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.

Today is my seventh time in placement, time flies indeed.

As the previous two weeks, much focus is on writing and today the image used for the “I can see…” writing task is very chaotic, maybe a bit too much as the children got extremely distracted by it and started to draw rather than write.

After this, I entertained the whole group of 56 children by reading them a book. I have to say I was quite overwhelmed, mainly for the teachers who were part of the audience too. I managed to engage the children quite well, by waiting for them to complete the sentences and engaging in an afterward conversation. Also, as the book has a little song in it, some of the children performed one of their favourite nursery rhymes in front of the whole group. It was fun, and I like the bond I have managed to create with the children through these weeks. I thought that going once a week would have made it more difficult to become a familiar person to them, someone to have a bond with, but every time I am going now I am coming home with drawings that some of them made for me, and seeing my name spelt wrong has never been so flattering.

During busy time Natalie wanted to play with me. She went to the kitchen area and came back with a trolley full of food; I asked her what she was going to make, and she told me she wanted to prepare a soup. I then asked her if she knew the recipe by heart, she said she did and I told her that I wished I could learn it too so that I could make a soup for myself when she was not around. I have asked her what we could have done to solve this problem and she decided to write it for me. This become a full hour task! She wanted to write every word right and was very determinate about it, so I helped her in breaking down each word in sounds to make it easier. Usually she doesn’t really enjoy the writing session in the morning but doing it on something that interested her had made writing an essential component of her play.

Today as been much of the same as last week and the day was quieter than usual as quite a few children were ill.The literacy was dedicated to reading and books. The book used was ‘The blue penguin’ and surprisingly, to me, the teacher did not read the book. Instead, she first showed the cover to the children and asked them to read the title, and the name under it (the author name). When with some failed attempts they manage to read it, she asked whose name was that, and they all promptly reply it was the author. I believe it is not the first time she did this with the children, and I hope I was there on other days then Wednesdays to see what happens. Anyway, the teacher goes on and ask the children to look at the picture on the cover and discuss with a partner how the penguin might feel. The most various ideas came up and the teacher then asked why. There were a couple of minutes of silent every time she asked that questions, and although children were struggling and maybe repeating themselves they did try to give an answer. I think that this is a good way of encouraging children in becoming critical thinkers who need to justify their answers and statements. Also, the ability of the teacher to leave those silent minutes without putting pressure has shown respect and understanding for children’s need of time to articulate what they want to say. As I previously mentioned, she didn’t read the story, but she read the blurb, and asked the children the name for that written section in the back cover of a book. I think that letting the children familiarise with different section of a book before to dive into the story is a good approach, I just felt sorry for those who wanted to know what happened to the blue penguin.

Here we are, back from the holiday. There is, as expected, a more structured day. The morning starts off with some phonics and then guided writing. The approach they have for this is quite interesting; they show a picture on the whiteboard, a jungle kind of thing, and the children have to write first the sentence “I can see…” and then write words of objects or animal they can see in the picture. The choice is totally autonomous and it’s interesting to see how the children’s interests come to surface. Teachers and assistant teachers stay around to support pupils and make sure that everyone is on task, they also write the correct spelling of the words under the children’s writing.

It’s 9:30 and busy time is announced. I sat at the table where usually children draw or do some writing on their own, in my mind I call it the child-led table. Kira is making an envelope out of an A4 and soon Rachel want one too. I suggest that Kira (who is about 5 months older than Rachel) should explain every step she takes to create the envelop, and then help Rachel in making one. I am delighted with their enthusiasm and collaboration, and obviously Rachel made thousands of envelopes. I have seen here the ZPD in action, and the value that sometimes can arise by not grouping children by abilities. While all this envelope activity was going on we all started (4 children and I), to talk about sounds, specifically the sound ch. It all started because I drew a cherry, and from there we were looking for words that had the sound ch. We spent a good 15 minutes on that, and some invented words came up too. This stands in harmony with Chukovsky’s view that children don’t simply play with objects but with the abstract of words.

