The Mark of Cain

The Mark of Cain
One-off drama about British soldiers in Iraq, focusing on two lifelong friends as they face complex situations and make instant moral judgements during their first tour of duty. Originally hoping to return home with tales of heroism, the men are permanently affected by what they see, and find their lives changed irrevocably. Starring Gerard Kearns, Matthew McNulty, Leo Gregory and Shaun Dooley

Description copied from TV Guide UK TV Listings. Channel 4

I watched the end half of this program and I was very disturbed by what I saw. I would put pictures up but it would be too graphic and they may be copywrite protected anyway. There were gruesome torture scenes and extreme violence but I was horrified and fascinated at the same time. I felt sickened watching the things that might have happened to prisoners in real life and no matter what crimes they may or may not have done, I just cannot justify such evil behaviour. Although obviously the program was only acting, it is in part based on truth. It even caused a heated debate between myself and the other half! We both have very different viewpoints even though we both strongly disagree that such treatment is acceptable of prisoners. I suppose it is hard to make a proper judgement since I have not myself been a soldier.

Having fun with photoshop

New hair cut - well just a fringe and tidy up really! I MISS MY GHD STRAIGHTENER'S!!!

I've been writing some quite long blogs recently, so here is a couple of short blogs about my hair and then a frog! After that there is another long blog of me whinging!!!

Frog on a blog!

The strange fellow that lives with me (aka the other half) found a frog in the dark on Friday. It hopped across the road and stopped on the grass, so I took some pictures. The strange fellow told me off though because he said I must have blinded the poor frog with all the flashing and frightened it half to death. Not to worry though as it soon hopped off to enjoy a different patch of grass. I'm actually really pleased that he told me off because it shows he cares about animals a lot; he doesn't realise how much he likes animals. He is always commenting on animals and worries about the welfare of animals. Brilliant! :-)

What a bad day - BEWARE it is a long list of me just complaining!!!

Yesterday, 14th March

I had a pretty RUBBISH day. I spent a lot of money going to London on a journey that was meant to be very informative and useful. At the Science Museum, in London, there was a TDA - Turn Your Talent To Teaching event. I was hoping to attend to get a lot of useful information about teaching as I want to become a teacher myself. When I got there, there were a few different stands representing different Universities, but none of them were where I wanted to go to. So that was pretty pointless, but there were seminars about teaching so I booked myself into one about how to make a successful GTTR application. Unfortunately, all the people in the room appeared to be morons and asked stupid questions, generally the same one, which was they didn't understand how to explain what they had done on their degree - as a section on the GTTR form asks you to explain what things your degree covered. At least 3 people asked how to do this section even though it had already been explained several times and was frankly obvious! These people shouldn't even be teachers. Worryingly though, I am sure some of them will get on courses. The seminar itself was catered towards morons, explaining the very basics of the GTTR form such as relate your personal statement to wanting to be a teacher and that to select answers, click on the drop down menus etc.


The 2 speakers holding the seminar handed round sheets with 3 different genuine personal statements on it. The first statement was from a person wanting to teach english, the second one history and the third was art. We were all asked to read the statements and then put up your hand for which statement was well written and should get an interview. Statement 1 was for an english teacher, but there were loads of spelling mistakes and poorly constructed sentences. It also had a childish writing style. The 2nd statement was ok but not brilliantly phrased. The 3rd statement said nothing about wanting to be a teacher. I said the people at the seminar were morons...they proved it again by quite a few of them putting up their hand for the first statement being the best one - an english teacher that can't spell! So I definitely think these morons should not be teachers. The rest picked the second statement including myself. The 2 speakers asked everyone to put up their hand if they could say why the other two statements were not as good as this one. The morons managed to notice that the language wasn't very articulate in the first statement, but they failed to notice the glaring spelling mistakes so I was brave and put my hand up to say there were spelling mistakes. Honestly, some people shouldn't teach. Anyway, basically the whole trip to London was a waste of time and money except for a pair of pretty pink leg warmers I bought from Primark for £1. Anyway, I've really spent too long talking about my wasted trip to London!


