Week Two of Student Teaching in England!

During my second week of England student teaching, I started to feel more comfortable about traveling on public transportation to get to school and learned all about the head teacher's responsibilities. As I came to understand how to get to school easier, the stress and anxiousness of walking and trying to catch a train everyday seemed to start to fade. I felt more confident of traveling by myself and definitely felt I was learning how to become less dependent on wanting my car back! Even though I miss my car, I did start to realize the experience and usefulness of having to use public transportation. I also felt I started to understand how important it was to be very attentive when walking in a big city. Not only did I become more knowledgeable of my surroundings, but unlike in the states, pedestrians do not have the right-away from cars. I almost got hit by a car a few times crossing the street because I didn't stop to wait for the car thinking they would wait for me!

I also started to learn a lot about the head teacher's responsibilities and how I can become more involved in the classroom. In England, there are not usually specialty teachers for music, physical education, or art, so the head classroom teacher is in control of organizing lessons and integrating these topics into the curriculum. The first week, I mostly observed how the teacher did taught these subjects, what was her focus, and how she planned for these topics. This week, my CT asked me if I wanted to teach physical education, which I excitedly agreed to do! I spent the days before the lesson reviewing what they teacher had done and planning how I would teach the second stage of gymnastics, which involved teaching students to balance on three and four major parts of their bodies.

On the day of the lesson, I decided to follow what my CT had done and ask the students to first warm up their bodies by walking, jogging, and stretching. Then after grouping students in groups of four, I asked the students to show me one way to use three or four major body parts to balance themselves. Some students were creative thinkers and chose to use their elbows and feet, or their hands and one foot. Some other students used what they had learned from the last lesson to show me a crab stance(two and and two feet). After allowing students to get some movement in practice, I asked them to think about how they would use all four major body parts to walk like a bear. Students were to get into position, make sure they had balance, then try to walk or move forward in this position. Most students showed me they understood how to do this, but I allowed some students to model it from their mats so that the rest of the class had an example. After trying a few other movements using three and four major body parts, I gave groups five-seven minutes to create a sequence of movements as a group, showing what they learned on how to use three or four major body parts to balance themselves. After allowing them to review what we learned, I asked students to join me in cooling down to slow our heart rate down.

Some of the improvements I would make to the next lesson in gymnastics would include reviewing with students safe ways to use the mats before starting the lesson so that I would not have to remind individual groups of safety hazards, having creative ways to warm up and cool down our bodies, and teaching an attention tool(get student's attention) so that the echo in the hall gym was a utilization of getting student's. The reason I mention the echo of the room is that when I taught this lesson, I was also sick and could not vocalize well, so the echo of the room made it rather difficult for me to get student's attention with my voice. I used a clap pattern, but also felt some student's could not hear me. As I reflected over this lesson, I believe that using a different attention tool, like a cheer or body movement like jumping on two feet, may have worked more efficiently in a room that may not allow for a noise maker. I believe this can improve the next lesson I teach in physical education.

I also attended my first planning meeting with my grade level teachers and observed and noted how they organized and planned for each week. Teachers in one grade level plan and stay on task level for mathematics, literacy, science, and topic (subject area usually social studies or integration of literacy). The teachers review the New National Curriculum for GB and rewrite standards based on ability and grade level. Then teachers fill out a table that labels each session(day) and the learning goal, description, steps to success, and assessment for each session and the overall outcome at the end of the week. Teachers must include resources and tools they will use to teach each learning goal. Teachers also not in their outline for each session the differentiation of ability levels, showing what each level will work on and who(the teacher, assistant, or independent) will be working with them. I found this tool very useful when look at the next week for teaching math. The teachers use the same format for teaching literacy, but also talk about how they will extend and integrate literacy into a topic, for example, if students are writing about the seven highest summits in the world in literacy, they will be researching and exploring the seven summits in topic and doing art, design, or even computing to integrate the topic. Sometimes the teachers plan literacy for two weeks or more ahead, so that they can look to see how they will integrate literacy across the curriculum. I appreciate the way the grade level teachers plan and work together to organize the lessons and learning goals for each week because as a new and upcoming teacher, I feel that it provides teachers with support and assistance in planning, collecting resources, knowing your objectives and learning goals, and how to assess your students. 

From this planning meeting, I was able to use the outline for mathematics to plan and write out my formal lesson plans for teaching fractions next week, which was the first lesson I would be observed by my study abroad university supervisor. The outline gave me all the tools and knowledge to plan my lessons and see how I would move forward in teaching mathematics throughout the next week.

Additionally, I volunteered to work with the group of students with down syndrome that were coming to our school for a day of play and exploration outside, a collaboration made between my school and two other schools to set up activities and games for children and parents to engage and learn through interaction. I have a strong interest in working with students with disabilities, one of the main reasons I am working towards my special education certification. This was the first chance I was able to observe children with down syndrome in their natural environment, see who they interact and engage with each other based on knowledge of each other and also common attributes, how they engaged with activities, and how to respond to their interaction and behavior towards the activities set up. It was interesting to see that many of the students were highly engaged and interested in the music performance that they did with a music specialist, who came and set up drums and music instruments that the students could use. He utilized visuals, examples, and modeling with his body and voice on directions and was able to keep student's attention. It was also a great learning opportunity for me to engage with them personally, learn to have a conversation and feel comfortable in how I communicate and engage with them. I found it very empowering to see some skills that these students really excelled in, like art, exploration, and design. Overall, it provided me with an opportunity to utilize some of the activities, tools, and strategies of engagement that I learned from others and from myself by working with these students for a day!