Before lunch time, the circle time learning input was about math, more specifically additions. I was fascinated about how this was taught. The teacher drew 3 circles on the board, two at the same level and one below, which she called bubbles. She drew some spots in the first two, then asked which bubble had the biggest number of spots. Once that was decided, she told the kids to take the highest number and put it in their heads, and count from there, using the other hand to check they were adding the right one. That must sound really confusing being said like that, I will try to make a representation of it. It never occurred to me how you teach addition as such a young age, and it has been quite enlightening.

Christmas is around the corner now. You can sense it everywhere. Today is the last day of term before the winter break. It is going to be a short day, finishing at 2 rather than 3:30. At my arrival all the staff is relaxed and joyful, it is nice to see. However, this ends soon when they realise they were supposed to do some Christmas’s handcraft and did not realise until then that today was the last day. The art craft entails having the children deep their hand in brown paint and then put it on paper, then they will decorate it as if it was a reindeer. The idea is cute, I have to admit, and although the all process is a bit like an assembly line (all the teachers are involved, cutting, helping children with the handprint, gluing, cutting again, finalising it), it seems like the children had a bit of autonomy in choosing how to decorate their handprint reindeers. Some of them don’t look at all like reindeers and I love it. I love not to see the conventional Christmas reindeer it was expected. I am happy to have children telling me, while they hand the piece of paper to me so that I can “make it stronger” (glue it to a harder cardboard), that “I have put some glitter because this is a fairy. Can you see how my fingers look like a skirt?”, or “It’s a chicken. Do you like it? I picked the only orange feather there was. Miss, can you see is a chicken even if I didn’t make a beak?”.

The day is spent indoors, as all teachers are required inside. Children free play or alternatively can watch a movie until is dance time. I realised just now I have never talked about the Dance lesson they have every Wednesday. Well, the one of today has been a particularly good one. All the children were so excited, and they are always so much fun to see. This lesson is an extracurricular activity, as children have their PE class on Thursday. Here the focus is on rhythm and coordination, and I think it is a great way to introduce children to these concepts. It is fun and can be a way through which children can realise their kinaesthetic skills. I am really looking forward to coming back in January, I believe the routine will be slightly stricter, with more focus on writing and reading.

Today I have done just half day. The morning has started with the register and some phonics on the white board. The usual teacher is off sick, and a supply has come. The phonics game used is different from the last time, it seems more engaging for the children. They have to finish the level in the shortest time they can. The game is set as a racing track and seeing the finish line on the screen make the children get all excited. After doing phonics for about 10 minutes, the supply teacher decides to read a storybook. The children don’t seem particularly involved in the story and ask when it is going to be busy time. No activities are offered as stimulus as the previous times. However, I am very glad to see that a rota has been put up in the laptop corner: each child will be able to play with the computers only one day a week, I am curious to see how the children will handle this.

Although being an extremely cold and windy day, a great number of children wants to go outdoors, so I go with them. A TA which seems to me to be the most enthusiastic is outside with me. We chat a little while supervising the kids running around and I decide to talk to her about something that really caught my attention in the past few weeks. I have seen children writing in the opposite way, reversing single letters, digits or entire words. I am intrigued by this as the child I am studying for an assignment (he is in another school) did it, and today I saw another child doing it here. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help, but it’s been nice to talk about this, I think I sort of fostered curiosity in her.

Children got bored of running around so we take some paper on the outside table and start to make some kirigami. The TA starts off showing how she makes a snowflake but does not impose to any of the children to do so. I really appreciate her ways, she shows enthusiasm to every piece of paper the children produce, even when to the adult eye would look as a mistake. We helped the children in folding the paper, but then just let them cut it as they pleased, some came out all cut off and literally fell into a million pieces. We had a good laugh with the children and try to do it again. G was trying really hard to get some sort of kirigami and persevered in his objective. I was impressed by the mindset of this child, it was very cold outside, and he wasn’t achieving what he wanted to, but he didn’t give up. Having recently started reading about Dweck, I was intrigued by his engagement. I have decided to help him, not in doing that little kirigami, but in reflecting on his actions and strategies. I tried to use a metacognitive strategy, and it worked. I did that each time he was ‘failing”, until he finally obtained what he wanted. I have really liked doing that this morning, I felt like helping someone in the learning process.

