1. Arranging your experiential placements
Ensuring you have the best start to your training.

2. Arranging your Experiential Placements
Your programme is made up of university-based learning and school-based learning. It is designed to ensure you have the required 120 days of school-based learning. Your two experiential placements contribute to these 120 days.

3. Experiential Placements –4 days (page 4)
Lower route
2days in a 0-3 setting, e.g., crèche or playgroup
2 days in a Key Stage 2 class
Upper route
2 days in a Key Stage 1 setting (plus EYFS unit if possible)
2 days in a Key Stage 3 setting

4. When? At the beginning of your taught programme
Tuesday 11th – Friday14th September 2018
You may organise to complete these earlier, e.g. during the summer term.

5. The purpose of these placements
To ensure you are familiar with and engage with the Key Stages before and after the ones you will be assessed in during your formal placements.
To broaden your understanding of:
children and learning
teachers and teaching
schools as communities

6. (assessment, behaviour management and supporting vulnerable groups)
Three Tasks
Task 1 (page 6)
Practitioner Enquiry
(assessment, behaviour management and supporting vulnerable groups)
Task 2 (page 12)
Child Study
Task 3 (page 16)
Educational Values

7. This will involve collecting evidence from:
your reading
documentation from settings and schools
discussions
observations

8. Implications This evidence collection will lead to
critical reflections on the implications of
what you have found
for you as a teacher
for children in general
for the settings and schools in which you
have had experience.

9. Recording your evidence
Make brief notes on your observations and discussions in situ
Summarise your thinking using the pro forma in the handbook
You will not need to bring all of this evidence into university but you must ensure you keep it to hand. It will inform discussions in seminars as well as contribute to your assessed academic work.

10. Professional conduct and appearance

11. Task 1: Practitioner Enquiry (page 6)
Assessment
Behaviour
Supporting vulnerable groups
What does the research say?
What does it look like in school?
So what? What does it mean to you as a beginning teacher?

12. Collecting evidence from your placements
Stage 1
Literature review
Stage 2
Collecting evidence from your placements
Stage 3
Critical reflection
Implications

13. Task 2: Child Study (page 12)
One child from each setting Observation of the child across a half day Try to see the experience through the eyes of the child Include transition and playground times

14. Child Study
Observe the child for units of 15 minutes at a time and then at the end of each 15 minutes, summarise what the child did.
Use simple narrative descriptions
Annotate samples of work or photographs with:
date
context
code name of the child
reference to notes
Use the pro forma provided
Remember that you should ask the school whether you need to gain the permission of the child’s parent or carer for the study, especially if you are to take photographs. Be sensitive if you talk to the child; probing questions about their family circumstances are not appropriate. The child’s real name should not be used and the study should state this if another name is used.
Try to come to conclusions about the learning experience for each child across the day in relation to:
the teaching and learning strategies adopted;
the teaching arrangements e.g. grouping, layout, setting;
teacher expectations of the children;
the curriculum.
Then reflect on the comparative learning experience of the two children.
Your reflections should be recorded using the pro forma provided (see page 12/13).

15. Task 3: Educational Values (page 16)
Arrange to speak with the Head or class teacher in the setting(s)
Discuss the school’s educational values with them – see questions in handbook
Consider your own educational values

16. Organising your notes, tasks and activities

17. What are your conclusions?
What were the differences and similarities in:
curriculum
use of time
learning strategies
teaching approaches used?
overall experience
Were you surprised and why?
How independently did children work?
What kinds of tasks involved thinking skills?
How much were children allowed to collaborate?
Make general reflective notes.

18. What have you learned about education?
What are the implications for learning and teaching in the two Key Stages you will be focussing on during your programme?
Part of critical thinking is your ability to reflect, consider differing viewpoints and begin to formulate your ideas about education. You might do this through making comparisons, synthesising the information you have gathered, asking questions/hypothesising.
You should keep these thoughts and particularly your questions so that as you progress through the course you can answer them and consider how your thinking is changed.