placement

From the 5th to the 9th of December I was on placement in Parkland Primary school.

During my time there I was placed in the nursery class. I don't believe this was the best time to go on placement as it was so close to Christmas the children were predominantly practising their Christmas concert so I didn't really get to see much learning on what was intended to be an observation week.

However, I did learn quite a bit about how children learn while I was there. The small bits of teaching that were going on during the week involved a lot of song and actions that the children got involved in. All pupils seemed to enjoy these times regardless of whether they were good academically or not.

Parkland is a very inclusive school in some ways. A large portion of both nursery classes were from a Muslim back round and many of them struggled to or even didn't speak English. I do believe this highly disadvantaged the children themselves and put an unnecessary pressure onto the teachers. However, this kind of setting from such a young age does promote equality among the children.

In other ways Parkland isn't a very inclusive school. They have a separate special needs department rather than children with special educational needs being in the classrooms with those children who don't. Although without having been into the special needs classroom I do not know how severe these children's needs are. They may well be disruptive if they were in with children who do not need extra help.

Unfortunately most of my week was taken up by rehearsals for their Christmas concert as I have said but I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Parkland and was sad that I had to leave.