Thursday, September 29, 2005

excellence and enjoyment (by order of HM Govt)*

See how my blog suffers now I'm not stuck in a boring 9-5 office job anymore with a computer in front of me and nothing else to do?

I've reached the end of my first teaching week on the PGCE (Yes, I know it's Thursday but I don't have any teaching tomorrow) and survived so far! I have lots to read, including the entire national curriculum, national numeracy strategy and national literacy strategy and a load of chapters from some theory of education books... you know the kind that keen students read at the start of their PGCEs but abandon by the end and most teachers have never even heard of. I've also got to read 8 pieces of childrens literature including picture books, fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Much more my level I think, and a chance to use that Roald Dahl reading I did earlier this year.

To date, the course appears to be jam packed with "I'm an education lecturer, do as I say not as I do" moments. For example:

They say: An average adult can concentrate for up to 25 minutes at a time
They do: Our timetable has 5 continuous hours of lectures on a Wednesday and four continuous on a Thursday with no breaks in either of them.

They say: Make sure your lessons cater for all three types of learner (visual, audio and kinaesthetic)
They do: In many lectures, they just talk at us for an hour.

They say: Make sure your classroom environment is comfortable for the pupils.
They do: So far we haven't had a problem-free classroom... either not enough tables and chairs for all of us or they are so packed in that there's no room to move once you've sat down or you have to use adult size chairs with child size tables. One session we didn't even have a room at all!

Oh well... at least we're learning what not to do!


* Excellence and Enjoyment is a doc published by the government saying that all schools should feature excellence and enjoyment in their lessons. Or something like that. I haven't read it.

1 comment:

  1. your 'they say they do's ring true with me SO MUCH!! we've had almost exactly teh same things said to us in the last 2 weeks... do warwick and southampton lecturers read from the same hymn sheet??! i'm a bit auditory learner, and really struggle to take things in from the net/books.... yet after the lecture about different learning styles we were told to go away and READ loads and loads of stuff... luckily we have to do a 'relective journal' on the lectures, so you can guess what i'm going to relect on! ;)

    well, i's only 9 months of our lives. do you have to do masters assignments for your course? i'm scared ******less by them!

    sarah xx

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Sometimes I do go on...