Welsh Language

Hello bloggers

In this blog I will taking a look at the welsh language and determining its value in the current primary education system.

Wales has many things to be proud of, it’s famous for a lot of things; Coal mining, welsh cakes, Tom Jones, Dylan Thomas, sheep, but what Wales should be most proud of is the welsh language, it derives from Gaelic, is over 1400 years old, and sounds beautiful, it has also stood the test of time, sort of.

Stats wales shows that the percentage of people that speak welsh in all but 3 local authorities has significantly decreased since between 2001 and 2011 and that number is still in decline. Although it is declining it is still mandatory in primary schools and is taught across Wales.

The Donaldson review states that ‘the Welsh culture is wholly dependent on transmitting the language to our young people’ which means that if we want to language to carry on it must be taught at a young age, Donaldson also outlines that he would like to see an increase in amount of people that both speak and use the welsh language, whilst I too would like to see it, I think it is an unachievable goal realistically speaking.

The welsh languages popularity is clearly on the decline and to see a noticeable change in that would require a radical change in not on the curriculum, but the whole schooling system, and I don’t believe this change is needed in the foundation phase. Wales is fantastic to learn about and the topic of Wales provides many opportunities for cross curricular learning, you can learn about the geography and history of wales, the poems and the music, the mining and the machinery, all of these are great examples of combing subjects and basing that around a single subject, I also believe that the language itself should be taught to a certain degree to try and spark an interest in the language, but then the child will be given an opportunity to further pursue the language when they get to secondary school where they are given more freedom.

Whitehouse, S and Jones, M (2017) agree with my point that it is important to have some understanding of welsh culture and the language it’s a great thing to be proud of, but we should not waste time trying to save a language that is arguably beyond saving, time is precious in primary education and that time could be spent teaching children literacy, although it could be argued that a child learning both welsh and English may even enhance their learning of English as they begin to understand things like mutations and dialects in language.

In conclusion I myself am proud of my heritage, especially being from the Rhondda Valleys, but when it comes to the language I can’t say I have much hope for it, although I suppose you must consider the fact that roughly 16% of the Rhondda Valleys actually speak the language so I may be biased.

References

Donaldson, G (2015) Successful Futures: Independent Review of Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements in Wales Available at: http://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/150225-successful-futures-en.pdf (Accessed 16th April 2018)

StatsWales (2011) Welsh speakers by local authority and broader age groups 2001 and 2011 census Available at: https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Welsh-Language/WelshSpeakers-by-LA-BroaderAge-2001And2011Census (Accessed 16th April 2018)

Whitehouse, S. and Jones, M. (2017) ‘Primary humanities: a perspective from Wales’ Education 3-13 45(3) pp.332-342

Science and Technology

Hello Bloggers!

In today’s blog I will be looking at science and technology activities and how they can be made engaging and relevant in primary education.

Science and technology is either a hit or miss with some students, they either love it or they hate it, I believe this is due to science either being very fun or very boring, its either exciting experiments or mind numbing textbook work.

Whilst it’s obviously preferred for all children to be engaged in science and technology lessons, you can’t have wild experiments every lesson due to the strain it would make on resources, although I believe these lessons need to be more consistent. I recently have been on placement and it took me back to when I was in primary school because science lessons were either an hour-long experiment where all the equipment was out and children were in lab coats or they would be sitting down with books describing materials and things like that.

Consistency is important because If a child comes into a lesson with high hopes for an exciting lesson and they then find out it’s book work, then their enthusiasm is immediately gone and they’re not going to be in the mindset for the rest of the lesson, I believe there needs to be a balance, all lessons should incorporate book work, and something for children to get their hands on, stimulate all the senses.

Donaldson (2015) states that science and technology go hand in hand and he later describes it as a way to capitalise on children’s curiosity and turn it into learning which I thought was very interesting, using a child’s natural behaviour to better their learning, I’ve spoken briefly about how children need to be stimulated and challenged constantly, why not allow them to create their own activities, I believe that science and technology lessons can be a brilliant way to incorporate student led learning, for example you could give the class or different groups a problem or something they need to measure and allow them to figure out how to conduct that experiment, the teacher could be more a facilitator and just oversee their learning; innervation and exploration are key in learning and give the pupil a sense of joy and accomplishment when it comes to running experiments.

There is only one foreseeable flaw I see with pupil lead learning in this context, with so much going on and with them being left to determine how to overcome a task, a child may become over stimulated and then lose focus on the task which can lead to behavioural issues and set the tone for the rest of the class, this is why I think whilst I believe children should be given a certain degree of freedom, it needs to be clear what the aim of the lesson is beforehand and any consequence for pupils that disrupt the lesson.

