And I’ve got to the end. Today has been my last day on placement. It has been a pleasure to work with the team, which seems to be really working cooperatively. Through these months I have managed to learn quite a lot, not only on practices to teach in reception class, but also to reflect. My views have been challenged at times, but I have tried not to stop and simply being all judgemental, I have questioned and tried to find answers. I did so not only through literature, but actually engaging in informal chats with the staff about serious things. It helped me to understand that there is need to scratch the surface to unravel problems and try to find solutions.

With this being said, this placement has been emotionally rewarding too. Children were hugging me and asked me not to leave, and although I will keep volunteering at this school, it won’t be on such a regular basis, that is why this was deemed as my official last day. The stuff was also very nice to me and gave me a card with lovely messages in it, flowers and wine. The quality of a team often means more than anything else.

Today I have shadowed one of the teacher assistant taking an observation for Oliver, her focus child for the week. Oliver engaged in a self-initiated activity which has turned to be extremely valuable for an observation. During free play time, he went straight away in the construction corner and took out some Lego, then after a few attempts of constructing something he put them on the side. He then decided to take the box of mobile and starting again to construct something. The end product was an unbelievably carefully constructed space rocket. After looking at it for a couple of minutes and nodding to himself, he moved to the table, he took a paper sheet and started drawing. The TA sat next to him with her notebook and started talking to him. She asked questions such as “what does the rocket do?”. Oliver started to explain all the different bits of it, particularly emphasising on the safety detachable shuttle. The TA asked what was that for and Oliver explained that in space there is no air and in case of emergency, if for example there was a fire in the main rocket, a shuttle was needed to get safe. Now, this is some really interesting and articulated explanation for a 5-year-old! But the TA didn’t seem quite satisfied and asked him why there is no air in space. At this question Oliver started to hum and appeared to be a bit lost, the TA changed the subject and asked instead if she could photocopy the drawing. Oliver said he didn’t finish yet and she just waited for him to do so. Overall, I think that trying to get Oliver to verbalise his thinking process was a great idea, and the TA seemed to have done a good job until that question about the absence of air, which probably was a bit too challenging. I do agree on the importance of expanding children learning and understanding, as challenge is the essential for development and learning, as asserted by Winstanley (2010). However, I think that challenge should be right in its difficulties, allowing transition through the ZPD, but not so ‘scary’ to negatively unsettle a child. Unless we are going to explain it to him rather than drop it.