I had my first day of 'work experience' today as the headmaster put it.
Was in the key stage 1 class which had 19 children in. The whole class read Little Red Riding Hood first. I was helping Year 2 kids (there's only 4 of them) do a 'story map' about Little Red Riding Hood all morning, then they coloured it in in the afternoon and then watched a film for the last half an hour before home time.
Reception were mainly playing all day and Year 1 were doing a big story map of Little Red Riding Hood with the teacher.
It seemed very.. different. Even though I was only with Year 3 before, they seemed to be constantly doing work whereas there was a lot of play time in Key Stage 1. It felt a bit unorganised. I sometimes wonder how teachers manage because I was only helping 4 kids and that was challenging enough because 2 girls were really good at writing and could write whole sentences, but the 2 boys weren't very good at writing and were finding it difficult to write words.
I'm with the Key Stage 2 class all day tomorrow. Looking forward to it more because it's more learning and not playing! But it's good that I have seen what the younger children are like. I definitely think Key Stage 2/Upper Primary is best for me though because I loved being with year 3 kids before, and I found Key Stage 1 a bit boring to be honest.
I did get a lot of observation in though between helping so going to note all that down. I forgot how tiring it is as well!