To make things's worse that evening though, when I drove home and parked the car, I discovered my front window wouldn't shut! It had falllen of its runner and was totally out of place and no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the window to go back up. So, not wanting to leave my window open all night, I called my car rescue service. After about an hour, they came out. The guy looked at it and said unfortunately there was nothing he could do. It was firmly out of place and needed a mechanic. By this time it was late at night and I was tired, so I thanked the rescue service man anyway and stuck a bin liner over the window (that was his advice to protect the car from the weather) and I left my car vunerable all night. Luckily, it was still there in the morning but also, apparently Corsa's are very difficult to steal.



Today, 15th March

This morning was horribly stressful. My good friend was coming to visit at about 11.30am which I was really excited about but I had to find a garage to fix my car at first. I rang around several and finally found one nearby. The only problem was that they could only fit me in at 11.30am which was when I was meant to be meeting my friend. So I let my friend know about the garage and as always, he was very kind and didn't mind waiting. The rescue service man from last night had told me that the job to fix the window should definitely not take a mechanic more than half an hour to fix and should not cost more than £50. So when I went to the garage today, I was very annoyed to see that the mechanic was a grumpy man that obviously thought that because I was a girl he could pull the wool over my eyes and before he had even looked at the car he told me I needed a very expensive part putting in, so I knew he was lying!!! I needed the car fixed though so I let him look at the car. The time ticked slowly by and I was getting later and later to pick my friend up from the station, which I felt really guilty about since he had made the effort to travel to visit. It took the mechanic's team of people an hour and a half to tell me that it still needed an expensive part, a regulator, because it was totally mashed up - apparently. So I said I didn't want to pay for the part and that I just wanted the window winding up to the top so that I can just permanently leave it closed rather than pay for the part. He was a really weird mechanic, very rude and grumpy with no manners and I could strangely also imagine him doing Elvis impersonations in his free time, he was middle-aged with a big quiff! I think he took longer to do the job because I said I didn't want to pay for the part. I also started getting irritated because I knew he was deliberately taking ages to bump up the labour costs, I could even see the team of mechanics just sitting around doing nothing through the back door!!!


In the end he charged me £20 for just doing nothing but it was still less than I imagined he would have charged so I just accepted it. My boyfriend had to pay though as my card has been cancelled or something as it's near it's expiry date, so a new one has been sent out but it hasn't arrived yet so I have no access to money :-( Another rubbish thing to add to the list. On the bright side, when I eventually picked up my friend I had a really good day and it was so nice to see a familiar face and have a good catch up.

7 things that I am greatful for

Following on from what my sister's blog mentions - five things that you are greatful for - here are seven (7 because I can use the colours of the rainbow) of mine:

1.) Sky - my hilarious, ridiculous and friendly dog

2.) My parents and other family for supporting me when I need them

3.) The strange male that lives with me and makes me laugh every day and does all those little things that matter - like making me a drink every morning!

4.) That I am moving next week into my own place. I just can't wait to not have to share with messy housemates

5.) That I don't work in the horrible working environment of that bank I worked for for over a year (it is red and involves a squirrel - a clue)