Relating back to the aim of this blog, the lessons also need to be relevant to children, children need to see that things they learn in the classroom have real life applications, when I was on placement there was one lessons that really impressed me where the teacher was teaching the children about friction and forces, and he had beforehand told them to bring in toy cars, he then weighed down their own toy cars from home to show how friction and drag work, he also brought in light plastic army men with parachutes and threw them into the air to demonstrate up thrust, and I think it’s that mix of the science and real life applications that make science more relevant to the children, that’s something they can take home and talk to their parents about and means that parents can converse with them too.

Overall, I believe that to make science and technology lessons more engaging and relevant, lessons need to have a consistent level of excitement, be partly student led, and students should be made clear of the fact that the things they learn have real life applications, thank you for reading.

References

  Donaldson, G (2015) Successful Futures: Independent Review of Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements in Wales

Physical Education

Hello bloggers!

In this blog I will be exploring how physical education can be used to promote well-being in primary education.

First of I think it is important that we determine what we mean by ‘well-being’, well-being can be defined as a state of being comfortable, healthy or happy, in this blog I will be discussing well-being in the physical and emotional way.

When we talk about well-being and physical education we automatically think of the physical side and how physical education promotes children to look after their bodies and keep fit, but physical education can also have a massive impact on the brain and mental well-being.

We don’t tend to think of children having mental health issues but this is becoming an ever-growing problem in our society, it is known that routine kills creativity and bores the brain, therefore whilst going to the same old gym to practise physical education may keep the body fit, the mind will suffer, doing the same thing over and over bores children and this leads to children being

Being outside along with practising physical education releases serotonin and dopamine which make children feel good mentally and actually want to partake in activates, a change in scenery is essential in stimulating the brain and therefore reinforcing engagement. highlights the importance of outdoor activities and says that being outside with fellow students aids development of social and interpersonal skills, although why being outside feels good doesn’t need an explanation, it just does and that’s what important, although this leads me to my next point which is that learning outdoors is a fantastic way to take advantage of learning cross curricularly.

Cross curricular learning is the process of combining two or more subjects together in the same lesson to break the routine of traditional lessons whilst getting children exciting and engaged, it can also trick children into thinking that they are not learning when in fact they are learning in a far more effective manor, cross curricular learning doesn’t tend to have strict learning outcomes, you reflect on what you have learned at the end. Donaldson sees these changes and cross curricular learning is being implemented far more as a result.

The Donaldson report states that the curriculum should enable children to apply in unfamiliar contexts what they have learned (Donaldson 2005) and learning cross curricularly outside is a perfect way of doing that, children could be jogging along a path whilst keeping an eye out for certain plans or species, children could be doing warm up stretches whilst seeing if they can listen out for certain things in nature, or children could count how many times they see a certain type of tree whilst exploring a forest.

Whilst I have talked about the mental benefits we also cannot forget about the physical benefits, childhood obesity is becoming a global epidemic, the UK government published that in 2015 one in five children in reception is overweight or obese (22.6% of boys and 21.2% of girls) and that one in three children in year 6 is overweight or obese (34.9% boys and 31.5% girls) It can be difficult for some children to keep fit because some children live in busy areas which means there isn’t a place they can go on their own to exercise, so schools and the facilities provided by schools are crucial in making sure children keep fit and healthy.

Whilst we have discussed the benefits of physical education and generally being outside, it is important to relate back to the main question of this blog, how can well-being be promoted through physical education? well I believe that taking children out of the traditional classroom setting and placing them in an environment where they are being stimulated and what they view as a lesson is being challenged, and then explain to them the benefits and why it is important to keep fit and healthy and planning lessons that the children will not forget and make them excited to partake in the future; make sure the child is comfortable both physically and mentally.

References

Donaldson, G. (2015) Successful Future: Independent review of curriculum and assessment arrangements in Wales. [Online] Available at: http://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/150225-successful-futures-en.pdf (Accessed 16th April 2018)

GOV.UK (2015) Childhood obesity: applying All Our Health Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/childhood-obesity-applying-all-our-health/childhood-obesity-applying-all-our-health

Expressive Arts

Hello bloggers!

In this blog I will be talking about something that I am very passionate about and that is music and the expressive arts, more specifically, how it relates to the four purposes of the curriculum that are outlined in Donaldson Review.

