Work Samples

Here are some lessons/work samples which I have retained from practical teaching experiences. Though they weren’t the greatest, they had good and bad points which helped me to develop good teaching practices.

Fairytale Parade- Year 1

During my first year prac, we did dance as one of our subjects, which in turn meant we had to teach dance. Though I have been a Croatian dancer for years, I was initially scared of having to teach kids how to dance. Then when discussing this with my cooperating teacher, she suggested that I could co-ordinate the dances that the children would be performing for their fairy tale parade.

So I ended up teaching my class, who then taught the other class, dances to be performed. It was pretty fun and they weren’t exactly too difficult (because they were only in year 1) but I was pleased to be able to come and watch them perform in costumes something that I had shown them.

The highlight of teaching this dance would have been one child, who generally refused to do anything public due to anxiety problems. My cooperating teacher was shocked to see him dancing, and said I really must be a big influence on him. It was quite nice to know I had touched a child like that, and three years later now that I occasionally teach his class casually, he still has the same kind of attitude towards me which is really nice.

Below are my lesson plans and teacher feedback for the dances, as well as a couple of photos from the final fairy tale parade.

GoldilocksDance

BillyGoatsGruffDance

Dance-TeacherComments

Editing- Year 5

Editing-LessonPlan

Editing-TeacherComments

Editing-WorkSample

Though my teacher was really nice in her comments (she was wonderful) this lesson was pretty bad, and the kids who did get its purpose (to pay greater attention to editing of own work) are the ones who generally didn’t need to really focus on it. It’s funny how when you are a prac student you have all these great ideas in your mind, but once you plan it and try to get out all the content within a set lesson time, it just doesn’t seem to work. The lesson taught me not to overcomplicate things, and also try and make sure everyone is keeping to the same stage because it is incredibly difficult to move on to the next part when only half the class has finished.

Limericks- Year 5

I didn’t have a lesson plan for this as I was onto daybooks by then, but I basically went through the structure of a limerick then we wrote some together as a class, the children wrote some drafts then wrote them up on nice paper and we made a display. At first the children groaned at the notion of writing poetry, but once they realised it was a fun nonsense poem, they really enjoyed themselves.

I took a photo of the display I put up in their room, it was quite exciting to be able to display something as a prac student. I kept a copy of the yellow posters for myself, and have used them within casual teaching.

Abstract Artwork- Year 5

I actually saw this idea on Art Attack back in the day and thought it was pretty cool. Basically, it just involved drawing a range of overlapping lines/shapes and then use different patterns/colours to make each small section different to the next. It allowed the children to use their creativity to demonstrate their emotions, feelings and personalities.

Some photos below are of the artworks which were displayed around the classroom.