Teaching in primary School has been both challenging and rewarding, but the overall experience has taught me a lot which is helping me understand how to become a better teacher. One of the main things that I’ve learnt is how to adapt activities and my own teaching methods to fit circumstances. When I work with small groups within the class, I have had to address a range of abilities and help pupils to understand the same information while some of them struggle greatly with simply reading texts while others can answer accompanying questions independently and write about their own opinions. I have had to learn, therefore, to help pupils who are at different stages of understanding and improvise to either make activities easier to understand or make them more difficult to keep pupils occupied. This has also helped me learn how to make resources that cater to a range of abilities, making it easier to work with a class of such different abilities. Because of the huge range of abilities in our class, I’ve started to think differently about the way that literacy is taught in primary schools, and that it isn’t as straightforward as I first thought to work with a class of pupils of the same level.
The unpredictability of the class we work with has also taught me how to improvise and deal with conflict. There have been difficult pupils but learning what to expect from them and what works in terms of settling their behaviour has changed the experience in our classroom greatly. The longer we work with our class, the easier it is to control their behaviour as a whole, and therefore to work well with smaller groups and develop their literacy skills.
Although most of what I’ve learnt has come from difficult situations, I’m grateful for the experience and it’s taught me to appreciate teaching and adapt to become a better teacher.
Written by Chloe Scott, 18 November 2014
The unpredictability of the class we work with has also taught me how to improvise and deal with conflict. There have been difficult pupils but learning what to expect from them and what works in terms of settling their behaviour has changed the experience in our classroom greatly. The longer we work with our class, the easier it is to control their behaviour as a whole, and therefore to work well with smaller groups and develop their literacy skills.
Although most of what I’ve learnt has come from difficult situations, I’m grateful for the experience and it’s taught me to appreciate teaching and adapt to become a better teacher.
Written by Chloe Scott, 18 November 2014