A Day At Heyhouses Primary School

As my mum is a good friend of the head teacher at my old primary school, I decided to use this to my advantage and ask if I could come to the school and just sit in on lessons for a day just to see the difference in teaching methods. I was in a year four class and the teacher was my sister’s friend so it was easy for me to approach her with some questions I had. It was very interesting to see the way teachers interact with children and vice versa at a young level, some children were quite needy and that was clear due to them going up to Miss.Singleton and hugging her, generally trying to get her attention whenever they could. She handled it very well meaning I took a lot from this day, there was also the quieter children who just sat and got on with the task they were given.

They had art in the afternoon and were in the first lesson of making a little bag for a tooth that had fallen out to put in it and under their pillows for the tooth fairy. Miss.Singleton asked me to work with a child who had special needs and wasn’t very chatty but I managed to get some conversation out of him and hep him with the sewing of the pouch. I tried to use some of the things I had learnt in our talk on working with people with learning difficulties and I hope that he appreciated it.

The difference I saw in a primary school and secondary school is that they are a lot more excited and engaged in learning which I expected but they still had some of the same habits older pupils have like chatting when not supposed to, not always listening but it was on a much smaller scale. The teaching methods I feel are pretty much the same just simpler, like the 1-5 count in order to gain control and quiet was used but had them taking part. For instance the teacher started counting from 1 and as she started to get their attention they would join in and after number 5 they all had to have their finger up against their mouths and say shhh. Every time she did it, it worked so they knew and were disciplined in doing this. She also had another tactic which I suspect isn’t used in secondary schools, she would clap a rhythm and they had to copy her so she knew whoever got it wrong or wasn’t taking part wasn’t listening and she repeated this until everyone was quiet changing the rhythm each time.