Christmas is getting closer and the children are getting ready for the singing show they’ll perform at the end of the week. This morning no phonics have been done after the register, instead we all walk to the theatre of the school (in the building next door) and practiced the songs for the show. It was real fun to see them enjoying it so much.

Once back in the classroom the teacher made the children sit on the carpet and told them that she had something really important to tell them. Apparently, on the previous day two Elves had landed in the reception classroom and positioned themselves on swings attached to the ceiling in order to keep an eye on all the children and report their actions to Santa Claus. Being so up high over the classroom they could see things that even the teachers could miss out, and therefore decided to send reports to them as well. Teachers had found these unusual post boxes on their desks, with an instruction sheet saying that each day they had to read the letter found in the post box, aloud and in front of all children. All the kids were hanging on every word. After giving this wonderful and magical explanation the teachers read the first two letters they had found, in which T and A where praised for being nice to others during free play, and for having practiced writing respectively. I found this to be an interesting behaviour management strategy. Praising nice behaviours in front of the all class sort of put the children under a positive peer pressure. Everyone had tried to be nice today, in one way or another. I am really curious to see if next week it will still the same, with all the children trying to behave the best.

After the Elves story children were told to go get busy and play. Once again, I have noticed no activities were set up, except for a TA preparing salt dough. I love salt dough, so I went nearby. I was so excited that there was an activity going on and that children today weren’t “fighting” over the laptops, and I couldn’t wait to see what they would have come up with. I remember myself creating the strangest shapes as a child, and the salt dough, with its weird texture, was just something I could get lost having in between my hands for hours, just feeling it and see how it changed according to my movements.

Anyway, the TA was sitting at a table and there were about 6 children around her. They wanted to help but she didn’t allow it. She told them to wait as they needed it to do some Christmas tree decorations. Being a multicultural class, where some of the children don’t even celebrate Christmas I was eager to see what was going to be created. I wanted to be there and listen to their narration while making something tangible with their hands, projecting their imagination into the real world. Instead, the TA put some “extremely” Christmasy cookie cutters and called each child one by one. SHE flattened a little ball of salt dough with a rolling pin, she asked the child to pick a shape, SHE positioned it and with HER hand on top the child’s one she helped him press it down, then SHE removed the dough in excess around the cookie cutter and SHE put in on a tray and thank the child. I know I should not be judging like that, because just emphasising the pronoun makes me sound pretentious, but mine was disappointment, exactly like what I saw in the eye of every child going through this process. I don’t believe this was, by any means, scaffolding. There wasn’t help here, the children hands were simply used as puppets. It might be the influence of my degree course, it might be my admiration for the Malaguzzi’s approach, it might be my inexperience in formal educational settings, it might be all the emphasis that has been put in learning through doing, the enactive mode as called by Bruner, it might be Vygotsky ringing in my head, it might be that I unfortunately agree with Sir Ken Robinson… school tends to kill creativity.

 

The Little Boy
by Helen Buckley

Once a little boy went to school.
He was quite a little boy
And it was quite a big school.
But when the little boy
Found that he could go to his room
By walking right in from the door outside
He was happy;
And the school did not seem
Quite so big anymore.

One morning
When the little boy had been in school awhile,
The teacher said:
“Today we are going to make a picture.”
“Good!” thought the little boy.
He liked to make all kinds;
Lions and tigers,
Chickens and cows,
Trains and boats;
And he took out his box of crayons
And began to draw.

But the teacher said, “Wait!”
“It is not time to begin!”
And she waited until everyone looked ready.
“Now,” said the teacher,
“We are going to make flowers.”
“Good!” thought the little boy,
He liked to make beautiful ones
With his pink and orange and blue crayons.
But the teacher said “Wait!”
“And I will show you how.”
And it was red, with a green stem.
“There,” said the teacher,
“Now you may begin.”

The little boy looked at his teacher’s flower
Then he looked at his own flower.
He liked his flower better than the teacher’s
But he did not say this.
He just turned his paper over,
And made a flower like the teacher’s.
It was red, with a green stem.

On another day
When the little boy had opened
The door from the outside all by himself,
The teacher said:
“Today we are going to make something with clay.”
“Good!” thought the little boy;
He liked clay.
He could make all kinds of things with clay:
Snakes and snowmen,
Elephants and mice,
Cars and trucks
And he began to pull and pinch
His ball of clay.

