makes an assumption that only good or outstanding schools are helpful schools.”

This quote walking about that not only good and outstanding schools can be helpful makes me think of in a classroom and how you have so many different kids and some of them may have a problem and could be considered special. They may feel that they are not good enough and due to being different their work isn’t outstanding but that doesn’t mean it can’t be helpful for both them and others. Reading this quote and how it talks about learning from other teachers it makes me think that this is what the Educations Show is all about, but also what schools are about as it is not just a place for the children to learn but also the adults. There is something to think about.

Learningvillage.org.uk

Any comments or questions please use the contact box,

Thanks for reading

Amy x

Why Bother?

Hey,

The talk ‘Why Bother?’ was led by Antony Mead who spoke about his Agency ‘Fresh start Education’ as well as about himself and how he became involved in education, plus what he does.

 

He used to be a foster carer and found it terrible that children were being placed with them for a few months and were not getting into education and being taught that they are not good enough to learn. This started his idea for the Agency, which is an agency that is about getting foster kids into education but also those who are struggling in education e.g. behaviour, whether that be getting the child into a school or whether getting one of the teachers of the agency to have one on one sessions.

The agency goes to where the said child is where they will conduct an assessment of the child to find out what they want for the future as well as their personal learning; so their interest and how they learn. This will help the agency find a match, meaning a teacher that is involved in some way with the agency who is best for the said child. This allows a mutual respect between the child and teacher which is important and will create a better environment for the child to learn in which in turn would improve the child’s learning as they would feel comfortable and therefore be able to get engaged more.

This agency offers: Apprenticeships, training, and work. Now for some facts about the agency which I found interesting: 97% of the children have success in engagement; 56% of the children are put back in school and on timetable with the other pupils. This agency also NEVER turns a student in need of their services away.

www.freshstartineducation.co.uk

Thanks for reading,

More will be coming shortly.

Amy x