Professional Experience 1

Homebush West Public School, 2013. 

Although it has already been four weeks since placements finished, I still feel that I should leave a note of memory in regards to my first professional experience. I was placed at Homebush West Public School in a Stage 3 classroom. 

First of all, when the time came to select schools and stages/years of preference for professional experience, I couldn't decide which school to select, so I did some 'research'. I looked up each of the schools on the list to read their website information, school newsletters and annual reports. As I have experience with ESL students, I was eager to go to a school with a high ESL population in which I could start to develop my own 'unique style' of pedagogy that was constantly emphasised in theory and especially to take my ESL teaching experience further. With this research done, I clicked on five different schools in which I was eager to start my placement at. Five different schools all in Early Stage 1/Stage 1 classrooms. Only to receive my 'Professional Experience Package" and email allocating me to a school, which first of all was not even on the list of schools given to us for selection but in a STAGE 3.... YEAR5/6 CLASSROOM. Despite the fact that I have been teaching mathematics and English to Stage 3 students for the past five years, I was devastated. I felt that a full class of "soon-to-be-high-schoolers" would be very intimidating and imagined them to be big and tall and disinterested... But, no. Not at all. They were not as big and scary as I had anticipated and I must say, I had an unforgettable professional experience and the most sad, last day of school. 

HWPS divide their classrooms by Stage and not by Year so when I was allocated to a Stage 3 classroom, the children were a mixed bunch of students from Year 5 and Year 6. During my pre-prac visit, I learnt that this school had a bit of a 'high school system' with their Stage 3s, in that they had a home class for a variety of subjects but for English and Mathematics, they split the students by Year and by Level. So, in the long-run I got to know and teach more than one class of students than most of my university peers on placement would have been teaching. I loved teaching the students in my classes, I loved learning from my cooperating teacher and being part of the "community and family" that HWPS emphasised with their students. The children were very responsive and incredibly engaged. They always wanted to participate and the "Who can tell me ....?" questions soon changed to "_____, can you tell me...." as whenever I spoked the word 'WHO', the whole class would throw their hands in the air wanting to contribute to the lesson. I was lucky to have a great supervising teacher, friendly staff and even more lucky that the children were so responsive and interested in everything I wanted to teach. There wasn't a single day I woke up wishing I didn't have to go to school even if the weather was way above thirty degrees or pouring rain. I learnt so much from this experience. Not only did I get  flexible chances to try out different lessons, I learnt about the in-and-out of school responsibilities of being a teacher. 

On the last day, my co-teachers started making bets on what time I would start crying... HAHA. I can't remember who won, but I started bawling my eyes out and it wasn't even 12pm. My students, although they were the 'cool' Stage 3s, the leaders of the school burst into tears at random times of the morning. How could I keep my tears in with these children sobbing away? Yes. It wasn't a pretty sight and my co-teachers and my supervising teacher mocked and laughed at me the whole day. I received so many touching letters, drawings and cards from the children and when I finally came home on that last day, I sat down to read all of them and felt very unsettled and was still quite emotional haha. I think I slept at least 20 hours straight that day and woke up feeling... tired. Those weeks of experience were amazing and even though it is 3 weeks back into uni now, I still think of the staff and children and still share the funny episodes that happened during prac with my friends.  

Something Special.

During my professional experience at Homebush West Public School, I came across a little stage 2 boy who had the cheekiest smile. Students who were 'in trouble' and had to see the principal and or associated teachers would sit in the corridors near the staffroom during lunch. On my first week, I didn't know this so I thought this little boy was looking for a teacher so I asked him who he was looking for and he said he's not looking for anybody, he was just in trouble... again. He grinned like it was nothing new so I told him to try and be good. During the four weeks at HWPS, when I walked towards the staffroom for lunch, I would see the student in that corridor at least once a week. I repeated myself every time, "Try to be good, okay?". So I've never actually had this student in my class, I didn't even know his name until the last week. But during my last week, his teacher told me he had something to give me, it was this picture. His teacher told me she was surprised that he kept to himself the whole lesson and concentrated in drawing the picture during art. I was surprised that this student, out of all the people he knew, just randomly decided to draw me a picture. It's amazing how just one smile, just one nod of appreciation and just one sentence of encouragement can brighten a child's day.

Something Special.

