Some School Stuff

For my last teaching placement I was in P1 where the children are mostly aged 5.

The topics while I was there included "Under the Sea", "How Things Grow" and "O'clock Time". These provided great opportunity for some fun arts and craft activities (preceeded by a relevant learning intention of course - all teacher bloggers out there: what are your opinions regarding learning intentions? I can see that lessons generally need a point to them, but does it have to be announced at the beginning of every lesson and in such narrow and limiting terms. Learning is happening all the time and can take many different directions...)

Anyway, here are some (not great) pics of what we got up to...

Painted, stripey fish. Starfish decorated with cheerios. Sprouting beans in see-through pots.

A wider window view. Hanging from the ceiling are the seahorses and jellyfish some groups made.

A & N created the prototype jellyfish (from an idea I saw on Pinterest). They ended up making their own versions of most of the craft items we made in class - now their bedrooms look like mini oceans.

A giant octopus for the under-sea cave. By the time the cave was finished there were turquoise and green crepe and acetate seaweed streamers at the entrance and pearl fairy lights inside. It was a special place for the children to go and play once they'd completed their work. I put sea-themed finger puppets and a finger puppet theatre in the cave for them to play with. There was space for only four children at a time, it was very popular.

Octopuses are fascinating creatures. They are intelligent, can squeeze through tiny spaces (no skeleton), have three hearts, their blood is blue, all are poisonous to a certain extent, and both the male and female die within a few months of mating.

Crabs. Did you know that crabs have ten legs: eight for walking and two for holding food or attacking? It's amazing how many crab illustrations are drawn incorrectly with only eight legs altogether.
.

Friendship fish - each group made one. Above them you can see the little wormery we set up - one boy in the class was absolutely fascinated by worms and used to collect them in his lunch box after he'd eaten his sandwiches, I linked it to the "how things grow" topic just to keep it all relevant. There's also one of the little ocopuses (or octopods or octopi) we made up there too. 

Continue-the-pattern fish on top, fish diagrams to the left, humpback whale puppets, sea turtles and more friendship fish. We all found the humpback whales very interesting, especially the way they hunt as a team and make a bubble-net to trap fish, please have a look here, it gets quite exciting!

The Rainbow Fish sharing his scales.

 Acetate fish (decorated using coloured Sharpies) and crab fact pictures.

Parts of a flowering plant. Cut cupcake cases for petals, wool for roots.

 Timelines and clocks.

Aside from helping out with the school trip that's my placement finished, as is my teaching course. I passed, but not without an incident towards the end of the placement which has rather soured the experience somewhat. It involved some kind of issue between the teacher and my tutor: I don't know the details and neither will talk, but I was granted a pass in the end.

Come August I will have my own class. I think that's hilarious/terrifying/exciting!