Work Experience Report: Learning from Ms. Donoghue

I did my work experience in a primary school in Clondalkin. I was assigned to work with Ms.Donoghue and her second class students.
Ms.Donoghue’s role as a teacher was to prepare lesson plans in line with curriculum objectives. She facilitated learning by establishing a relationship with her pupils and by her organisation of learning resources and the classroom learning environment. She assessed and recorded progress of the students and prepared the pupils for examinations.
Ms. Donoghue had a lot of skills which enabled her to be a good and practical teacher and some of these skills included:
Organisation skills: Ms. Donoghue was a much organised person all of her different teaching materials e.g.handouts were all placed in a folder at the side of her classroom this was a great help for her as it enabled her to easily access the different materials she needed. Ms. Donoghue also had created a time table for herself this time table included the different subjects she would teach to the kids from Monday to Friday. I thought this method was very practical as it enabled her to have a better understanding for herself of what she would teach the boys each day.
Communication skills: Ms. Donoghue is a very friendly, caring and kind person this enabled her to get along very well with all of her students and her work colleagues leading to her having really good communication skills.
Teaching skills: Ms. Donoghue also had a really good way of teaching the different topics in the different subjects to the kids. Ms. Donoghue would use songs to try and help the kids to understand and learn the topic she was trying to teach. I thought this was a really good practise as it enabled the kids to easily understand about the different subject they had to know, the kids were learning and having fun at the same time which I thought was really nice way of teaching.

Ms. Donoghue told me that to be Primary school teacher you must be qualified to teach a range of primary school subjects to children aged 4 to 12 years. She also told me that to qualify as a primary school teacher you must have completed one of the following: * A recognised 3-year full-time programme, leading to the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) degree * A recognised Graduate/Higher Diploma in Education (Primary)

Thanks to Ms. Donoghue I was able to improve a lot of my skills for e.g. communication skills and organising skills and for that I am really grateful.

My work experience report

04-12-2012

Today I had to do some corrections for Ms. Donoghue. She told me to correct some of the maths work the kids had done earlier in the day, she told me to use a red pen to correct and she also said to write down the days date on the page after I corrected it. It took me quite a long time to correct all the books as there were 32 books to correct and I had to correct around 5 pages in each book so it was quiet time consuming.

After the corrections were finished I was asked to do some reading with the kids in the class Ms Donoghue picked the kids who were to come and read with me, once the kids were picked they would come up to me and read the pages that they had to read for homework the night before. All of the kids were really good and confident at their reading and they didn’t need much help with it.

At the last section of the day the kids had P.E. and Ms.Donoghue allowed me to pick a warm up game to play with the kids. I picked stuck in the mud and the kids really enjoyed it and had a lot of fun playing which I was glad to see!!

05-12-2012

Today Ms. Donoghue asked me to hang up Christmas decorations around the classroom as the Christmas season was quickly approaching. I did as she instructed and hung up the decorations which Ms. Donoghue complemented me on as the classroom looked amazing after I was done with it.

After that I want down to the photocopying room and photocopied 32 Christmas stockings which Ms. Donoghue wanted the kids to paint and then hang up around the classroom. After I photocopied them I went back to the classroom and gave out a Christmas stocking picture to each of the kids, then I put out paint pallets containing the colours red, green .sliver, gold in them. I handed each table a paint pallet and brushes.

After the kids finished with their paintings I put them at the top of the classroom to dry and I cleaned all the paint pallets and brushes and left the in their places. I decided that I would stick up the paintings on a blank wall at the back of the classroom and Ms. Donoghue agreed with the placement I thought off and asked me to stick them up, I did as she instructed and as I was sticking the paintings up I was really impressed at how well the kids had painted them and at how well they had turned out.

Once all of them were up the blank wall became so colourful and bright it looked great and the kids were so proud of how well they had painted the pictures.