6.) That I am not a chav and not one of those moron people that I have mentioned

7.) That I can enjoy computer games because so many girls don't which is a shame

Final day of Primary School work experience

I have made it in one piece! I have completed my last day of work experience in the primary school. Today was my most challenging day I think. In the morning, I went to ask the lady (as I have done every morning) who first accepted me for work experience, what classes she wanted me to spend time with that day. She said she would leave it up to me, which was great although this meant that I had to awkwardly go and find some teachers that I had never met before to ask if I could observe some lessons. I could have chosen to stick with my favourite Year 3 class and looking back on it, I wish I had spent the day with them again because they are just so sweet and they really like me being there. I wanted to challenge myself though so I decided to find a Year 4 class to go to for the morning and a Year 6 class for the afternoon. I hunted down the Year 4 teacher who I had very briefly met previously because I was meant to be in her class last Friday but instead I opted to stay an extra day with the Year 3 class and so did not in the end go to her class. Today, she was not very amused when I asked if I could spend the day in her class because she said that she had already arranged stuff for me to do last Friday and I didn't turn up, but it wasn't my fault the kids in Year 3 really wanted me to stay an extra day and the general treatment of my work experience so far had been unstructured in that there have not been any tasks planned for me. I have always been able to go into any class I like as long as the teacher's haven't minded. I didn't know she had stuff planned for me; oh well, I apologised anyway and she seemed to cheer up. At that point though, I wanted to go back to the nice teacher of Year 3 and the kids that appreciated me but it would have looked rude to leave. This teacher luckily did cheer up when she saw that I got stuck in with helping. I went round each table of children while they were reading their books quietly. Something that I have surprised myself with is that I have never once been nervous when speaking to the kids and even to large groups of them at a time. The teacher (I hate saying 'the teacher' but it wouldn't be safe to use actual names I guess) said that whatever table I went to I could engage the children in any discussions that I liked while all the other tables had to remain silent. Naturally, none of the other tables did stay quiet and so there were lots of children being shouted at. I had some fun conversations with each table. This has been the only lesson where the teacher has allowed me to talk to the kids about general stuff, as normally I have to keep it strictly work related which I understand. I loved being able to ask them anything though. I learned that a lot of kids are very lucky and most of them have Nintendo Wii's I'm so jealous - I don't have one! Some kids talked to me about their parents being divorced and the new boyfriend/girlfriend of the parent which was really interesting to hear about and they were surprisingly mature and OK with it. I learned about all the different pets the children had. One girl told me she had a pet horse but it died in a cold winter :-( A couple of the kids lived on farms or had relatives with farms.

I watched the kids do some handwriting practice. I helped them to construct exciting sentences using made-up character's and bad weather conditions - one of their literacy lessons on nouns and time connectives i.e Today(time connective), Mr Smith was walking home from the shop in a good mood until a strong gust of wind swept him over backwards and he broke his leg. As with all the classes I have helped with, there was a wide range of ability levels. Only a very few of the children were able to write imaginative and well constructed sentences. The same ability differentiation happened in their Numeracy lesson. It was a lesson on how to tell the time. I was sat with a table of four boys who struggle the most with their work. I was given a plastic clock model with moving hands and I had to try and explain how to read the time. It seems like an easy thing to do, but not at all when they are all trying to shout over eachother and one boy even thought he could be the teacher and kept trying to tell me how I should be reading the clock and kept trying to snatch the clock and move the hands for me. To be honest it was quite funny because he had a big ego for someone so small, he kept patronising the other kids and telling me that he was very clever and that he knew more than everyone else. To be fair he was the best at the telling time compared to the other three boys who were not even listening very well because they were too busy mucking about, so in the end, my teacher voice came out and it worked. I managed to get them to listen and understand what quarter past, half past and quarter to meant. Then they had to write this all up in their books and they kept daydreaming or chatting and not copying down from the board the facts about time. They were writing really slowly and were waaaay behind the rest of the class. I don't think it's because they couldn't do the work but rather that they just wanted to mess about! One of the tasks was to think of actions you could do in 1 second i.e blink/clap/click your fingers and another was to think what could be done in 1 minute i.e play a game/tell a joke. The rest of the class found it easy but these guys were just not even trying. They were shouting ridiculous things out or if not they were repeating the same idea that I had already given them which was blink because they couldn't be bothered to think of their own. It was helpful to me to be faced with a particularly challenging group because it gives me the chance to work on my authority skills and regaining control of bad behaviour and also helping the kids in a positive way so that they feel more confident in their abilities. Generally I am very patient and I was with these kids, but I had to use my teacher voice because of the silly behaviour. Fair enough if they genuinely wanted help and were struggling because in that case I am more than willing to help and have a lot of patience. Assembly today was rather boring so I will leave out what happened...which was nothing much! I never did like assembly.

