Some thoughts from the early years ~ Castledown Primary

Feeling very conscious, after spending my second day with Tim and Sarah, of my lack of ‘gorgeous language, similes and metaphors’-but ‘not worrying about my spelling’ (not because of Tim’s reassurance that it’s not always the most important part, but in this case because of the spell checker), I embark on summarising yesterday’s experience from an early years teachers perspective.

Wednesday’s teacher training left me feeling a mix of excitement and overload of ideas. I needed little encouragement to go home and play around with some of the apps and pages we had talked about and think of ways to link them in to my teaching. But for me today was the most inspiring part as it really gave us an opportunity to see some of the software in practice and become part of the class to experience how it can be delivered in such a powerful way.

I am a fairly newly qualified teacher so it is always interesting to watch someone else teach. But to the children it felt less like teaching and more like being guided through a new world and adventures together, chatting and scribbling down there ideas as they went. Tim led and drew ideas from the children and had endless techniques up his sleeve to get more and encourage longer, more imaginative answers every time.

I sat next to a Year Three boy whose first comment was ‘This can’t be exciting; it’s just a picture of some ship under the sea’.  He then went on to speak at length about the picture to the friend next to him, got into an almost heated debate due to their differing opinions about just how the ship had got there and wrote nearly a page of his thoughts when it was suggested he put ‘scribbly stick’ to paper.

Also important to me was being given the chance to see how the same ideas were so transferable across all the age groups and abilities. Just subtle changes meant that even the youngest children were able to express their thoughts and feelings and were engaged for extended periods.

I can’t wait to explore more of Tim and Sarah’s discoveries and hope that as a school we can do justice to what we have learnt and share it with others. I would like to say a massive thank you and give a ‘ripple’ to you both.

Hannah Gibson
Castledown Primary School

Category: 1) Events and Training days, 2) Useful n Interesting, 4) Well Done!