#placementreflection

[amyemmadeakin-blog]

PROMPT FOUR

PLACEMENT REFLECTION

Third year placement for me was so very enjoyable, I had a great learning experience and got to do some pretty great things such as: Attend camp at Sovereign Hill with the year level I was placed in and attend and help with inter-school sport activities! While all this was an amazing learning experience it did unfortunately leave little time for teaching within the classroom. I did however watch and teach some lessons on comprehension. The students were studying the gold rush and I was asked to run a lesson on the Eureka Stockade. I tailored this lesson to be a comprehension activity as there are so many facts and details regarding this event in history, I wanted the students to focus in on the parts I deemed to be important to understand. I found a text that explained the main events of the Eureka Stockade in terms that the students wouldn’t find too difficult to understand. I was very lucky because the students were so engaged when it came to learning about the Gold Rush as they were super excited for camp! After reading the story we had a group discussion to clarify some of the events or words that the students may not have directly understood from the text. The students then worked independently to answer a few comprehension questions about the text I read to them. I was so pleasantly surprised by how much the had absorbed and taken in from the book, this was evident by their answers in their books. I unfortunately didn’t get the opportunity to take photos of their work afterwards as time slipped away from me but i have attached a photo of the text I used as a resource. 

[ecl310-emily-g-blog]

Prompt 4 - Placement Reflection

Literacy was one of the main subjects I taught on my recent placement and I absolutely loved it. With the reading and writing lessons being sequential and relating to one another it made it easy to teach and really displayed the strong connection between reading and writing. During my recent two-week placement, the year 3’s were continuing their Author Study’ unit in reading and were beginning to look at Mem Fox as an author and in particular her writing techniques used in Possum Magic. Each reading lesson had a different focus on a different strategy used by Mem Fox, such as rhyme or personification. Each lesson was a different technique which was then utilised in the writing lesson following. Students were focusing on writing short stories that incorporated Mem Fox’s writing techniques. These lessons were scaffolding the skills and techniques students needed to complete their assessment task that they were to complete in the next few weeks; writing picture story books.

Whilst on my placement, students practiced these skills in order to write and illustrate picture story books for prep students. On my second last day of placement, my class went to visit a prep classroom to present their picture story books to them. It was wonderful to see them not only build their confidence in their writing but be proud of their work when showing the preps.

One thing I found interesting about teaching these lessons and at times didn’t like, was the use of ICT. When we read Possum Magic as a class it was either using a scanned copy of the book on the Interactive White Board or as a YouTube clip that read the book. Alternatively, when the children read the story independently it was on the same online document of the scanned book on their iPads. I found it interesting and somewhat sad, that the technology of today meant students were not seeing the physical book and turning the pages. Instead they were swiping left and right to flick between pages and zooming in and out on pictures and text.

The class had a novel the teacher occasionally read, and this was ‘The 26 Storey Tree House’ by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton. The students absolutely love this series of books and that was demonstrated in their attentiveness when reading and their desire to always want to read more.

The above images are of the students picture story books, as well as an anchor chart I created on the writing techniques used by Mem Fox.

[ecl310annajeanbala-blog]

Prompt Four - Placement Reflection

I was in grade six for my placement, and was so impressed by the quality of writing that the students produced. For their writing pieces, we were focusing on the text ‘The Arrival’ by Shaun Tan. This is a picture book with no text; and we would show a chapter at a time, and ask the students to put text to the images from various perspectives; including a third person narrator. The students really enjoyed the task as it allowed them to use their imagination and write relatively freely.  As part of their literacy unit, the students also had word study, where they had to find out the root meanings of words, and distinguish prefixes from suffixes. From this they would go on to find more words that the prefix or suffix would fit. EG: Telephone, prefix: tele, suffix: phone > telegraph, microphone. 

For reading, the children based on their reading levels read a variety of texts surrounding Australia since Federation. These included texts about Don Bradman, immigration, and war. These books were selected as the students are currently studying Australia since Federation as part of their History unit. As a class, we were reading Plagues and Federation, which is a challenging book to read as the grammar and syntax is so disjointed throughout, as the implied author isn’t completely literate. Overall, I really enjoyed the literacy sessions that I had with my grade sixes. They worked productively, and seemed to enjoy the various tasks we provided them with. During my placement I was able to see them work on snapshots, narratives, information reports and newsletter articles. They worked to a very high standard, and are considering entering some of their pieces into a writing competition.  

[jh-deakin1-blog]

PROMPT 4

Reading: I really liked that in the grade 3 classroom for reading they had 15 minute silent writing everyday to encounter consistent improvement. The classroom I was in was a shared classroom and in the middle of the space was a library where students had full access to choose their both class and home reading novels. Including reading into world events happening was also a task I found very intriguing children in the class had heard about the drought by the teachers including a picture book I thought the students understanding grew. A popular novel in the grade 3 was the Anh Do collection and Bad boys.

Writing: In writing we focused on summarising world celebrations. A positive in writing was that children could summarise a celebration such as St Patrick’s day in their own words and gain full understanding of the task. I also liked in silent writing time that students chose what text type they would use with the seed given to them. This way students were able to chose the text type which they prefer. The only thing I would have changed in the writing task is repetition of summarises although it related to their action learning component.

#ECL310 #prompt4 #placementreflection

[ecl310-2018fwr-blog]

Prompt 4 - Placement Reflection

During my placement, i really enjoyed the reading and writing programs that were in place. My class a weekly story book and a them that they would chose they would then rotate through groups that would include an IT activity, a punctuation activity, a response to the text and guided reading session with the teacher. While i was there i got to take these lesson with a focus on Dreamtime texts in the first week and inferencing in the second week. It gives the students routine while also giving then a change as the activities change from week to week. The children seemed to really enjoy this and got a lot out of it. 

Writing was mainly about structuring letters for the two weeks and practicing those skills which some kids struggled with more than others, But every Friday htey got a free write where they could write about whatever they wanted and the kids loved it. They always asked for a free write session when they saw writing on the timetable.

There was also a wide range of reading levels which is usually the case but had one child who had just finished the Harry Potter series and had started the first Lord of the Rings novel. Most children keen on simpler novels such as Paul Jennings which was an author focus from earlier in the year and the kids seemed to really enjoy with many having a copy of one of his books on their table.