Transition Placement Part 2

Evening everyone

   I’m just going to try and finish my thoughts on the transition placement. I’m mainly going to talk about EAL, the transition between KS2 and KS3 and golden time. I originally planned to talk about the school trip I went on, but I felt it was pretty uneventful and therefore boring, so instead I’ll talk about golden time which is brilliant ( mainly due to the fact I haven’t played with Lego or Connect 4 in years).

   I find the concept of EAL very interesting and feel it is a topic we, as teachers, should all be aware of, especially if we are teaching in urban areas. In the school I was based in there wasn’t a huge amount of EAL students but one example stands out. There was a polish boy in year 5, who had only recently moved to the country (from recollection it was about 3 months ago). His English was quite impressive, he actually won star of the week for his progress in class and with his improvement with language. The main thing I noticed about him from a learning perspective was the fact the teacher was obviously aware of his intelligence and discussed with the TA who worked with the child, the idea that he was planning on placing the child with some of the smarter children in class. From what I have learnt about EAL, this step of pushing intelligent EAL students is very important in their adaption on progress in the school. Many EAL advisors insist that EAL should not handicap a child’s ability when it comes to learning (Polish children enjoy education in the UK, apparently it is a lot easier in the sense of work load, they can find it unchallenging compared to what they experienced in their native country). Therefore I feel the teacher was doing the right thing by giving the child the chance of being surrounded by peers who were at the same level academically. This was definitely a good idea about breaking down the language barrier and fulfilling the goals of inclusion in learning.

   I’m now as promised going to talk about transition. Transition is a topic of debate within education, in a seminar at university today we discussed the aspects of transition from an ICT perspective and I felt there were some very interesting points raised. I believe that the transition between KS2 to KS3 is a very important issue within education today and is probably a topic that needs to be addressed more thoroughly. Talking to the transition coordinator within the primary school I was based in, I developed an understanding of the general protocol of the process. We discussed the links between feeder schools and secondary schools, open days, prospectus’, parent’s views and my own views.

   One aspect of the transition that I felt was interesting was the fact that the children knew which secondary school they wanted to go to and it was usually the only option for them (in the sense of the family have gone to that school, their friends go to or are going to that school, they live a stone’s throw away from that school). This is hardly surprising as I remember myself as a ten year old having very similar views; I didn’t want to go to the local school as it had a reputation of being crap, instead I wanted to go to the school where my best friend was going to. However my parents view was much different, they wanted me to go to a school where I would achieve academically, socially and would turn out as I well rounded individual. In hindsight my parents were correct, as I feel my secondary school played a large role in the person I am today, if I were allowed to go to the school of my choice I probably would have never gone into higher education and teacher training. From this, I believe the transition coordinator plays a very important role in making sure the parent’s wants and needs are met and also that it is done in the best interest of the child (Probably comes under Every Child Matters). This must be a huge undertaking for the coordinator and I don’t envy the amount of work they have to put into this.

   Another aspect of the transition is assessment. Primary education is very literacy and numeracy orientated and this is reflected in the assessment at the end of year 6. An interesting aspect of this is whether the secondary school takes this assessment on board and uses it when it comes to schemes of work, banding and lesson planning for Year 7, or whether they just throw this assessment in the shredder and start from scratch. I feel that primary school teachers are only doing what is asked of them when it comes to assessment and I would argue that, are we as secondary school teachers any different; we are all just teaching the national curriculum, national strategies and the school policy on the subject. I believe that there should be greater collusion between primary and secondary school teachers, especially between Years 5, 6 and 7 so that the children are ready for the transition, not only between schools but between subjects. This might be achievable, especially logistically, in the new super schools and academies where they cater for the age range of 3-19. I am definitely of the opinion that communication and strategies would be vastly improved in these schools when it comes to transition.

   I’ve rambled a little there and have probably gone off on too much of tangent, apologies.  Let’s talk about golden time instead; this was the best aspect of primary education I saw on my placement. It shows the kids enjoy the school environment the most when they are allowed to play and be creative. It was really good to talk to the children during this time, learn about their likes and dislikes and to just have a laugh with them. I feel that to an extent secondary education is missing out on this interaction between teachers and students.  As one final thought I will leave you with this; as an ICT teacher I believe there is plenty of room for creativity and play in the ICT curriculum and maybe we should be doing more creative work such as video and animation instead of databases and spreadsheets. That’s just a thought though, thanks for reading.

Nathan

Transition Placement

Hi

I’ve recently started my PGCE in ICT at secondary school level. This blog will enable me to keep track of my experiences throughout the PGCE year. I feel that writing this blog will help me to gather my thoughts about the trainee year and education; it will also come in useful for my critical reflection assignment towards the end of the year. Having just completed my second week of study and my transition placement, I thought there was no better place to start.

   My transition placement was based at Ambleside Primary School in Nottingham. I found the staff to be very welcoming and also witnessed a lot of excellent teaching. The children were on the whole very well behaved, from talking with the teachers; I found out that behaviour of the pupils had improved drastically over the last decade and that this was mainly due to the discipline and classroom management used.

   In lessons I found that the majority of the school day was devoted to Literacy and Numeracy.  There was a big push on Literacy; nearly the whole morning was spent teaching it. ICT was implemented moderately but I felt quite effectively in all lessons. The school has implemented Promethean interactive whiteboards in all classrooms. They were mainly used in Literacy to display mind maps and to introduce and explain topics such as the Vikings. The whiteboards were also used to demonstrate handwriting techniques such as joined handwriting. In Numeracy the whiteboards were used to display starter activities such as daily dash, where the children had to perform sums using addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. The whiteboards were also used for interactive maths games where the children were scored on how quickly they answered times table sums. It was interesting to see how enthusiastic the children become when games are brought into learning, I will be looking to try and implement this into my teaching.

   During the week the main experiences that stood out were behaviour and behavioural management. The children’s behaviour on the whole was outstanding; I feel this is probably due to the effective classroom management used in lessons and the discipline instilled throughout the school. The main aspects I learnt were as follows; eye contact and body language are very effective ways of dealing with small behavioural issues without having to use your voice, I practised this myself during the week and found that 90% of the time, I didn’t have to speak to stop poor behaviour. Another thing I learnt during the week, was that when children are given I task they will enjoy (usually practical), behaviour starts to go downhill, this is something I have also witnessed in secondary schools. I feel that when you allow creativity to occur amongst students, their excitement levels increase and this can lead to behavioural issues. Although I believe that students should always be allowed to be creative, there must be some sort of control or focus in place to prevent the lesson becoming chaotic. I witnessed this first hand in a lesson involving paper mache, the teacher took a group of children outside to create George’s Marvellous Medicine bottles out of paper mache, whilst I had a group of children who had to draw design ideas for their bottles and come up with a design criteria. The group’s behaviour wasn’t overly bad; however a group of boys were quite chatty and could not really concentrate on the task at hand. On a side note, I thought a lot of the boys were kinaesthetic learners, mainly due to them using plastic bottles as drum sticks instead of reference points for drawing ha-ha. When the groups swapped tasks, the girls were much quieter and also concentrate very well on the task.

   Overall I thought the transition placement was an invaluable experience for my teacher training, I learnt a lot about behavioural management, how Literacy and Numeracy is taught, and the variations in Literacy and Numeracy levels amongst students and how ICT is implemented across the curriculum. I wanted this blog to be quite concise, so I will probably post about the transition placement again in the coming week, as I have yet to cover the transition between primary and secondary, EAL students and the school trip I went on.

Regards