Yahoooooooo!

Ok, I am really excited. I met my Mentor and visited my school and my nerves have dissipated and have turned into utter excitement. I am really looking forward to this professional experience. My Mentor doesn’t use a whole lot of ICT’s within the classroom, she describes herself as ‘old school’. She didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned IWB…although she does have one and uses it often.

The school doesn’t have an ICT teacher as I originally thought, their website information needs updating. However, they do have a box of Bee Bots, some Bee Bot mats, some speech-to-record microphones, 16 mini iPads and the IWB. Apparently, there are 6 computers, 3 or which work…some of the time.

So my strategy over the holidays is to prepare some lesson plans using the Bee Bots as the class has not done anything with them or coding to date. It really gives me a good grounding to start using the ICT. They have also never used QR codes and the iPads are only used at the moment during guided reading.

This really seems like the best scenario for me, as it gives me some things to play with and in some ways I am happy the teacher doesn’t use many ICT’s now because it will all be novel and engaging to the students I hope.

I have really been enjoying reading about other preservice educator’s ‘take’ on professional experience, as I think we are all generally hoping for the same outcomes and trying to ‘get through’ it, as best we can. This blog post is from a teacher who remembers what it was like to be a student teacher and offers some great thoughts.

My teacher mentioned being an ‘Archer Leader’ school… does anyone know what that is? I am not sure if I heard it correct. She made me think it was a theorist but I haven’t heard of them and have tried google to no avail. Would love to hear your thoughts. I am thinking maybe its Margaret Archer or maybe it is something to do with this? I am not sure but she did say she will go over it with me on my first day. So, I will let you know when I find out.