Project Reflection Hayley Coldman 0902201
Reflecting
upon the project as a whole, I believe it was thoroughly successful and I feel
proud of the work we have accomplished as a group. Personally, I feel I have
learnt many new skills and enhanced my pedagogical knowledge and understanding,
which is something I can take with me into future practice.
The parts of
our project I found particularly valuable were creating resources and
strategies to employ into a real classroom and identify whether they had a positive
impact or not. This is because we have learnt lots of theory surrounding good
practice within Literacy at University and we were able to tailor this to the
class we were getting to know. We met a class who had ‘textbook’ attitudes
towards writing, and therefore we wanted to engage them in the best ways we
knew how, yet responding to their personal interests also.
The part of
the project I found particularly challenging was implementing the majority of
the work in the autumn term whilst we had many other assignments that required
our time and attention. This was due to the nature of project, whereby we
needed to put our strategies into action in order to give them enough time to
take effect. Not only did we need to create the resources for the class, but it
was necessary to go in to the school to introduce the strategies and ensure the
class teacher was secure with our ideas. However, our group worked particularly
well with taking turns to visit the class, as not every visit required all four
of us to be present.
Talk for
Writing is a concept that I believe is thoroughly effective and therefore it
was refreshing to be able to carry out a project using a theory I truly
believed could make a difference. However, as we only visited the class every
month or so, it was difficult to measure the extent to which the strategies
were being used. If it were our own class, we would ensure the strategies were
being used consistently and to their full potential, however, this may not have
been the case for our project. In part, this is due to the Year 6 upcoming
NCT’s and time-constraints on the curriculum. We entirely appreciated all the
effort and time the class teacher gave to us as it enabled the project to be
all the more enjoyable and professional relationships to be formed.
A potential
limitation however, was overcoming the initial barrier of presenting our ideas
to an experienced teacher and explaining what we would like to happen. As
students, this was something we found a little challenging and we did not want
to appear too forthcoming, yet still demonstrate respect and confidence in what
we were advocating. I feel we dealt with this professionally and gained
experience in dealing with members of staff, including TA’s within the class.
This was accomplished by good timekeeping, maintaining professional at all
times and sticking to deadlines and commitments we made.
Project reflection Paul Everitt 1005169
When we began
this project back in October 2012 I was in truth not overly excited about doing
a writing project. Especially when I saw some of the projects that other people
were given. However, that quickly changed and I got very engrossed in our
project and now I am so pleased that we did take on this project. Not only has
it been a great experience working with year 6 children (something I had not
done before) it has also been wonderful to look at the teaching of writing in a
different way.
I think that
our group has complemented each other well as we all are quite different and
have each have unique skills and abilities, as well as very different
personalities. This has given strength to our group and also made working
together an enjoyable and fun experience. I also think that these strengths
have enabled us to succeed at what was quite a challenging project. Especially
as we put a lot of hard work and hours in during the very busy autumn term!
The many
approaches we have taken in the project have inspired me to think differently
about how writing is taught in schools and how I will teach writing in my own
classroom in the future. I am certainly keen to use and develop some of the
strategies that we have tired in the project. I would like to use magpie books
or writing journals in the future, have inspiring visitors in my class, to show
the children I teach how writing is used in the real world. Moreover, I have
seen how bringing in new books can really engage and excite children.
Another
aspect of the project that has given me a lot to think about is the pressures
of the school time table. Many parts of the project relied solely on the class
teacher amending the time table and implementing the strategies and activities
we had devised. The class teacher was very supportive of our ideas and made a
lot of effort to implement our strategies. However, because of the time of year
and the class preparing for the up and coming SATS, some of the strategies were
not used as much or not at all. Also the children were really engaged and
motivated when and shortly after we visited but this lost momentum over time. I
will certainly be very aware of these pressures in my own teaching practice
when taking on projects to ensure they are manageable.
Most
importantly this project has opened my mind to thinking about the teaching of
writing in different ways and the need for teachers to think creatively when
teaching writing. We need to inspire and motivate children to write for a wide
range of purposes and also make the teaching of writing relevant to children’s
lives.