After lunch, I went to find a Year 6 teacher. Immediately I knew she wasn't one of the nicest teacher's I have met. I asked her if she would mind me observing her lesson for the afternoon and I asked if maybe I could help out. She replied by sarcastically saying 'well you certainly wont be observing I will be expecting you to help out and be very busy!' I'm sorry but that was a bit cheeky of her because I am volunteering my own free time to help and while my experience helps me get onto my course, I am still there to be helpful so it is quite rude to be so bossy. Obviously I hadn't meant that I wouldn't get stuck in and help, I was just being polite because some teacher's have preferred me to merely observe lessons rather than physically help out so I thought it best to ask her what she would mind me doing. She brought me into the classroom but didn't tell me where to sit and didn't introduce me to the class even though they were all looking at me because they wanted to know who I was. She seemed to just ignore me and get on with teaching but then finally she introduced me. The class was then split into groups of 3-4 children and told that they were going to have a special science afternoon. They were going to learn about Cantilevers - which I admit I couldn't for the life of me think what they were but the word sounded familiar. Turns out it's just a test to see how much weight a stick can take and how best to support the stick (ok so that's my simplified idea of it). I remembered doing it at school as soon as I saw the equipment. They were given 2 sheets of newspaper each and had to devise a way to make a pole out of it using only masking tape and scissors. They then had to tape one end of the pole to the table with 50cm of it sticking horizontally out in the air. I wandered round all the tables and gave a lot of them clues about the strongest method of making the pole - to roll the newspaper up tightly. Incidentally, something I forgot to mention. At the beginning of this lesson, the teacher had asked me to check through all the pages of the newspaper incase of any inappropriate pages like naked women. Why the teacher had bought a bunch of The Sun newspapers rather than a sensible one I don't know because every other page was a naked woman! Now as it happens, unfortunately I overlooked one such image of a woman in a skimpy bikini and very unfortunately it ended up on the table of the silliest boys table and they started giggling and showing the rest of the class. The teacher glared at me and snatched the paper off them. Woops! heehee.


Anyway, as I was saying. After wandering around all the tables I was asked to help with the boys table that found the work particularly difficult. Again, just as in the Year 4 class, these Year 6 boys were only not able to do the work I think because they were misbehaving, shouting and running around with scissors! One poor boy in the group I felt really sorry for because he was trying really hard but the others were spoiling it for him and I found myself feeling a little annoyed that the teacher had mixed a lovely, hard working boy in with a bunch of loud and boisterous kids. Well, there was only one thing for it...... yep, my teacher voice came out again and I shouted at them to stop being lazy and to get on with it. I explained that they were being very unfair on the boy who was actually working hard for the table. Happily, my shouting pretty much worked and I got them trying harder and concentrating more. Then after all the tables had made their newspaper sticks (cantilevers) they then had to test them for strength by placing metal weights in a plastic cup (with string attached like a little bucket) at different points along the stick to determine the weakest points of the stick. Most people's sticks collapsed and sagged downwards at the first test of weight. Later they learned about other ways to strengthen the stick like my adding string and supporting columns. I think the lack of convincing cantilevers was down to the general noise levels and lack of concentration in the class, because although their teacher shouts a lot, she didn't seem to have much control of the class. A lot of the 'sticks' weren't made very well with the odd exception of some very neatly crafted one's and I don't know if there was anything in it, but the neat and well structured ones came from the girl groups. It's funny because this Year 6 group behaved quite badly but all the younger classes behaved almost perfectly! Still, it was a good challenge for me and it was good to teach some of the older kids because although I found them more challenging than the younger classes, I still know that I want to teach older children at a secondary school. I'm sure the secondary pupils will mess around and be a challenge, but I like a challenge and I like having good conversations with them and teaching more complicated things.

My day was over and my last thing to do was say goodbye again to my lovely Year 3 class who I made a special visit to at the end of the day. I got lots of hugs and one girl said that when I became a teacher, I had to let her know at what school so that she could come and be in my class! How sweet! I gave a thank you card to the teacher of Year 3 who has always been very good to me and then when I had said my goodbyes I made one last visit to the lady who organised my work experience for me and gave her a card aswell. She also said she would be happy to give me a reference and she seemed a little disappointed that I wasn't doing more work experience. I felt really guilty knowing that I had decided on doing secondary teaching rather than primary but I still loved my time spent at the school and I will actually miss some of the children. It has been far more useful and fun than I had imagined it would be. I feel good that I have helped children and made them happy.

