Potter Mad!

I start this blog after watching the most anticipated film this year ...Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1!

I am not much of a book reader (don't tell me english lecturers) so it's no shock when I say I haven't read any of the books. My brother has bought them all and they sit on a bookshelf unread. Maybe one day I will read them to a class while I'm teaching. One of the things lecturers tell us trainee teachers to do is... not to give up reading to children. Whether they are year1 or year 6 all children will benefit from being read to. Anyways back to HP... My Fiance prebooked tickets for the Xtreme screen at Vue Westfield. The screen is like mahoooosive and the sound is emence. We had to arrive early to collect our tickets due to the high demand. It was sold out, every seat filled with excited Harry Potter fans. The atmosphere was amazing and the film...Wow! I got pretty scared at times, wishing I had a pillow to hid behind and I shed a tear in moments too. I'm far too emotional for my own good.

Speaking about being emotional I also had a tear in my eye this week when my lecturer Peter Gregory announced that he was leaving. I was really shocked and proper gutted. He teaches me for my specialisms; SEN and Arts in Education. I thought he would be the most appropriate person to supervise me for my disseration;as it about colour and dyslexia. Although I am really gutted I do also wish him all the best with his new job that is closer to his house than Greenwich, but at a rival uni grrr! Imagine me shedding a tear over a lecturer! How sad am I!

So in my last blog I mentioned I had attempt number 3 for Literacy Skills Test and FINALLY I PASSED! I can happily now fill in applications to the teaching pools, ticking the box to say I have completed all my tests.

This point in the academic calender as a year 3 student is proving extremely challenging. I have lectures like every day and assignments due in next month. I also have my research proposal due in on Thursday. Luckily thats already done as I worked on it with the summer university course I did. This week I will be starting my core assignment on effective teaching. So you will find me in the library when I'm not in a lecture.

See ya x x x

Baby cow!

So this weekend we have the great news to tell you Nikki from the office has given bith to Daisy (real name Louisa) I called her Daisy because Nikki loves cows, almost as much as I love cows.
I can prove I love them more because I have cow print car seat covers, seat belt covers and steering wheel cover (I had to take the steering wheel cover off when i fractured my wrist 2 years ago when I fell off my scooter but haven't put it back on! I also have cuddly cows, a cow print adult baby grow (my fella isn't impressed with that one) and loads of cow print pjs! I might call my own child Daisy one day...doubt my fella will agree to it! To add to my insanity I have already named 2 of my children...I intend on having at least 3, George Ryan Richard Cooper and Jasmine Grace Cooper. The fellas surname as you can see is Cooper and wants a daughter called Minnie or Mini which I would never allow, therefore having Jasmine it can be shortened to Minnie.

I am pretty broody, I think I have been broody for as long as I can remember. One of the great opportunities I have had this week and will next week is looking after baby Charlotte. She is only 3 months old and is very lucky because both her mum and dad are training to be primary teachers at Greenwich. You will often find them swapping over childcare inbetween lectures. She's like the youngest person do receive a uni education lol. As daddy is now in school placement, which lasts 5 weeks in your second year, mummy doesn't have anyone to cover her when she's in lectures. This is when the child loving babysitters that year 3 offers. I had the pleasure of Charlotte's company for 2 hours last week. She wasn't keen on the computer rooms but seemed to quite like the staff and student common room. I had planned on taking her on a walk to Southwood Site so I could sign my Jobshop contract but it was pouring with rain and freezing cold.

Anyways here's an example of the exciting workshops we do on the primary degree: Film making.

We had a 3 hour session where we was shown the software and then left to play and prepare our own mini film. Take a look the link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rARPaB34oLA
if it doesnt work simply go to you tube and type in puppet love by georgina2384

Hope you have a good week!

Georgina

Priorities, priorities, priorities!

So this week in the life of a year 3 student I have been trying my best to organise myself.

If I wasn't so embarrassed about the state my room was in I would take a photo but you will be happy to know it is all tidy now!

One of the benefits of being engaged to a carpenter is that he can build useful things. In my first year of uni he built me a new wardrobe, a desk and storage for all my books.

As a primary teacher one thing is that you have lots of is books, folders and more folders. Having not anticipated the amount of folders I needed and now accumalated I am now lacking space! One of the most organised things I have done is investing in magazine racks. I have a magazine rack for every subject, once I have finished a lecture or workshop I put whatever I have written or collected in their respective boxes allowing me to put them into folders when needed. This week I have to show my maths folder to my lecturers. Our maths folders show evidence towards the subject knowledge we have to have for our teaching practice and allowing us to obtain qualifies teacher status (QTS) On the note of QTS that dreaded literacy test and guess what...I failed once again! The best thing is that I don't have to pay for retakes. I have taken out a book from the library on the literacy skills test so hopefully after reading it I will have more success! You are probably thinking how can I fail again? Well try them out for yourself; type in QTS literacy practice test into google and follow the links and have a go!

So this weekend was 5th November - Guy Fawkes Night I had planned on attending a locally organised one but it poured down with rain and I didnt want to get muddy. Instead I went to my best mates house and we bought some fireworks and had our own fireworks show. We invited her neighbours round too. My partner was very brave to light them. I really enjoyed watching them and having sparklers...even though it was raining! One of the fireworks after it had gone out, fell back onto my friends roof so she will have a permanant reminder (unless is falls off) of the nights festivities.

Apostrophes

In my last blog I spoke extensively about my QTS skills Tests. You will be happy to know so far I have passed ICT and Numeracy, but as I guessed I failed Literacy :'(
So back to the drawing board. The one good thing about the tests is they tell you why you failed. I failed on the punctuation and comprehension sections and missed passing by 3 marks!

Being so close to passing was annoying but I am now on to figuring out where I am going wrong.

My first issue is apostrophes (') I always forget when I need to use them. And thanks to my mate Phil who has been sitting and patiently helping me to understand. Apostrophes are used when something belongs. So an example 'The school's rule book says you can not run in the corridors. The other time you need them is breaking up words like you're to shorten you are. Sounds crazy that you can go through education achieving A levels and GCSE's and over halfway through a degree but use apostrophes wrong!

I've got my retake for Literacy on Tuesday so once again wish me luck!

Also this week I had 'The most boring lecture in the world!' We had guest lecturer and it was awful! Last time we had a guest it was the amazing Andrew Lambirth! A genius lecturer who inspired me so much for my teaching career. He was so good the uni decided to keep him and I believe he will be doing a couple more lectures in the future, I can not wait! Back to this boring lecture it was on 'team work'...seriously when you are in 3rd year of a degree after having to do many group presentations, there is definitely no need for a lecture on it! The guest lecturer would ask us to discuss with person next to us on the topic and all you heard was people saying 'core aint this boring!' I also ended up on facebook on my iphone and noticed alot of people from my class also online. I wonder if the other lecturers felt the same way as the rest of us....like what was the point?! This is not to put a downer on my degree as I absolutely love University of Greenwich and its an amazing institution for Primary Teaching degree but I will defo be giving some feedback at the end of year on that one!

That's all for now!

Georgina :)