Project Reflection Emmalene Greene 10051686
The process of setting up this
project has been very enlightening. I’ve learnt a lot about myself as a
learner. I feel that my strengths in this project have been my organisational
skills and being the main communicator with outside organisations and
individuals. I felt that my weakness was my concern at times, about not being
able to control all aspects of the project and allowing others to drive the
project forwards. We often had to delegate tasks depending upon one another’s
current workload, especially during our final school placement. From this
experience I’ve learnt to delegate to people’s strengths and not volunteer to
do all the tasks. I also found it quite nerve wracking being responsible for
vetting outside individuals to come into the school, because how they performed
once in school, reflected upon me as an individual. This is something that I
will definitely encounter again in my career as a teacher and I will try to not
be so worried about this.
The project in my eyes has been
very successful because we’ve had an impact on how writing and reading are
viewed and taught in the classroom. Not all of the strategies we implemented
have been successful or manageable in the time scale. Aspects that were less
successful usually relied more heavily upon the teacher being the main
instigator and therefore we had less control over how often things were used.
For example, the spelling mats were not used as often as we would have liked.
For them to work they would have needed to be a part of the daily classroom
culture, preferably on children’s desks so that they became a routine part of
each lesson. However, it was unrealistic to think that all of our strategies
and activities would be successful. I think that because we used so many
different approaches we were able to let go of methods that didn’t work after a
trial period. For instance, we had initially hoped to use more talk-partner
work, but after modelling this approach and meeting with the teacher it became
clear that such a strategy conflicted with the current classroom climate.
Whereas other strategies like the writing games could be adapted into his
current teaching style and were used successfully with positive outcomes.
The strengths of the project in
my opinion were the way we showed our creativity and imagination. The writing
wall, Magpie books, visits to the University campus to use the ICT facilities;
word games, guest speakers and the author were real strengths and had the most
impact. Through these creative plans we have illustrated how children have
become more engaged in writing and developed a greater awareness of the
importance of writing in the real world, this has improved their effort towards
writing. If we had more time on this project I think it would have been
effective to have held a whole school assembly so that the children could
discuss what they’ve found most useful and encouraged other class teachers and
pupils to perhaps start writing in a Magpie book!
Project Reflections Mathilda Lucas 1002871
Through
engagement with this project I have developed my understanding of a variety of
approaches to combatting educational issues. Upon beginning the project, we
believed we could impact upon the children's attitudes to and achievement in
writing via writing based workshops. Yet it soon became clear that a variety of
factors were at play. I believe this has been by biggest learning curve during
the past 6 months, education is interrelated. Although I was aware of this fact
due to numerous lectures and assignments on the topic, actually going into
school and seeing an emerging issue cemented this understanding. After
surveying the children's attitudes to writing it was obvious it was not writing
they were having trouble with it was the writing they were doing, how they were
doing it and when. Using our knowledge developed in English assignments we knew
the children needed a purpose and to see writing as something special. Using a
variety of approaches seemed to be the only way to make this happen.
This leads
onto the second learning curve I experienced from this project, the most obvious
approach isn’t always the most effective. To use visitors who are daily writers
and readers showed the children writing is not a task done in school in order
to be levelled, although we could have told the children this I am certain they
wouldn’t have believed us!
One thing I
am very proud of from the project is the broadening of the children's reading
habits. Previously the children were engaging in text after text by the same
author gaining nothing but a habitual writing style. Through enabling access to
numerous high quality texts across the project I do strongly feel we have had a
large impact on the children's reading habits. The children are now engaging in
graphic novels, detective stories, classics and fantasy. I believe over time
this will have been our biggest incite of change.
What I
intend to take forward into my own classroom in September is a greater feeling
of responsibility. During the project we left a lot of the responsibility to
the class teacher, we gave him ideas and resources and left it in his capable
hands to implement where he saw fit. Yet due to National Curriculum Tests and
timetable constraints, it was not always possible or plausible for the
strategies to be introduced. This caused what the class teacher often referred
to as a loss of momentum, the children would be very excited and motivated when
we were there yet that fizzled as soon as the daily routine returned. Within my
own class therefore, I feel I can now really consider the affect and reasoning
behind all out, full on projects. I will consider what will have the largest
impact and run with it, rather than trickling in minor bits here and there as I
think during the project we sometimes felt disheartened if things weren’t
used/weren’t working, yet this was due
to too much at once rather than the quality of the resources.
I am proud
of what we have achieved. We did make a difference and we really encouraged
change to happen through Talk for Writing.