Some more experience at the school

Yesterday - 6th March 2008

Yesterday, I went to Reading to attend a meeting at Reading University about the GTP route into teaching. I took the day off from my work experience to go to the meeting and the school didn't mind. I wanted to learn more about this route because I thought it might be a good option for me rather than PGCE as you get paid a salary of around £14-£15k to work and train as a teacher. Plus applications are still being accepted whereas the PGCE primary deadlines have gone and I wouldn't be able to do the primary PGCE route for this september because at the time of application I didn't have the relevant experience. However, from doing my primary school work experience, I have come to the conclusion that I would actually prefer to be a secondary school teacher after all, which means I can still potentially get onto a PGCE for this September because the application deadline isn't until June. This is not to say that I haven't been enjoying my primary school work experience, because I really have enjoyed it very much and I have learned a lot more than I thought I would. I am opting for secondary now though because after teaching the older kids in the primary school, I have realised that I prefer teaching the older kids rather than the younger ones, because I get the chance to do more complex work with them etc. Also, it seems I would get paid more to do secondary school teaching and I could also specialise in Art and Religious Studies I think, which are two of my favourite subjects. In primary I would have to teach all subjects which I am not sure that I would want to do. I wouldn't have been able to know that I wanted to do secondary teaching without first doing the primary experience so my time spent in the school has been invaluable. Plus I have had a fantastic time! There are other reasons that have made me want to do secondary teaching but I think I have waffled enough! Anyway, the GTP meeting in reading has made me rule out the GTP route to secondary because I found out that you only get a QTS qualification from the GTP route and it means that you would not be qualified to teach in Scotland, Ireland and a lot of places abroad. I figure if you are going to work just as hard as a PGCE student then you should get the same qualifications but it seems you don't. You also don't get a University certificate or any modules towards a masters, wheras all this you get with a PGCE. PGCE seems just more varied and interesting as you switch schools through the course and get extra qualifications. So...PGCE here I come!


Today - 7th March 2008

I was back in the primary school today with my favourite Year 3 class that I have got to know quite well in a short space of time. I promised the Year 3 class, who I spent the day with on Wednesday 5th March, that I would come back to their class today for the whole day again (because they asked me to come back and because their teacher was OK with that). In the morning I listened to two children read and helped them if they got stuck. Then I sat with a table that was allocated to me to help and helped them finish their numeracy work from Wednesday which was bar graphs. They all finished with a few minutes to spare before break time so I allowed them to ask questions and I answered them - normally they ask questions all the time anyway that are not necessarily work related and I have to tell them to concentrate. I indirectly got a bit in trouble with their teacher though because several times the teacher started shouting at my table to be quiet and only talk about work, so I guess she was sort of telling me to keep them more in line. I like listening to their questions and stuff though and I didn't know if it's my place to tell them off so I let them talk a bit but after the teacher not being happy with that I became stricter! Then came assembly. The children's parents were in from the lower years in the school to watch the little ones do readings about St Davids Day. I had to sit with the parents rather than the teachers and I got some dirty looks from parents. I know why and it made me laugh. They must have thought I was a young teenage mum (because I look only about 17/18 a lot of people say)and because I was sat with the parents. I also didn't have a video camera like all the parents so I think they thought I wasn't interested in my child, even though little did they know I don't have one! After assembly, came P.E. One of the teacher's was off sick so I was given half the class to teach - it was a different Year 3 class and I had to teach all by myself! Great experience though. I was teaching them basic tennis skills and I had to really shout across the playground at times and think on my feet because I wasn't given time to plan a lesson so I made up activities like asking them to work on their own and try to keep the ball in the air by bouncing the ball on the racket to see how many times they could bounce it before losing control of the ball. I then put them into pairs and got them to try making one bounce on the ground only before they hit it back to eachother . After P.E, I helped my favourite Year 3 class again and the kids had to make up imaginary animals as in a few weeks time they are having a sculpture maker come in to look at their ideas and then help them to create a sculpture. The kids were aksed to draw an imaginary creature, such as something completely random or perhaps a shark's head and a horse's body. Some kids had really good ideas. Some struggled to even think of one type of animal! As usual, all the kids were shouting for my help at once so I had to be firm and say to stay quiet until I got round to their table. I was a bit shocked and embarrassed because a couple of kids started crying because even though I had already spent a lot of time with them, I had to share my time with everyone so they cried because they wanted some more help or for me to draw something for them. It was embarrassing because the teacher had to keep going over to them to ask why they were crying and it was because I couldn't help them all at once! hehe. One girl got in a very sulky strop because I couldn't spend the whole lesson just with her and when I came over to her for like the 4th time she wouldn't even speak to me or try and come up with any ideas for animals! In the end I left her to it because she was just attention seeking and misbehaving. Other than that everyone was really well behaved. After the imaginary animal session, there was Golden Time. Golden Time is time the kids have earned for being good and in this time they can do whatever they like. So, I went in the playground with some of them and also the teacher. Some of them performed songs from High School Musical for me because they are going to be auditioning to be in the school play of it. Then I played catch with a few of the kids and spent time chatting to them. Also, incidentally, today was my record breaking day for number of hugs received. It's really sweet, these kids just love to hug! I had to ask the teacher if I should be pushing them straight off me though because sadly the world has to be more careful now and there are some dodgy people in the world so I had to find out what the rules were. The teacher said it's fine if they hug me and not to worry, as long as I don't let them hug me for long which I didn't anyway. At the end of the day, the teacher told them it might be my last day with their class so everyone said thank you and bye and gave me a mountain of hugs! Sorry if this blog is a bit rushed but I was too tired after my day of work experience today to write it up straight away and I'm still tired now as it's getting late so I'm rushing a bit!