A while ago, I quit one of my part-time jobs working as an ESL teacher at a tuition centre. Whilst I was there, I did a intensive 2-hour session with two ESL girls, one had come to Australia about two years ago and the other a bit longer. They were in year 3 and they were always so excited to learn new things. When I told them I had to leave, they thought I was leaving to teach at another place but I told them it was because I had to study to become a better teacher. The girls wrote and brought me some farewell cards in the following, last lesson.

I was very proud when I got these cards, not because I got the cards but because of how much they wrote and how hard they tried to use the correct sentence structure we had been working on! Even more, we had been doing 'shape poetry' the previous lesson and one of the girls wrote me some shape poetry in the silhouette of... well... me. Despite the spelling errors, the improvement these girls made during the year I had them was immense. As a teacher, when you can see the improvement in your students, and when you see your students truly enjoying the process of learning something new, nothing is more precious than that.

Week 9, Visual Arts.

Visual Arts Workshop

This was our last visual arts workshop, and in this session our class shared our visual arts teaching opportunities that we had in our 4 week professional experience. Generally, everybody was given the opportunity to teach a visual arts lesson at their schools but there was a distinct split in those who had a positive experience, and those who did not. Lucky for me, I had a positive experience AND I was given the opportunity to teach 4 visual arts lessons. 

I was placed with a Stage 3 class at Homebush West Public School (HWPS)and this class loved their art. The classroom had two walls which were labelled "Gallery" and students could pin up their artworks to the wall whenever they wanted to. I had a look and there were some amazing drawings. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photograph of them as at the time I felt that they were personal possessions of the students and later I completely forgot to ask. However, I received many drawings from the students during this professional experience and I will upload them onto my blog in a later post. 

Lesson 1: Pictionary!

With my class, we had been focusing on adjectives as a language device during our English lessons so I thought it would be an amazing opportunity to deliver this lesson (taken from the idea in week 1). I got the students to sit in table groups of six and like we did in the visual arts workshop, I have each group one colour and A4 pieces of paper with alphabets written in the corners. Before we started, I re-capped our English lesson on adjectives and told the class that we would be drawing a representation of an adjective that described our family and community at HWPS. I showed them some examples I had made previously and the class was immediately engaged. I used the tips of emphasising no rewards but as we had been in the workshop, it didn't stop the children getting over-excited and eager to 'win'. I regret forgetting to take photos of the work samples, must remember next time!

Extension activities: Have doubles and or triples of each alphabet so the children that finish earlier can do another!

Lesson 2: Proportional portraits!

This lesson was observed by my tertiary mentor and besides that, I was nervous as to whether the children would enjoy drawing portraits and whether they would follow my instructions by will because they were interested not just because I was the 'teacher'. At the beginning of the lesson, I showed the class a picture of my portrait and told them this was what we were going to do today, and then showed them my cubist portrait to explain that this was an example of what we were aiming to finish in the following 3weeks. To my surprise, the children thought cubism was 'awesome' and they understood the principles of different perspectives and angles. The class followed my example (which I did on the whiteboard) to sketch out the proportional features of the face. Due to the short timeframe of the art lessons (45minutes), I ensured the children not to rush and that we would continue to complete them next week.

Here are some of my student's sketches started!

Lesson 3: Proportional portraits & cutting!

In this lesson, we re-capped what we were aiming to do (Cubist portraits) and continued with our sketching of proportional faces. As my students were stage 3, they had an eye for detail and as you can see below, some students even drew the fine lines under the eye and drew in eyelashes. 

Here are some of my student's completed portraits!

I was very impressed with what my students did, and they were very impressed themselves! After the portraits were complete, I asked the students to use a ruler to draw lines across the paper that would result in three pieces when cut. I demonstrated this on the board so that the children could have some ideas and after they checked with their table groups, they were allowed to cut their portraits into three pieces after they had written their name and two colours on the back of each piece-to-be. 

Lesson 4: Cubist portraits and more.

Unfortunately, my last lesson was on my last day of professional experience and during my art session slot, many of my students had to leave for that hour to complete other activities or go to PSSA. With the children that were left, i gave them the option of continuing with their cubist portraits or completing their "Get better soon" cards for a teacher from HWPS who was in hospital as I had about 10 new children from a different classroom in my class. Instead of using paint (Paint can get messy and is difficult to use and clean up in a short amount of time) the children used oil pastels, coloured pencils or wax crayons to colour the portraits in. They loved mixing different types of colouring-in materials and exploring the effects of smudging and scraping. But as many of the students were not present, the pieces were unable to be completed. One lucky portrait got all the pieces coloured in but the remaining, I left in two large folders as my supervising teacher said if he could, he would continue with them the following semester. 

