A bit of a later post for several reasons

So yeah I was planning on posting at the end of my first week. That obviously didn't happen, mainly due to the work involved in the course and partly due to my laptop deciding to massively overheat. The fact that half of the outer casing is half made of stainless steel probably doesn't help, but the fan's been loud for quite a while now and this was eventually going to happen I suppose, so sorting all that out took up one of my evenings.

At this point I was more than a little worried I'd lost it forever!

As for the actual course though there are basically two types of days that we have, which I'll call pedagogical and subject knowledge; pedagogical, for those who don't know what it means, is basically learning how to teach, classroom management, behaviour management and everything else that isn't subject specific. Whereas subject knowledge is, you guessed it, working on the secondary-level knowledge of your subject.  I know this may seem strange at first but it actually is quite necessary. Subject knowledge days mainly focus on going over different methods to tackle a problem; after having done half a Bachelor's degree in maths, a lot of secondary-level content will just come naturally to us without having to explain how we solved that quadratic equation or how we multiplied out those brackets, whereas when teaching highschool children who are learning this stuff for the first time, you do have to be able to explain it.

We've also had a fair bit mentioned to us about posting stuff online, like, oh, I don't know, blogs (although I think I've been careful enough so far.) But Facebook was the main thing mentioned; we've basically been told not to post rants online if there's something about the course or our school that we don't like, which really is common sense more than anything. We've even been told not to post the name of our schools in case in the future we do put something bad about it and it can be referred back and land us in hot water. Again, it's common sense really. There's actually going to be a few sessions tomorrow on online safety, safeguarding children and protecting yourself so we'll see how they go.

On that note, we have also received our placements for the first term of the year, I suppose I can reveal that it's in Blackpool, but that's about it. Travel arrangements did at first look bleak as I'd have had to get the 6:30 train out of Lancaster every morning, until the penny dropped that I have family living quite close to Blackpool, so that's that settled for three nights a week! It's only three as most Fridays we're back in uni studying so I'd obviously need to be back in Lancaster on the Thursday.

So the first day on the course

One thing became immediate to me this morning as soon as I woke up: I should have been up 2 hours ago and am meant to be leaving, well, now. So this is definitely one of the more immediate things to tackle. I did manage to get to the uni on time however having skipped breakfast, which when you're in uni from 9 til 4 - as I now am - is another bad idea, well, I did manage to find the time to neck half a cup of tea, but I was starving all morning!

Morning mishaps aside though, and the morning session was - as expected - pretty intense. We were all in the main lecture theatre for a couple of hours while the programme leader gave a couple of presentations and has us doing a couple of 'get to know you' activities, in which he recommended taking out pen and paper and writing things down...maybe I should have brought those things with me. Luckily my phone came to the rescue! As it so often has done in the past. I just opened the notes app and was ready to go, and as it turned out this would be needed for pretty much the rest of the day. Always prepared.

After lunch (I'd made some last night, thank god) came the sessions more focused on registering us with the uni and sorting out our IT accounts, along with a bit of a presentation on the sort of writing expected now we're at Master's level. Luckily for me I'd set my IT account all up before even arriving in Lancaster, and only needed to sync my email account with my phone, which for some reason or another refused to work before, Microsoft could really handle these things better.

All in all it was a very informative first day, and I can only wait and see what the rest of this week has in store for me (although I do know we get a lie-in on Thursday - as late as 10am!)

My first real teaching resource

So I've created what I would call my first real teaching resource, a simple poster describing what triangle numbers are and an example of their use. It can be found here.

My PgCE pre-course and just how intense this next year may well be

I have had quite a busy week between last Sunday and this one just gone, basically it was travel to Lancaster, attend pre-course, graduate, attend pre-course, attend pre-course, travel home, go to school for the end-of-year show and the last day (spent mostly eating junk food and signing the children’s shirts and autograph books), up to the Yorkshire Dales (via Lancaster would you believe) for the staff weekend away cut off from the world, go on walks and through a cave, come back home, and finally relax.

This post will of course be focusing on my pre-course which basically was a subject knowledge enhancement course (or SKE) in secondary mathematics, and it served mainly to get us ready for the PgCE, get our knowledge up to scratch, and get us thinking of ways we'd explain a concept to a child who doesn't understand the first time, which demands an incredibly deep subject knowledge well beyond merely knowing one method how to do something like solve a formula or work out an area, and this was reflected in the intensity of the course! I was lucky enough to get a break on the Tuesday though for something which I guess isn't that important, just graduating from Lancaster with a 2:2 in Spanish Studies and Mathematics, I was actually disappointed with that grade at first until everyone's reaction was "wow, so you did maths and Spanish? That must've been hard!" So the general consensus has been 'well done on surviving', which I won't lie, at times it felt like that was what I was just about doing. And it means I'm basically the only one on the PgCE (of non-foreign heritage at least) that can boast multilingualism, as all of the MFL PgCE students are based on the campus in London!

Wednesday and Thursday saw a return to the workload although it was at the same time very stimulating and informative, the main thing I took away from one of the days is just what the QTS that I will gain at the end of my PgCE entitles me to do, which is to teach any subject that isn't swimming in any secondary school in the EU, I don't even officially need any language qualifications for that country! I could in theory teach art and design in a secondary school in the Czech Republic - not that I plan to.

All in all the week has given me a lot to think about and a whole range of ideas to prepare for when I first start the course and my placements in the schools.

