I am four weeks into my second block school placement.

I am teaching in a Year 1 class, which I am really enjoying. They have a one hour computing lesson once a week. One of the year 1 teachers does all the computing teaching. This term in computing they have been using ipads to create their own storys. First, in groups, they drew pictures on paint for each page of their story. Secondly, they imported this in a story book app and then wrote the text for each page. They then recorded themselves reading the story aloud.

I observed the Year 1 teacher who teaches computing. She has an ipad linked to the whiteboard screen to demonstrate for the children how to do each step and then they all have an ipad on which to do it. The children were given a chance to be really creative and really enjoyed the process.

After Easter, the children are using beebots to learn about instructions. I am sure I will get to teach one of these lessons.

This week’s task was to comment on a story from 100 word challenge. The story I commented on was on the focus ‘…the noise was SO loud’. I really liked giving feedback as not only did it provide him with some more ideas for how to continue his story but it made me also think about how I might write or teach it.

It was interesting reading about assessment as lots of the ideas e.g peer assessment, open questions, KWL grids are things that we could use throughout our teaching.

I really enjoyed the lecture on the internet and the web. I now understand the distinction between the two and would feel confident teaching it. I think children would find it fascinating looking at the cablelines across the world and the junk in space!

I think they would also really enjoying using x-ray goggles to change web pages. It would also give them a real understanding into how everything works and is connected.

I really enjoyed the lecture on data handling. We made google forms, which the class all filled in. Our form asked people what their favourite animal was and how many pets they owned. This was a really useful activity to show how you could then use answers to create data and graphs in a very easy way. I think children would really like this activity and they would be able to use skills developed in maths to read and understand the graphs.

I really enjoyed this lecture, particularly the writing instructions for how to make a jam sandwich. It showed how clear you had to be and how simple each instruction must be in order for it to be understood. I can’t wait to try this activity with my class!

The lecture about e-safety was extremely useful. I think it is especially prevalent given the growing of social media and the influence it is having on children. Most notably, I thought the cyber bulling and keeping information private was the most useful and will be an extremely important things to tell children. It will also be useful for myself to make sure I am being as safe as possible on the internet.

During the task, we focused on respecting copyright. I found out a lot more detail than I had known before and I am looking forward to passing this on to children in lessons.

I have really enjoyed the session today on programming. I have never done programming before and was quite nervous about it but I have realized it is quite simple. I especially thought scratch junior was great, and would be a good way to introduce programming to children.

I’m looking forward to trying to use this in school.

Here is a screenshot of the scratch I made today:

During my first placement I wasn’t able able to teach any ICT, as it was during our PPA time. However, I did manage to use computing in other lessons. During humanities, the children used iPads to search about mountains. I also taught a phonics intervention class where I used the interactive whiteboard to do pairing activities. During BSE 2 I hope to teach ICT.

Today’s session on interactive whiteboards was really interesting! It was really fun to try and create a resource to use. but I definitely have a lot to learn. Here is what I have come up with so far, but I am hoping with a bit more practice I’ll be able to make something much better.

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