X...

Dendrobium, I think...

Vík Prjónsdóttir...

So my love for all things woolen continues...I came across Vík Prjónsdóttir a while ago, they are an Icelandic design company, they make all kinds of wonderful woolen products made only from Icelandic sheep wool. They draw inspiration from myths and stories, this little onesie or 'Kópurinn' inspired by an icelandic myth involving seals is quite possible one of the cutest things I have ever seen!

Vík Prjónsdóttir 

Cookies...

Cookies are one of my favourite things to make, I made these just before Christmas for our PGCE Christmas party. White chocolate and raspberry and dark chocolate and hazelnut...yum!

Finger Knitting...

I recently discovered finger knitting, it's really easy and the results are pretty nice. I thought I would practice by making these little Christmas decorations.

Week 14, it's all over...

 This was my last week at my first school placement, which I was pretty upset about; I did have a brilliant week however. I really enjoyed all of my last lessons with the classes I had been teaching for the past few weeks, especially the year 7’s as we had a pretty fun lesson. We started with a Christmas quiz then I challenged them to make the penguins out of bin bags, they loved this and their penguins were so cute!

 

The school held a Christmas concert, which was lovely, the atmosphere was great and really helped bring back my love for teaching as it made me realise all the bonuses that come along with the job. 

 It was sad to say goodbye to the department, they had all helped me so much and made me feel very welcome, it was also hard to say goodbye to my form. The lovely year 7’s who I had been with for 10 weeks now and had come to know quite well. They made me a goodbye and good luck card, which was really nice of them!

 I was really sad to leave my first school placement as was everyone else on the PGCE, we were warned about feeling this way when we started, like we felt like the school was ours and were jealous of those going to our school in their second placement. I am however quite looking forward to starting my next placement, it is an inner city school and seems to be quite a contrast to what I have experienced so far so it should be really interesting.

 I have decided not to carry on blogging about my school experience and will keep my second placement private instead, so sorry to anyone who was reading about it but I will carry on blogging about all the usual stuff I blog about so stick around…only if you want to of course!

Week 13, observations, textiles demonstrations and bioplastics...

 Monday was my first formal observation. My uni tutor came in to see my lesson with the year 8s and their pop-up books. I felt quite nervous but well prepared I had planned my lesson and readied my resources it was just the behaviour management I was worried about as this is a tough class. The lesson was probably my best lesson so far with that class but still I felt didn’t go great due to some of the student’s behaviour. My tutor spoke to me after the lesson and gave me a pretty good report. He suggested things that need working on and things I had missed. I was really annoyed at myself because one of the things he picked up on was that I don’t give clear timings for activities however this is something I am good at and almost always do, I guess I forgot due to nerves. Some of his suggestions I thought were good and I will take them on however my mentor gave me the good advice of ‘knowing your audience’. This class is a hard class to teach and I felt some of his suggestions just would not work with that class due to behavioural and SEN issues although they would work really well with some of my other classes so still really appreciated the advice.

Tuesday I had my year 7s and decided to take on some of my tutors advice by giving  the students something to do whilst I take the register so they are focused as soon as they walk through the door. I had 2 statements on the board of things I would like them to think about as they were settling and listening out for their name. I asked them to think about all the new skills they had learned and what they feel most proud of. After I took the register we had a bit of a group discussion about this as students put their hands up and gave their thoughts. I felt this worked well and will try more activities like these in lessons. The students then got on with finishing their boxes. Some of the higher ability students have finished already so I had planned some extension activities, the first being a self evaluation of the work, a form a self assessment really. Then I asked them to work on packaging for their products using manufacturing nets which also brought some numeracy to my lesson, brilliant! In the afternoon I had the year 9s who are carrying on making their toys, I handed out production journals for them to fill in throughout the lesson. The journals were for them to assign roles in the group, write about who has being doing what and at what level they are working and then deciding as a group how things can be improved, a bit of self assessment, peer assessment and literacy all in one a activity, I’m getting the hang if this! Last lesson I was with the year 10s and it was now my mentors turn to give me a formal lesson observation. They have just starting working on their new projects for their GCSE and are in the initial stages of coming up with an idea for their project as they have a fairly open brief. I used this lesson to go through the marking criteria so it was easier for them to understand how to get top marks then though a group discussion and a powerpoint presentation we talked about how to focus their ideas and then be able to write an appropriate brief, after this I let the students just get on with their work giving one to one help where needed. My mentor gave me some good feedback and will give me my observation form back next week.

Wednesday I had year 8 textiles again and I said I would take the second hour and demonstrate how to do appliqué, seen as I had only learned the technique last week I was feeling pretty nervous. Due to it being near the end of term and Christmas concert rehearsals pretty much taking over the timetable meant that my class was diminished down to a lovely size of about 8 students. The demo went fairly smoothly, I felt I had covered pretty much everything that needed to be covered, stressed health and safety and let the students talk me through how to set the machine up giving me the chance to check their understanding. As my class was so small I didn’t have to worry about the lack of machines as for once there were more machines than students so they were all able to get on and practice. I was really impressed with some of the skills in this class and their ideas so again left feeling quite sad that I won’t be able to see their finished products. The teacher gave me great feedback from this lesson and was impressed that I had taken on her advice from last time, to talk slowly and be clearer and more focused; she said she could see definite improvement…good news! That afternoon we had professional studies, all about getting literacy into lessons this time, I found it quite helpful and am finding I am getting better at including literacy and numeracy into my lessons. Finally last lesson the year 7s had a cover lesson, I said I would take them and plan their lesson. I got them to start their evaluations and then start working on their nets. A couple of students finished so I gave them a Christmassy activity, they designed and made little 3D Christmas trees out of paper.

Thursday I gave a short presentation about what the Design world is like after school. For those who are wanting to continue on to University I told them about how different it is to A level and explained about all the new techniques and technologies they will be able to work with. I then spoke to them a bit how a Design office works and also about how setting up your own Design business works. The students asked a few questions then just got on with their work, they seemed to be in a fairly sombre mood as they were all pretty far behind in their coursework and had a deadline the next day.

Friday at Goldsmiths we were back to our first subject specialism and learning about plastics. The first half of the day was alright, I know a fair bit about plastic already and didn’t really feel like I needed to play with the plastic to learn anymore although it was quite fun to heat and bend the acrylic. The afternoon however was brilliant, we were told all about bioplastics and were shown how to make our own out of various food ingrediants. A great cross curricular way to educate the students about plastics as it obviously covers materials and food but also biology. The cornstartch bioplastic I have seen before and seem to have started being used commercially but is still more expensive than other plastic so will be a while before it is wildly used. Because the bioplastics are technically just food we thought we would eat some and see what it tasted like, turns out it had no taste but I loved the thought of being able to get the students to make their own plastic and then eat it although I would hope this doesn’t lead them think that all plastics are edible!  Definitely the best workshop session we have had and I will be trying to make some of the plastics at home!