Observation Week – Tuesday

The second day gone, and I'm even more tired! I have a feeling this blog entry will be much shorter than yesterday's...

As we waited to start our day, my Professional Studies group stood and chatted about tomorrow morning - while most of us are in school, one brave member has volunteered to represent us on a panel which talks over the issues/positives of our Enhanced Partnership. We all seemed to agree that it was a valuable experience, and being back in school was brilliant. But we also said there was a definite (and frustrating) element of disorganisation.

Tomorrow we are going to be in a primary school for half a day (more about that in the next entry!) and we knew absolutely nothing about it until last period today. While that is not at all the school's fault - the primary schools have been a little lax with replying to emails - it's an illustration of the frustration we've all felt over the past few weeks.

Nevertheless, I'm excited for tomorrow! Living with three primary PGCE students has made me keen to spend some time with the really little people... we'll see whether I change my mind after tomorrow morning.

So... back to today! I preferred it to yesterday. There was less free time and things were more interactive. The students were often doing group work so we got to walk around and talk to them about their work and school generally. Talking to the year 7s about how they were finding secondary school after just a few weeks gave me some real insight, which I'm hoping I will add to tomorrow.

We also saw Geography today (very useful, seeing as I might end up teaching some of it!) but stuck mostly with History. Seeing three different teachers was really interesting for me, especially comparing things like behaviour management techniques, use of questioning and choice of resources. I took a lot of notes today! How much of it I've taken in is slightly a different issue... although writing this, I feel quite hopeful. I'm looking forward to tomorrow afternoon, when we will be reunited with our PS group and given time to reflect together. I have a feeling tomorrow may be the most useful day of this week, but you'll have to read tomorrow's entry to find out!

: 04 Oct 2011 19:44 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem