Unit X | Educator Key Blog Post 1

From the educator programme so far, I feel that I have taken away so much more information that I thought I would have. I completely understand that not everyone or especially in this case ‘every child’, soaks in information the same way. From experience I found that I take in more information in a lesson if it is a fun lesson with a teacher that speaks on my level. So what I need to research further is what type of charisma I need to express when it comes to my turn of teaching, and also how I'm comfortable teaching to a group of children. I intend to gain this research from future experience in schools.

From the beginning of this year I found out that I had a specific form of learning difficulty which explained loads of unanswered question to why I couldn't take notes in lessons, why I drifted off in lectures, why I couldn't withhold information, why I had difficulty reading on my own. After Brian Frew explained the special needs a child has in learning, he mentioned that special needs doesn't necessarily mean disabled; it just means people that require extra time to understand/ learn. Or that they may need to be taught in a way that suits them. After numerous exercises on different types of learning, my favourite ones have to be the layout of the classroom on how tables and chairs are placed and also the freedom to doodle or make something while the teacher is teaching. Why these? Because I felt comfortable and felt a part of the group, we cold share our thought and ideas clearly.

Reflecting back on the moth making workshop, it was an eye opening experience and also felt like I went back in time to being a kid. The workshop was both enjoyable and a big learning curve to how we can interact with children in different age groups and how the interact with us as ‘teachers’.

During the dry runs before the workshop, as a whole group we demonstrated that we are able to problem solve and work as a team and also support each other. We didn't face to many issues as we had planned out who does what beforehand. When reflecting back on how the dry run went, we gave critical feedback an worked on them so that we can overlook it and avoid any awkward run ins. An example of this would have been that if we had 8 children at a station how would we cope with three captains? We planned that if such thing were to happen, we would take small groups of children each and give them our time and attention instead of a big group of different age groups and understanding.

The workshop turned out as planned with one or two children working at an extremely fast pace. To resolve this I came up of the idea of asking them how they could add other crafts to it and where they would place their moth, either the natural environment or the urban. This gave me a chance to connect with them and make them feel comfortable.

Unit X | Educator Week Two |16/03/16

Working with people with special needs was discussed this week by Brian Frew. the understanding of time and patience required to connect tih these individuals became more cleaer to how they can learn effectively and what the change of being patience can do. after several personal stories shared by Brian, I felt a warm feeling to why these people deserve the same education as us but in a more caring way so that they take in the information in. During the talk, we were given things to play with for example, plasticine, pen, paper, small objects. These were provided for a small exerimne tto see how everyone taked in information in the talk. afterwards, we discussed whether we were distracted or whoich mehtof we preffered; sit and listen or doodle while listening. I feel like I listen better while making something.



Natural Environment

Urban Environment

Turned out that most of the children wanted to place their moth in the natural environment. I think this was because the tree was 3D and that the Urban environment didn't look appealing as it was black and whit and on a flat surface. either way, you could clearly see that the children understood which environment is good and which one is bad.

Unit X | Educator Week Two 14/03/16

Dry run for the moth workshop for children aged from 4 to 11 years.

Moth Making Station

In the Moth making station as a group we prepped the activity so that the children could have a variety of materials to work with, as well as making their moths as their own using various techniques and patterns. After a dry run of pretending to do the workshop, we realised that we weren't paying much attention to the time we were given to make the moths which was 15 minutes for three groups. Therefore we decided to work in smaller groups. My group had 3 members including myself, so that gave us the chance to work closely with 1 to 3 children and give them our attention if needed.

Urban City Station

The Urban City Station was about making an urban environment for the moths to live in. What the goal was, was for the children to draw an area of Manchester that they are familiar with. After feedback from the rest of the group, we agreed that because we are from an textural art background, we could include mark making with unusual objects such as sticks, wheels sponge etc. in the building drawings. I feel like this station was more of an exploration of use of materials and gave the opportunity to be free and messy when it came to drawing.

Natural Environment Station

This station was more controlled by the use of materials, After discussing what needed improving, We agreed to keep the tree brown and that the children could place the moths in the corners or attach the moths with Velcro on the tree.

Unit X | Educator Week One | 11/03/16

This was the first week of educator! What I learnt from this week was…

o   Child protection (a person under the age of 18 is a child)

o   Safeguarding (to make sure the environment we put the children in is a safe place to working, the equipment’s used are safe enough to handle, any high concerns of students should be disclosed to someone higher.)

o   Types of abuse (physical, emotional, neglect and sexual)

o   Disclosures (if a child discloses something to us that is high risk then we should report to our line manager, but reassure the child before they tell you anything and after they tell you what they need to say, you will have to tell someone about it.)

o   My line managers (someone who can take over the matter, after reporting to them I do not need to be involved.)

 

These were just some key points that I took from this week’s sessions. First day of Educator really felt as though I could relate to my peers, because we had similar ideas and thought on ways of teaching and expressing ourselves through storytelling and drawings. Learning about my responsibilities to being a teacher in the future, gave me a boost of confidence when interacting with people.

Icebreakers are often introduced to a group of strangers to make them connect. Therefore, what we were introduced to was the exercise I’m sure; every person took part as a child; not quite sure the name of the game but once you see it, I’m sure you’ll get what I mean!

Meet Dr Content. A special character created by my group in the icebreaker challenge.