More primary school work experience

Today - 5th March 2008

Today has been my favourite day of being a classroom assistant. I stayed with the same teacher and class all day. I was helping out in Year 3 today so the children were age 7-8 I think. Already I have come to the conclusion that I definitely prefer teaching the older children even though I had fun teaching the younger ones. With the older children, you can have more advanced conversations and they are able to ask more complex questions. It also gives me the chance to explain instructions or ideas in more detail rather than having to keep things basic. When I walked in to the classroom in the morning, the children were particularly excited because one of the girls in the classroom was also called Lindsey like me. I started my day off by listening to a child with learning difficulties read a few books. He was struggling to read simple words like if the word was 'duck' he would tell me it said 'the' which is very different. I think he struggles because he tries to rush the words rather than looking at what the word begins with. He loses concentration and makes up the words. Then another boy came to read with me and he was reading very quickly and understood most words. It is so interesting to see the different levels of ability in the classroom. After reading with the two boys I then observed while the teacher of the class went over how words change when you add 'able' to the end of a word like 'enjoyable.' Then she also went through how to read a clock and where the hands should be to represent a specific time. This teacher is one of the really good teachers, I could see that straight away. She is always friendly to the kids but firm when she needs to be. She clearly explains everything to the kids. She was also really nice to me and so far has been the only teacher to offer to show me around properly (apart from the kind lady that gave me the opportunity for work experience in the first place) and she made sure I had somewhere to go at lunchtime and also let me wander around the classroom helping anyone that asked for help. Again, I was amazed how much the kids respected whatever I said and trusted me so quickly to help them. Some kids even kept running up to me and hugging me, even the boys! Then it was time for assembly, my first one I have been into so far. It wasn't very interesting but I suppose it was worth seeing at least one. The headteacher read a story about perseverance and there was a prayer. Also, lots of the kids were being told off for bad behaviour.

After assembly, the kids had a numeracy lesson and learned about tally charts and then how to represent the voting figures in a bar graph. I was assigned a table to sit with and they were all well behaved except for one who wasn't concentrating and kept interrupting to tell me about random things not related to the lesson. Then after lunch, the kids had the best lesson of all in my opinion. Design and technology. They were learning how to make a pop-up book which was brilliant because I found it easy to teach because again, it relates to my art degree. It was fun thinking of all the diffrent ways we could make pictures pop out of the page. I had free reign to wander around the classroom, although I never got far if I started walking because the kids clustered around me all the time asking questions! I loved that they were keen to ask me things though. Also walking a round was the teacher's permanent teaching assistant. Some kids wanted me to show them how to draw different animals, so I drew quite a basic fish and soon I had the kids fascinated and they all wanted me to draw their pictures for them and in the end I had to tell them that they had to do their own work but that they could copy what I did if they liked! The kids were easily impressed, because my drawings were not great, they were basic outlines with smiley faces but they were loving them so it was great to watch their excited faces. At the end of the lesson, there was a short question session with the teacher that they have everyday. At the very end one girl had a question for me which surprised me. She said 'are you going to be coming back?' so I told her that I was going to be away tomorrow but would be back friday but not necessarily in her class. She then said 'could you be our new teaching assistant pleeeeeeeeease and coud you live with our teacher?' I thought it was really sweet. The teacher has kindly said she would be happy for me to come back to her class on Friday so I am going to teach with this class again on Friday. I overheard some really nice comments from the kids about my being there and they were all really happy when I said I could come back on Friday. I am happy to be going back to that class because they are so friendly and well behaved and ask so many questions! Something that I have forgotten to mention in my primary experience posts is just how shattered I am after every day, a lot of it is very interesting but after a day of having to be so alert and attentive with the kids I am ready for sleep!