I really enjoyed my professional experience and was extremely thankful that my supervising teacher was flexible with what I wanted to try out in my lessons. I was lucky that although I had to team-teach for other subjects, I was given the opportunity to 'fly solo' with the art lessons. I believe that the visual art workshops truly helped me gain ideas for these lessons and am glad that they went so well!

Week 9, Drama.

Drama Workshop

Storytelling was the focus point in our final drama workshop. As a warm-up activity, we did 'vocal-tennis'. This is where students 'throw' words to each other by experimenting with volume, pitch and tone. We did this activity using fruit and vegetables. Once we spoke out the common ones, I found that thinking on my feet was actually quite difficult! But it creates a great atmosphere for the following drama activities. Funny enough, during my professional experience at Homebush West Public School, I was given the opportunity to observe a kindergarten mathematics class. In this class, students participated in an activity called 'vocal-tennis' as well! But, the pairs had to count up in 2s (ie: Two! Four! Six! Eight!). At the time, I thought it was a useful activity to engage the students and get them to learn to skip count. What I didn't know, was that this idea was 'sneaked' out of drama!

My favourite part of this workshop was when we were put into pairs and asked to tell each other a personal (but appropriate) story from our past. Then as a pair, we would decide who's story we would deliver to the class. To deliver the story to the class, both individuals of the pair had to 'pretend' that the story was their own and the story's lines would be shared. We would add and expand on the details and it was quite fun. Children love telling stories, and I think this would be an excellent activity to use in the classroom, especially at the beginning of the year for the students to get to know their class members better. 

Week 3, Drama.

Drama Workshop

This workshop focused on Anthony Browne's picture book, "Voices in the Park". The text was simple and the illustrations supported the text nicely. This book could easily be used in primary classrooms of various ages cross-linking two KLAs (English and Drama). This workshop gave me many teaching tips and ideas.

Activity 1:
The book was read to us. There was focus on playing out different voices to suit the role of the character in the book. This was quite engaging for an adult audience so I felt that the use of different voices would definitely engage a classroom of students.
Two characters were drawn on the whiteboard and we were asked to write characteristics on post-notes then go up towards the board and stick in in the character's silhouette. We read through these characteristics together. For a primary classroom, this is a good activity that will ensure the students truly understand what the characters are like and this will be the solid foundation by which students will use to play the roles in the following activities.

Activity 2:
Freeze-frame. We split off into groups and with one person as the narrator, we moved into three different freeze-frames as the narrator delivered the story in one character's perspective. The part of the story did not actually have to be from a page in the book. This type of flexible activity is good in the primary classroom as it encourages imaginative thinking.

Activity 3:
Free role-play. In pairs, we had to play the role of either Smudge, who had to convince her new friend to play and the other person had to play the role of Charlie, Smudge's new friend who had to refuse or 'give in'. This role play was not scripted and allowed us to think for ourselves and deliver opinion.

Activity 4:
Conscience alley is an excellent activity in the classroom but often, it is difficult for the whole class to participate as a long line of thirty students wanting to speak out their idea will be time consuming and towards the end, many children will have overlapping thoughts. A new strategy was introduced to us where pairs would share their idea and speak out their best one. This activity supports classroom inclusivity and encourages collaborative thinking.

Activity 5:
Writing in role. We were then given time to write in the perspective of a 5th person that does not actually exist in the text of the storybook. This allows students to use their imagination and be creative.

Week 3, Visual Arts.

Visual Arts Workshop

This workshop we were introduced to a version of cubist portraits. We had to cut our portraits (from last week) into 4 pieces, write our names and two colours on the back of each piece and the class would share pieces and paint four pieces that was not their own.

I chose pink and blood orange. These are the pieces put together after they were painted by the class. There was some smudging on one of the pieces but it has it's unique abstract effect.

Teaching tip: Ensuring the students painted pieces that were not their own seemed like a good idea. There are always children who are more advanced in artistic skill than others and the children who have low confidence in visual arts are not eager to participate in class. By allowing different students to paint different pieces, each student will work hard on the pieces as firstly it is not theirs and secondly, they know somebody else is trying hard on their own. It also allows the appreciating of different perspectives which highlight the underlying factors of cubism.

Before I use this idea in my art lesson, I would have to explain cubism and ensure that the students understand that cutting a portrait into four pieces does not mean it is a cubist portrait!
Cubism: Displaying multiple viewpoints in one picture!