Week 11

This blog is my last blog, so I am going to take this time to reflect on my time in this unit.
Over the weeks I have learnt a lot about my teaching philosophies. I never really incorporated any of these concepts into my thinking, these include past-present, place thought and learning to be affected. I hadn't thought of the bringing the aboriginal culture into children's learning so this was a new way of thinking. In conclusion, this unit has opened my eyes to expanding my thoughts.

Week 10

This week in my blog I am going to talk about my experiences at my 'engaging with place' placement. I am positioned at St Anne's Primary school in Sunbury. This is only a short 5 minute walk from my home. In the past weeks I have really enjoyed all the engaging with place, every day on my walk there I collect things that the kids can use to paint or sort. This has opened my eyes to many things such as we need to encourage kids to get in touch with nature and steer them away from technology as much as we can. In conclusion this placement has had a positive impact on me, I look forward to going back next semester.

Week 9

This weeks lessons for both History and Play development interested. We covered 3 topics, these included: children being capable, empowerment of children and lastly images of a child.

The first topic was revolved around what it means for a child to be capable. In my opinion this means that the child can understand the given task and can complete it independently at a reasonable standard. But with this in mind you still have to be considerate in the fact that every child learns at a different rate so this means that the definition of capable can vary with each child that you associate with.

Next was the notion of empowerment of children. What does it mean to empower someone?
Simply put it means to give others the power (or ability) to do something. As a teacher this can be done by giving the students an element of freedom, for example letting them work cooperatively with you to determine some classroom rules that need to be followed.

Lastly was all the different images of children, we read an article that explained to us in detail some of the types of children that we will come across when we teach. This was very interesting as it is evidence to the statement that 'every child is different'. It was helpful in the fact that it makes you think about how you are going to deal with the variety of personalities in your classroom.

Week 7

Week 7 was a week I had been looking forward to for a while as this was when we were beginning our placement. I was very excited about this as I would finally be able to interact with children, which is my reasoning behind wanting to become a teacher. The placement is a very different concept which I really enjoy,  it is revolved around the things we are learning in class about aboriginal culture, land and nature. 

The aim of the play group is to steer children to play with the involvement of nature instead of using materialistic things. We got the children do things such as, making angels out of leaves, painting with sticks instead of paintbrushes and collecting then sorting sticks, leaves and rocks. 

After witnessing the children get involved with this kind of learning it makes me become more motivated to engage with the learning in class as the future students that I will teach will enjoy this type of learning. 

Week 6

This week was very different from the past weeks as we had work to complete from home in our own time. During the slides you were asked some questions to get you thinking and I have chosen to include 2 of my answers in my blog for this week as they related to me the most. 

1- Think of an experience in your schooling where you were a “receptacle” for knowledge. I am fresh out of high school, so last year when I completed year 12 particularly the subject Health and Human Development we were required to remember and recall roughly around 30 definitions word by word. My teacher presented the knowledge to us in cue cards that we were to use to test ourselves. My own engagement with this style of teaching wasn't the greatest as I don't have the best memory and I would prefer to learn things in a more hands on way. 

Can teaching be organised around schedules, recipes? I agree that to a certain point as a teacher you need to have an organised schedule that you plan to follow but in saying that you need to be aware that it may not always go to plan. You will need to have a plan that is well thought out as preparation will assist you in getting the best out of the classes you teach, but you will also need to be able to think on your feet because not everything will got the way you want it to e.g. timing. 

Week 5

This week instead of attending our lectures and tutorials we were given time to attend the Bunjilaka exhibit at the Melbourne Museum. A few of my fellow classmates and I arranged to meet up to complete the task together. On the Monday morning I caught the train into the city and got off at Parliament Station and from there it was about a 10 minute walk to the museum. The weather was perfect so off I went on my walk. Usually when I am walking from place to place I never take in my surroundings, I just think about how much further I have to walk until I can get a break. But since beginning this course I have learnt to appreciate and think about my surroundings, on my walk to the museum I took a short cut through a park that was full of trees and beautiful grass land, although in the center of it the museum was placed and as I was strolling along I began to think back and wonder what this land was like before human citizenship, because even though it was gorgeous it had been tampered with by humans. This thinking for me was really unexpected but very welcomed as it means that I am learning and beginning understand the concepts in relation to Play, development and learning as well as History and Philosophy of Early Childhood Education. 

Week 4

Week 4 was a very different week as compared to the past weeks. We were given 6 different workshops to complete instead of attending our tutorial along with having to attend the lecture. 

During the one of the workshops I got to thinking about the idea of 'stereotypes', our everyday life is full of them and if I'm completely honest I seem to go along with most of them instead of thinking about them on a deeper level and trying to go against the typical image. So if I, as an adult am so quick to give into these stereotypes then no wonder why its so common for the younger generation to be sucked into believing them. This thinking has provided me with motivation to ignore and/or rebel against these common misinterpretations and as a result I now intend to aim to eliminate this issue within school kids.