Primary School work experience

Yesterday - 3rd March 2008

Yesterday I had my first day of work experience at a local primary school. The teacher who first decided to allow me to visit her school for a week has been fantastic. When I arrived yesterday morning, she let me get stuck right in and while she took the register, one child at a time would bring me a short book to read to me and then when they had finished, I would write a comment in their progress book. The age of this class was around 4-5 years. What surprised me most is that not one of the children was worried about having a stranger in their classroom and all of them seemed to really enjoy talking to me. The teacher and I then played word games with the children in a lesson about phonics. The game involved understanding the way adding the letter 'e' on to the end of a word changed the sound and meaning of a word. For example: TAP and TAPE. Once all the children understood the idea then they were all given one word each on a piece of paper and had to find who had the word that connected to their own, so one person would have TAP and one would have TAPE so they had to sit next to eachother. Then after the game was finished I moved on to another class called the Foundation Group. From what I gather these are the youngest children and their is no real structure to their activities. There seem to be several tables with creative materials on them and also a play area with a sandpit and dolls house etc. The teacher in the Foundation Group wanders around and helps children with any activity that they feel like doing and so this is what I also did. I was not watched by any other teachers so I felt like I was in charge and this was a helpful experience; to totally have a taste of teaching by myself and controlling the class. I helped children trace around the template of a number between 0 and 9 and then I watched and demonstrated how to decorate the numbers for a wall display. At this point I had such a funny comment from one of the children. She asked me if I had children and when I said no, she asked why not and why was I in a school if I didn't have any children, so I explained I was there to learn how to be a good teacher. Then, she poked my belly and said ''Is there any babies in there?'' I thought it was so funny, she looked so confused, but I also thought oh my god I need to lose some weight!!

In the afternoon, I sat quietly in a corner of a numeracy lesson with children aged 6-7 and observed a PGCE student teach the children. She was herself being observed by a lady who was perhaps her mentor I'm not quite sure. This particular PGCE student in my opinion is already the perfect teacher. She has her own children and seems already very experienced and has worked previously as a teaching assistant. She is very confident and has a wonderful command over the children, mixing humour with firmness so that the children really pay attention to what she is doing and if they don't, she soon has them behaving properly. I will certainly steal some of her classroom control techniques. One of her techniques is that she explains to the class that she is not going to speak to them until everyone is quiet and sitting nicely. Also, when children start fidgeting and messing about she adds humour by saying ''stop rocking about you are making me sea sick.'' This lesson was very basic and all about representing groups of data in tables, such as how many children were aged 6 in the class and were boys. I got a chance to ask this PGCE student and one other about their course and if they are enjoying it. They both told me it's hard work and lots of essays, but really interesing and rewarding. They both seemed to agree that the PGCE route may be better than the GTP route (where you earn your qualification while being in full-time employment as a teacher) because the GTP route is not as easy as you don't have so many other students also doing the same course as you to talk to and share ideas with. It has put me off the GTP route a bit, which I was considering as a way of still getting onto a course for this september (I have missed the deadline for PGCE this september now because as I thought, I needed more work experience; the GTP deadline isn't for a while yet though so I have enough time to get the experience).

