#pre course reading

[kelseybecomesateacher]

Adulting.

I am trying very hard to act like my 24 years rather than a teenager. Living at home for the past three years has seen me revert back to my teenage ways of spending money till my card gets declined, refusing to buy new glasses 🙈 and spending half my life procrastinating. On Monday I finally gave into my mum and set up Internet banking, looking in my account after three years of avoiding it was a bitter pill but I feel so much better now knowing where I stand finically, as opposed to laying awake all night worrying how I was going to afford my car/rent next year. Not that I would ever admit that to Mum. I also ordered new glasses, despite paying medical insurance since I was at university last time around I was insistent that I didn't need/want/couldn't be bothered to get new glasses. This also made my mum very happy. Yesterday I moved into my house, sort of. All my stuff is there but somehow I ended up back at my parents house last night! This morning I'm registering for uni, I normally manage to cock up things like this spectacularly so will probably be posting my rantings on here shortly 🙊

[kelseybecomesateacher]

¿Habla usted Inglés?

Last week I spent 5 days in Barcelona/Port Adventura and I was truly blown away by the amount of English every one we encountered spoke. I was also ashamed that even after a week in the country the only Spanish I had picked up was "Yes" "Two" "Exit" and a rather offensive curse word which I have noticed football players use rather a lot! As an English person I always feel so ignorant about how when we are abroad we expect other people to accommodate us and make very little effort to return the favour. Working within a highly EAL setting I was always amazed and fascinated by how quickly children picked up English once they were submerged in it. Within weeks they were able to have full conversations in their second, or sometimes third language and I often had to use children to translate for me and help me communicate. I think it would be beneficial for everyone to learn a second language, properly. We tried to teach Spanish at Priory but it was more of a filler lesson than anything else. I have such an obsessive love for people speaking their second language as will probably come quite apparent on this blog!

[kelseybecomesateacher]

Mathmatics

I am really, really struggling with revising for my maths audit. I only passed my QTS maths test on a wing and a prayer, and I am starting to worry about teaching it as I am struggling with it so much. When I worked with Year 5 I found maths much easier as I was working with HAPs who would be doing level six SATs papers next year. But that was over a year ago and I’ve spent this academic year working with LAPs in Year 3 who struggled to add numbers smaller than 10 without visual aids meaning I haven’t practiced lots of methods such as working with decimals or algebra in a very long time.

[kelseybecomesateacher]

The Poetry Library

I am hoping to visit the Poetry Library during the summer, but for today I have to make do with the website. There isn’t too many resources on here but the stuff they do have on here is pretty good and should be helpful next year. 

[kelseybecomesateacher]

British Library Website: Dialect an Accents get my heart racing.

I am a big geek when it comes to dialect.  I have always been incredibly proud of my Norfolk accent and had an intense interest in other peoples accents. Curiously when I first moved to Birmingham I nearly lost my accent entirely and picked up a thick brummy one instead. I am the person who watches all those accent videos on YouTube and then tries to copy them. I am useless at echoing accents but I still love them immensely. The British library has a fabulous page on their website all about accents and dialect that I could spend hours scouring for information on. 

[kelseybecomesateacher]

Random Musings on www.Poetryline.org.uk

This is an absolutely amazing resource. Thousands of poems available for free and already organised by year group. I can see this website very absolutely invaluable over PGCE and then during my career as a teacher. Beautiful website that is very easy to navigate to around. I also loved how many poems featured on the site have a video of the poet reading their poem. 

[kelseybecomesateacher]

Random Musings on www.DavidCrystal.com

Absolutely fantastic source for articles about the English language and linguistics.  I has a very interesting time looking round at the resources for about half and hour, I was a bit overwhelmed by all the resources on there and wasn’t sure where to start. However I feel like this will be very helpful in the future when I can focus my search a bit more!

[kelseybecomesateacher]

Random Musings on www.SFS.org.uk

“To Increase Public awareness of the value of Oral Story telling.”

This is something that I also find very important. I have had the pleasure to watch two professional story tellers and both times have found the experience very rewarding as did the children I was working with at the time. I am also a huge advocate for talk to write which ties in very neatly with Oral Story telling.

“To promote the exploration of storytelling in all its diverse forms and various applications”

Very important, particularly living in a very multi-cultural country. All children from every country from all around the world deserve to know and embrace story from their cultures and other cultures. 

 This story has some fantastic teaching resources that I look forward to exploring in the future and using in my lessons.