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!