The next lesson, with again, a different teacher, was with younger children again and involved watching a projection screen of a video about what different materials houses are made of: brick, wood, glass, clay, plastic etc. The classroom facilities have definitely changed since my days at school which made me feel really old! They now have special white boards where a computer program is projected onto the board and then the whole board becomes touch sensitive so the kids can press buttons just by touching the projection of them on the board. After the video and touch screen session, I spent the rest of the day playing estate agents and also drawing houses with the children. Again, I was amazed how happy the children were to play with me and how comfortable they were around me. They all wanted to sit with me and learn and some wanted to sit on my knee or hold my hand. Some even wanted to sing songs with me and dance. The difference in this school is that to me it has an unusual structure. All classrooms are open plan. There are no doors and all classes can hear and see every other class - which I'm not sure is a good idea because the children sometimes get distracted by the other noises around them. At different times in the day the children are also allowed to do whatever activity they like and play games. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it's nice to see the kids having fun and creating chaos, but on the other hand it seems a little unstructured and random and maybe the kids need more attention. It is very useful to me to see such a unique style of classroom environment because I have learned the positives and negatives of this.

Today - 4th March 2008

My second day of work experience. The day started off with helping in the numeracy class with the PGCE student. I would mention names but I think it best to keep things anonymous. This time, I was allowed to get involved as the PGCE student was not being observed. Everyone was learning how to produce block charts. I thought there was a mistake at first, I thought they were meant to be called bar graphs but it turns out I learnt something new along with the children. Block graphs are when there are gaps left between each column! I felt bad not knowing that. They were learning how to produce a graph that showed how many people in the class liked each of the 5 different types of drink written on the board. I then sat with one of the children's table's while they filled in their own graph based on how many people had voted for each different type of activity such as drawing or lego. Some children understood the concept straight away, while others really struggled so it was great for me because I really got to help the children improve their understanding and in effect, practise my teaching. One boy really stood out as gifted, he found the work too easy and finished almost straight away, I was impressed! After this lesson I was with another class again of age 6-7. It was an ICT lesson and the children were in a computer suite learning how to edit simple sentences such as how to delete a word or add in a capital letter. This teacher had a totally different teaching style, which really differenciated from other teachers because she is quite strict and often raises her voice to say something, even when the kids are not being naughty. However, this method also works well as the kids respect her authority. I even had to tell off a couple of girls who were poking eachother and I was amazed when they listened to me and started behaving properly. I had shocked myself because I have been finding it a lot easier than I thought to be firm and also be friends with the children. Again I found that most of them were desperate to ask me questions to the point where I had to tell them to put their hands up if they wanted help and to sit quietly and wait for me because everyone was shouting for me or coming over all at once and tugging me over to their desks! I couldn't help but find it amusing when some of the children were slightly misunderstanding the idea of deleting one word only in their work and accidentally deleting the whole document!!! Unfortunately I'm not sure the teacher was very computer literate, as she was explaining to them that a desktop is any window that they open with pictures in it (she actually had the control panel open and was telling them it was called the desktop!) but of course I didn't say anything!

After lunch, I spent the whole time particularly enjoying myself because I helped in an art class with the children aged 5-6. This is the best lesson I have helped in so far because it relates to my studies and degree in illustration and I was given free reign to pretty much teach the children. Again, they all concentrated on what I was saying and they crowded around for help. I admit that I also liked the lesson because the idea was to pick an animal and then make a drawing or collage of it and I know quite a bit about animals and also LOVE animals so I could tell them interesting facts about them and give them ideas for creating fur textures etc. I can't explain how much I liked the children's drawings they were just so fantastic. All of the drawings just looked so cute and funny. So, to show you how lovely the pictures were, I have attached most of them to this blog. The little boy who made James the polar bear really was just soooo sweet, he was very quiet and hard working and I spent a lot of time with him showing him different ways to make the arms and helping him cut and stick things. I also had to blow his nose for him, a new experience for me, hehe (at one point I couldn't tell what was snot and what was pva glue).

Glove Man

I have named this little creature Glove Man. My sister's husband surprised us all at the pub with this treat. He started off life from 2 black gloves (Glove man, that is, not my sister's husband!) and from only folding the gloves over eachother in a marvelous way, he presented an extraordinary puppet of what looks to me like a little man in a turban. I thought it was brilliant! What do you think? Maybe it's just a case of simple things please simple minds, hehe. Sadly the video quality doesn't do it justice so I will have to get a clearer one sometime.