Okay so I've really been struggling with a couple of things during last placement. The main one being my lesson plans, but also transporting the stuff I need to and from school sensibly.
With the lesson plans I was apparently using the university's standard lesson plan instead of the super specific ones for our subject. The subject specific ones have so much additional information that I can't just *see* what I'm supposed to be doing through all of the other thousands of fields and check boxes. Do you think it's okay to continue to use the one I'm currently using for myself? It's clear and I've added extra white space so I can just glance and know what I'm doing next and then I'm also making additional work for myself in that I still need to do the other one too to put in my folder. Essentially I suck at planning. I know it's in my head and what timings and such but I'm not good at translating that into the minute detail my uni requires of me. I'm writing short sentences where I need to be writing paragraphs upon paragraphs for each lesson episode.
I also got told off for not giving the pupils enough time to complete activities and that more time needs to be spent actually doing stuff on computers, but then was pulled at observation by my uni for them spending too long looking at their screens so I need to figure out a way of splitting their activities up but I hate to do it when they're really focused on something like that.
My second major issue is transporting what I need for each lesson every day. Is that standard? I was having to take in the workbooks for each lesson I taught and if I had more than one lesson that day it was crippling. I then had to bring pens, markers, bits of paper, worksheets and anything else I needed to teach the lessons. Essentially I had nowhere to leave anything in the school as the department was struggling for space completely. I commute quite a distance in the mornings and that includes two buses and sometimes a train so my issue is keeping everything dry and movable while making it small enough to put on a train. I also need to take in my university folders too plus my very small laptop. Any idea how to deal with any of this apart from buying a car which is what the other trainees seemed to do?