Term One

During my first term at Gloucester College for my 2018-2019 work placement, I feel I have achieved a lot and developed quite a few personal skills.

Before I began my placement, I was increasingly worried that I would not be able to do all that I would have wanted to within my placement, for example, I didn’t know if I would be able to talk in front of a large class or assist individual students. This gave me concerns that I would struggle a lot throughout my time at my placement, hindering me in getting the most out of my time this year. However, during my first term, I discovered I was able to overcome these fears and concerns and I have been able to do far more than I had imagined myself able to do.

The first term of my placement took place during the 10th September- 19th December, with half term taking place 19th October- 29th October. I officially began my placement on 20th August in which I was able to learn about the college, help with admin work and get to know who I would be working with during the year. In that time I have sat and observed in lessons taken by three different English teachers so I could see their different teaching styles and one Maths teacher. This has given me a good overview of the different styles of teaching and the different ways of dealing with different students, for example, the style of teaching a class of 20 differs from the way of teaching a class of five. I have also been able to view how to deal with difficult students by these separate teachers and see which way works the best dependent on the situation.

For the first few weeks I mainly observed English lessons, occasionally helping struggling students. Within the Functional Skills lessons, in which the lessons consisted a lot of relearning the use of commas, capital letters and language features, I was there to remind students of how to use them within their written work. They then moved on to learning how to write letters, doing their own and assessing what was wrong within incorrect letters. This built their writing skills as well as developing their knowledge of punctuation and capital letters. During these lessons, I myself learnt how to talk to and help these students without appearing patronising or rude; just supportive and helpful.

Within the GCSE English classes, however, I found that the students were less in need of this individual help and assistance I was giving to the Functional Skills students and so I spent more time in these lessons observing and making notes about teaching styles.

I have also been given the chance to observe two different English Adult classes by two different teachers. This has also given me to chance to see the teaching differences between different teachers and different class ages as well as being able to see how an adult class behaves as opposed to a class of 16 year olds. Similarly to working in Functional Skills classes, I learnt how to treat adult students in which I was able to help them without being patronising but simply being supportive.

I began sitting in Maths lessons to help and support within large and difficult classes and have since been working in quite a few Maths classes during the week, working closely with students that struggle within the lessons. At first I was worried about helping in these classes, being that I myself haven’t done Maths since my GCSEs, however, the more I worked in these classes and the Maths teacher, the more I improved my own skills and abilities in Maths.

After observing lessons, I was able to take over a few lessons, acting as almost a substitute teacher for if one of the teachers has been ill or otherwise unable to take a lesson. At first this was only for a few lessons with only a small amount of students – for example a class of five. However, nearing the end of December, the GCSE English teacher fell ill and was off for three days. In this time I was instructed to take over her lessons to give them work to do and be in the room while they did it to help/encourage them to keep the volume down and work. At first I found this to be quite a scary and daunting task, however I soon learnt that it wasn’t as worrying as I first thought it would have been. I was able to talk to the students confidently and could get most of them to get on with the task they were given. I actually found myself enjoying this week and the lessons I overtook. While some of the lessons were challenging- such as the larger classes or the ones with particularly troubling students- the other lessons went well as the students simply got on with the work. More on these lessons in a different blog post here.

During my first term at my placement I have been able to work out my personal style of interacting and working with the different students I meet and work with throughout the week, using what I have been observing from other teachers and their teaching styles. I have allowed myself to relax and not get worked and worried about different tasks I have been set, for example public speaking or working with new students I had not yet met.

Although I have only been at my placement for one term, I have really enjoyed the experience and opportunities that have been available to me and aim to continue to use and develop my new skills.