First day down....

Had a really good first day back in school, although a fairly restless night last night!

Was observing most of the day, not many lower school classes in the department on a monday, but taught First years period 5 and it went really well. They are starting a design unit and were beginning by doing some drawing. Demonstrations (which I detest!) are normally when I completely forget to mention something vitally important but today I felt really calm and managed to explain everything without missing bits out!! (Partly because no-one was distracting me by misbehaving!) However the class were wee angels, and after about 10 minutes of them working silently I found myself thinking... 'what do I do now? everyone is working.. and I have no-one misbehaving to discipline.' It was strange - so different to my last school where behaviour was a real issue. It was nice to have time to go round all the pupils individually and be able to talk about their work. I felt like I actually enjoyed the lesson - something which I dont think I'v been able to do up until now because I have been so concerned with getting things 'right' - whatever that might be. I remember thinking during my last placement - 'will I ever get to the stage where I dont feel sick before a class and actually enjoy it??' Although Im probably not quite there yet, I definately feel like I am able to relax a little and put a bit more of 'me' into the lesson (if that makes sense!) rather than just following a lesson plan word for word... I suppose that comes from having less to deal with discipline-wise too.

Anyway, hope everyone else had a good first day. Would love to hear all about it......

Sunday night blues....

I hate Sunday nights. I always get a weird 'butterflies in my stomach' feeling about the week ahead, and feel depressed the weekend is over and once again I have achieved very little of what I should have done!

Tonight, I feel even worse because of the initial visit to my second placement school tomorrow. I am honestly looking forward to getting back into the classroom and teaching, but the uncertainity and newness of the next placement is daunting. I suppose at the back of my mind I'm preparing myself for the possibility that this placement might not be as good as the last!! (You can tell I'm a really positive person!!) And Im worried about how unprepared I am!! After tomorrow I'm sure I'll feel better about things!

Anyway, ill stop moaning. For now!

Here I am - finally given in to the world of blogging!!

Like many of the students at Jordanhill on the PGDE course, after David and Ewan's ict lecture last week, I was inspired to start sharing my thoughts with the world via the 'blog'. Im hoping it will be useful for me to articulate my own learning as a student teacher, and I suppose, somewhere I can let off steam!

For anyone else who attended this morning's lecture on Assessment, I hope you found it as inspiring as I did. Left feeling like I had learned loads in such a short space of time, and was definately worth getting out of bed for!! Found that lots of the stuff Dylan Wiliams mentioned in the video was really worthwhile, and although it sounded like common sense, it seems that schools have a long way to go in implementing these concepts. I know a great deal of it was Primary based, but I agree with what Wiliams said that secondary education could learn a lot from Primary. Was desperately racking my brains to think of ways I could include these ideas in my subject area of Art and Design, and I suppose this is the challenge now as we all head out on our second placement....

Trying very hard not to worry about the amount of stuff I have to do before starting placement... i am a worrier by nature. My new years resolution was to worry less about things I couldnt control.. mmmm... not doing so well! Gona try and get some lessons planned out over the weekend, but one thing I learned from last placement was that I cant do everything - im gona have to find a work/life balance, hard as this may seem.

Anyway first blog over, feel better already! Looking forward to lots of friendly comments!