Links between University courses and placement (Transcript)
F7: Our EC placements were based on play through ... learning through play, sorry. So all children learn from playing. So that was just give them their resources and then use things such as learning stories to see what they were doing if they encountered a problem, how they overcome the problem and then how they resolved it, so, stacking blocks, we're trying to make the tallest tower. What happened it fell down so then they went and used the bigger blocks to make the tower again. And then at the end of the session they packed away the blocks so, that's assessing their learning through their play and sort of like what we did at university, just learning how to assess play and how useful play is.
M4: In understanding the learner we had our project based on a student that we had to choose. That went like really well. I chose one of the Year 7s I had and he was really keen to do it and he was kind of a bit, oh, sort of misunderstood and didn't do his class work to an exceptional standard and so I wanted to try and get to the bottom of why he wasn't doing as well as the others. And through that project I found that yeah, it was really sort of, it gave me a better understanding on the variety of students that you teach and different ways of addressing them, that you can do quite subtly which allows to get the most out of the student and reach their full potential.
M1: Definitely Gartner's ideas about multiple intelligences. So his idea was that everyone has a set of unique intelligences within them which range ... ranges from the linguistic and the verbal to spatial, to mathematical and then to I think it was musical and so on and so forth. So a lot of his ideas about that underpinned my planning. And for example the cut and paste activity were catered towards the kinaesthetic level involving their use of hands and their body. There was ... I also planned for a game in one of the lessons and I brought in like these buzzer things, the party things were you blow and it creates ... and I used that as a buzzer. And again that involves using the body. And they need to pay attention to the questions and then they need to, you know, go straight and answer. So yeah, so Howard Gartner's multiple intelligences were fantastic.
F8: One good thing which came out of my literacy class was Gloria introduced us to, it's called Inanimate Alice and it's a digital storytelling project online and, which was really good for me on my first placement because I was so kind of apprehensive about presenting to the class and showing them this series of stories was so incredibly engaging for them. So really gave me that, the kind of hook that I needed to get them interested and then I was able to, from that, open up class discussions, you know, different kind of brainstorming activities, getting them to do kind of feedback response on what they'd seen and just, they were so engrossed, they were just, you know, waiting for the next episode to come out. So, it was really good and also I think the school was quite ... some of the students were quite challenged with their literacy so in a way it was a really good way of just engaging, being able to engage the whole class and you know, regardless of what level they were at they could actually engage with the story.
M2: Well the main one is the maths. The maths courses we've done in our IT have been the sort of most sort of practical, I would suggest. And the great thing about it, you get told all these theories but then once you actually take them to school you see them actually work which is really, you know, sort of great as a teacher to actually see what you're doing in university to work in practice. For an example, the fractions and actually getting students to physically fold paper and then get them to physically do it, I've seen that work time and time again from ... with a range of students from the ... from preps to Grade 6 this can work. And other sort of techniques in maths has really been useful.
F6: Yeah, I have seen some link, especially with Cath Murdoch's planning model, planning a unit. You have to ask your mentor for their unit outline so you can see where what theories they've applied to designing their own units. Also De Bono's theory, the thinking hats. I thought when I was first introduced to that or I first read about it I thought how can you, how do you sort of incorporate that into the classroom? And this, my first school was quite progressive in some of these ... in embracing the theories and then have thinking hats where if a student's presenting say a PowerPoint presentation, they'd hand out a red hat or a black hat and a yellow hat to some students in the class and at the end of the presentation the student with the black hat would give negative feedback, or constructive feedback and the person with the red had would say how they felt about the presentation while they were listening to it, or ... and the yellow hat, any positive things they could give to the presenter. So I found that was quite good and they also used that for when it was a dual class doing math rotation so there was two classes joined together in different activities and it was the first time they'd joined the classes together for maths and they sat down, the students at the end and said okay, everyone put a black hat on and took some feedback. Everyone put a red hat on, they took some feedback, things like that, so. And even the green hat, you know, students say oh no, you know, different ways of looking at things and I thought that was probably the most stand out thing that I noticed between the course.
F2: They had a program that was ... they ... it was all based on emergent curriculum so what the children were interested in was what they followed. And it was absolutely fascinating because I actually worked for six years as a kindergarten assistant in a very structured kindergarten. Went to a placement at a kindergarten in a child care centre that was quite structured and then the second kindergarten placement was also a very structured kindergarten and this is just completely unstructured. So what the children are interested in they do, they can choose to spend as long or as little time at any one activity, which most kindergartens offer but there were no set formats for anything, there were no preconceived art works or anything like that. Everyone didn't have to make a spider with eight folded up legs and hang them all from the wall and that sort of thing. So what they did was so creative and so interesting to watch, for me, and also it was an indoor-outdoor program which I'd never worked in before, so the children could be inside or outside when they wanted to and it just opened up my eyes to the real world of what good kindergarten is. It was just an amazing experience.
F3: I started to make those ... link between learned theories and the professional practice. For example, running records. I did running records in the class with my mentor and it was a little bit different from what I did for one of my assessment task in ... in last semester. It was a little bit different. So yeah, and again I asked questions, how can you do that this way, but I learned this way. So that as well. What else? Progression points. I was getting familiar last semester with that term. And I was involved in ... in a meeting where all Grade 1 teachers were and they talk about the progression points and I sort of like, things started to make more sense to me because there's so much things to learn and it's a little bit overwhelming, it's just a little bit stressing. It makes ... makes me ... made me feel a bit stressful because I didn't know what they were talking about and for me it's important to understand everything. But I can't do it at this stage, so I'm just letting it sink ... sink into me and things will be clarified in the future for me. So just, yeah, again enjoy and relax.