But the teacher said, “Wait!”
“It is not time to begin!”
And she waited until everyone looked ready.
“Now,” said the teacher,
“We are going to make a dish.”
“Good!” thought the little boy,
He liked to make dishes.
And he began to make some
That were all shapes and sizes.

But the teacher said “Wait!”
“And I will show you how.”
And she showed everyone how to make
One deep dish.
“There,” said the teacher,
“Now you may begin.”

The little boy looked at the teacher’s dish;
Then he looked at his own.
He liked his better than the teacher’s
But he did not say this.
He just rolled his clay into a big ball again
And made a dish like the teacher’s.
It was a deep dish.

And pretty soon
The little boy learned to wait,
And to watch
And to make things just like the teacher.
And pretty soon
He didn’t make things of his own anymore.

Then it happened
That the little boy and his family
Moved to another house,
In another city,
And the little boy
Had to go to another school.
This school was even bigger
Than the other one.
And there was no door from the outside
Into his room.
He had to go up some big steps
And walk down a long hall
To get to his room.
And the very first day
He was there,
The teacher said:
“Today we are going to make a picture.”
“Good!” thought the little boy.
And he waited for the teacher
To tell what to do.
But the teacher didn’t say anything.
She just walked around the room.

When she came to the little boy
She asked, “Don’t you want to make a picture?”
“Yes,” said the lttle boy.
“What are we going to make?”
“I don’t know until you make it,” said the teacher.
“How shall I make it?” asked the little boy.
“Why, anyway you like,” said the teacher.
“And any color?” asked the little boy.
“Any color,” said the teacher.
“If everyone made the same picture,
And used the same colors,
How would I know who made what,
And which was which?”
“I don’t know,” said the little boy.
And he began to make a red flower with a green stem.

Today has been my first day at the placement. I didn’t really know what to expect, as I have never worked in schools before. I have been several times in nurseries, to carry out observations, and volunteered at summer camps, but never in primary school’s formal settings.

I arrived around 8:20 am, and all teacher assistants were in the kitchen room having a tea. At 8:30 they started to set up the class, by putting chairs around the tables and placing books a bit everywhere. The books are offered as a stimulus to engage parents in reading with their children when they drop them at school. I found this a very interesting idea, as for those parents who can actually take 10 minutes to seat down with their children, it’s a way to forget about the upcoming day. I think it is a tactic not only to strengthen the parent-child bond, but also to make the transition from home to school slightly smoother. Rather than being dropped and waved goodbye, there are those extra 10 minutes of real relationship. Nevertheless, routine looms over almost everything and at the “specific hand clapping” the reading experience was interrupted abruptly.

The teacher does the register while all the pupils are sitting on the carpet, and immediately after they do some phonics. The teacher makes use of some computer games. There is a racing car and different phonics appear in street signs; all the children promptly and diligently sound out what they see, accompanied by the gesture. I have never experienced the teaching of phonics before and I find myself amazed and frustrated at the same time, as they all seem to me to be a little army troupe, unaware of what they are actually doing.

This week is assessment week; therefore, children are tested by the teacher in small groups. The ones who need to be assessed are called by name during the morning, and in the meantime the rest are simply “getting busy”. I’ve spent a couple of hours supervising outside, and engaged in some of the children’s play activities, which were all self-initiated. I haven’t found the absence of organised outdoor activities particularly unusual, but I did for the absence of them indoors. I am a great encourager of self-initiation in children’s activities, but I do believe that there is need of some activities to be set up and offered to the children. This does not mean forcing them into doing them, but simply offer something which can be used by them as a means to develop new skills or ameliorate and support existing ones. I think that my concern about the absence of organised activities is a consequence of the use of technology that I have seen here today. The only “activities” offered were using the whiteboard and the laptops (4/5 laptops where available in a corner desk). I do believe in the potential of technology and the many benefits that come with it, but I am slightly loath on its uncontrollable usage. Children were literally fighting over the laptops, as too many of them wanted to play with them. Nevertheless, it is assessment week and it might be affecting the normal routine. I am curious to see how next week will go.