February Log

The further I get into my placement the quicker it seems to go! Just coming back from a half term holidays, we've now have a four week term up until Easter. Before the half term I had my progress review with Sarah Wawn (Acting Headteacher) who met up with the Class teacher I'm working with to assess me. It went a lot better than I could've imagined with lots of 4's and even some 5's for outstanding! Working in a school can be quite manic! Your role is never black and white and you sometimes wonder whether you're prioritising correctly. It was good to have reassurance that I'm making progress and doing well.

When talking with Sarah we also spoke about a possible switch into Key Stage 1 for one or two weeks just to get some experience working with slightly younger kids. We also spoke about me spending two weeks in a high school to get some experience there, but it would have to arranged by myself and just confirmed with her, so hopefully I can start looking into that.

At the beginning of the month in one of our Support staff meetings we had an awareness session on FGM (Female Genital Mutilation). It is now law that staff working in schools in the UK have awareness training as it is quite popular in some cultures for it to be performed on girls as young as five years old, even though in a lot of the countries they go to in order to have it done it is illegal. It is a violation of child protection, and as weighty as the topic was, I think it was necessary that we were informed about it and the procedures and steps to take if we ever suspect something. It was another wakeup call about how working in school or with children and young people, you really do have a huge responsibility to them.

During my half term holiday, I took a trip to Canterbury back to my university where it seemed almost like a different world. I met up with my academic advisor who reassured me that I would soon get back into the swing of studying next year, and we had a brief conversation about module selection. My modules for my final year have to be selected near the end of March. So soon I will have to start looking into which ones I want to choose. It was another reminder of how quickly my placement is going and will all be coming to an end soon.

Until then I plan to do all I can to make this placement an experience I will have no regrets about. I recently accepted the challenge to train the top 3 girls in Maths years 5&6 for a maths competition next month. Although they haven’t got much time with the competition taking place on 8^th March on International Women’s Day, we plan to try and work through the practice questions and do the best that we can. The competition is being hosted by Hampstead High School whose students I believe will also have a go at the challenge. Looking at questions it has been challenging for even me to do them, having been away from looking at this level of Maths and logic questions for so long, but hopefully they’ll do okay. I'll let you know in my next entry how it went!