My fourth placement over and done with - and the surprisingly big difference between primary and secondary education

So I've now done 4 school placements in total - and all in the space of a couple of years. The first three were in secondary schools (two English, one Catalan) and obviously before I started this blog so I can't really write about them here, although a blog about my life and work in the Catalan school can be found at Two and a Half Spaniards. This last one however has been in a primary school (the one I used to attend, in fact) and boy has it been different. I decided to publish this post after the end of the placement and the staff weekend away at the end of it to give me time to collect my thoughts and experiences into a concise, coherent passage.

Now I don't know if you the reader have ever been back to your primary (or elementary) school after leaving as a fresh-faced 11-year-old, but the main thing you notice is how everything used to be a lot bigger, including the number of kids in your class - although this may be just me - I remember when I was in year 6 (5th grade) there were about 30 of us, I spent most of my time working with that class that now has 18 and they were struggling for room! For the life in me I cannot fathom how 30 of us managed to fit in there, although the current year 6 teacher is quite creative and likes to build things out of cardboard, so a whole corner of the room has been dedicated to it.

Onto my actual work though, and it has sort of been split into two parts: the first part I did for two weeks during my own Easter holidays (we get 4 weeks at university as opposed to the standard 2) and it was very much focused on SATs and the numeracy and literacy involved, that's another thing that's changed in that when I was their age we also had a KS2 SAT in science. This gave me a chance to really practice my maths teaching by taking a few of the children through to the library and working through a mock SAT arithmetic paper. The closeness of being with a group of just 4 - much like in Catalunya - meant I was really able to get inside their thought processes on the questions and make sure they understood what was being asked, even if they were a little embarrassed at first to tell me what they'd done as it turned out to be wrong. Of course on some questions though, this part was easy, on one of them they had to circle the decimal equivalent of 1/5 out of a choice of 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5, it was easy to deduce what had happened inside the minds of those who circled 0.5.

I also briefly went into the year 1 class as they were doing a project on Spain, and I was just itching to get in some Spanish teaching, this however was a lot more difficult as they first of all had to get round just how I actually knew Spanish - how do you know Spanish if you're not Spanish? Why did you live there? - Just so many questions before I could even get onto all the 'my name is...', 'I am ... years old' etc. I couldn't really do any Spanish in year 6 as language-wise they were all focused on building up their French portfolios for secondary school, and je ne parle pas français yet.

The second part involved coming back after I had done my own exams (or big SATs as the children dubbed them) and after they they had done theirs which meant education-wise there was, well, nothing to do, except a few transitional numeracy exercises. So they filled the time mostly with preparing for their end-of-year show, church service and Summer Fayre and PE, all of which I got heavily involved in, there was allsorts to build for the show and it needed quite a lot of expertise! All in all it was a fun few weeks with very little actual teaching involved, in fact I think the ones who learnt the most were myself and the other volunteers!

At the end of the last day of school I was made to promise some of the children I'd go back to my old highschool as a teacher so I could teach them maths, and I haven't ruled it out! I have been advised to stay in England for at least the first year after completing my PgCE (which would have been the plan anyway) and then who knows!

A Little About Me Then

I suppose the most unique fact about me is my degree, which is in Spanish Studies and Mathematics which I achieved in July 2013 (or at the time of posting this, next Tuesday) from the University of Lancaster. This has given me a much broader range of skills and experiences than if I had taken on simply a Spanish or mathematics degree, unfortunately the mandatory year abroad of a language degree didn't give me any experience in teaching mathematics in a foreign language - I was an English Language Assistant in a secondary school in Catalunya - although it has given me experience in dealing with children whose first language is not my own - something which I have faced head-on in the Summer of 2013 upon volunteering at my old junior school where a Thai student has joined.

My PgCE at the University of Cumbria (Lancaster's campus, so really not a big move for me) will focus very much on the teaching of mathematics however I also plan to keep up my languages, in particular Spanish (which I have been studying for 11 years) and Catalan/Valencian (3 years), in my first year I also minored in Italian and I plan to learn French, German and Polish in my spare time (but believe me, I have taken on board all assurances as to how difficult this may well be to manage!)

Moving into the more personal area, I was born and have lived almost all my life in Huddersfield, that is, up until my village became part of Holmfirth, I attended Holmfirth High School, gaining a broad range of GCSEs including an A in maths in year 9 - still a crowning achievement - and a further A in statistics in year 10. These are among grades from A* in electronics and Spanish to, well, an F in art. From there I went to Greenhead College to study my A-Levels, achieving As in maths, further maths and Spanish along with a B in physics and a B at AS-Level in computing. From there I went straight to Lancaster to take on my degree including a year as an ELA in a secondary school in Amposta - almost equidistant between Barcelona and Valencia. Highly recommended if you find yourself in Spain with nothing to do for a few days, as you do.

Outside academia I have my Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award and am hoping to achieve the Silver and Gold awards, and I am also a qualified football referee, a career path which I hope to pursue to the very top (but I can't play the sport to save my life!) I'll also use this as an excuse to learn so many languages - imagine an international level referee with 7 languages under his belt!

So...why start a blog?

I decided to start this blog to reflect on my year studying a PgCE so that hopefully I can look back on it during my (hopefully numerous and successful) years as a teacher and so that future teaching trainees can hopefully gain an insight as to what the year is like and - for potential applicants - whether it is for them.

That's really all there is to put in this first post I suppose, a bit of my own background will follow in the next post and some actual styles and formatting will be applied in time.