Music has been a passion of mine for about 12 years, I’ve always wanted to tutor music and since I have undertaken my studies I have realised what an excellent opportunity it is to experiment with cross curricular learning, I will now give examples of how the expressive arts relate to the four purposes of the curriculum

All our children and young people will be:

Ambitious, capable learners

Ambition is something that al musicians and dancers must have, you must want to better yourself and be the best, and this will only be achieved through practise and self-discipline, these two skills will be vital in bettering yourself in any subject, any subject requires time and attention

Being capable not only means being able to do something it means understanding why you’re doing something, whilst the expressive arts are something that comes from the heart, there still needs to be an aim, and a direction.

Anyone with an interest in the expressive arts is capable, and can be ambitious.

Enterprising creative contributors

Creativity is the bedrock of all the expressive arts, creativity fuels all musicians, dancers and artists. Enterprising can mean teamwork, how a group of people work together to achieve an objective, this usually refers to business but can quite easily relate to music, group performances really enhance team work as everyone relies on each other, the melody relies on the bass to keep it time, whilst the bass relies on the melody for ques. You need to exercise a lot of trust in your peers when performing as a group.

Ethical, informed citizens

Being ethical, and informed on global issues is something that can be easily understood through art, all cultures demonstrate art in some way and it’s all expressive, the romans created fashionable pots while Zulu warriors would paint their shields, you can obtain a great understanding of a cultures virtues if you examine their art, this also provides an opportunity for school trips which will further enhance a child’s learning.

Healthy, confident individuals

Pride, confidence and responsibility breeds competence and power (Webb, Liggy 2013), confidence is something that will be used all your life, everyone has some degree of confidence, and it’s how much confidence we have that determines how far we go in certain situations and can make us miss opportunities, I know that if a lecturer asks a question I am reluctant to answer, then I get anxious because what if I’m right and someone steals my praise, but what if I’m wrong and I am mocked. How much a child participates is directly linked to how confident they are in themselves, and all of the arts are a fantastic way to build confidence, you can perform in front of friends in music, dance in front of friends in drama and show friends you’re masterpieces in art, although they are the obvious answers, what people don’t realise that in all of the expressive arts you can always improve, and this means you can always and I mean always be criticised, it’s this constructive criticism that leads children to see that you don’t have to be wrong to want to do better, and that being told where you’re going wrong is the key to learning.

Here is an interesting video that outlines why the arts are important in schools

References

Donaldson, G (2015) Successful Future: Independent Review of Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements in Wales Available at: http://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/150225-successful-futures-en.pdf (Accessed 16th April 2018)

Webb, Liggy (2013) How to Be Happy: How developing Your Confidence, Resilience, Appreciation and Communication Can Lead to a Happier, Healthier you. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated [Online] Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/cardiffmet/reader.action?docID=977921&query=# (Accessed 16^th April 2018)

Music in primary education

Greetings bloggers, today I will be looking at music in education and exploring its importance, and place in the curriculum. During my time in primary education I don’t believe my musical intelligence was fully explore, music lessons consisted of merely singing songs and tapping the table; it wasn’t till I went to secondary school where I learnt that music was actually a very strong subject of mine, both the practise, and theory of music.

Although, this is evidently not the case in all primary schools as recently I was working with St Nicholas primary school who came into our university and two 10-year-old boys from that class were teaching me how to use garage band as I have never used it before, and I saw a real passion in these boys as they were layering beats and melodies over each other, a passion I can’t say I experienced during my music experiences in primary education.

I believe my music lessons were bland due to budgeting, we didn’t have drum kits or guitars or even keyboards, so children couldn’t play around and find hidden talents. It would seem that the solution is simple, fund government, more deprived schools more so that they can afford musical equipment which sounds easy, but schools are taking more and more budget cuts and money has been budgeted, so the problem lies not only with money, but we need to prove how important music actually is so that it gets the funding it needs.

Music lessons can be much like PE in that they are an excellent opportunity to get students learning more practically, practical learning not only improves motor and coordination skills, but it can build up practical didactic knowledge that also involve questions as ‘how to’ and ‘what’ to do ( Ehrlin, A. Gustavasson, H. 2016)

A common view amongst some parents is that music is a useless subject, because there aren’t many common jobs that involve music, but what needs to be explained is that there are plenty of jobs that need the skills that music teaches you, coordination is a skill heavily used in construction and design based jobs, and it’s a skill that can easily be improved by practising instruments.

In conclusion whilst I believe funding can be an issue on creating more engaging music lessons, I believe that the real issue is promoting how important music lessons are, and explaining that learning music is all about acquiring skills, and not just playing instruments/singing.

References

Ehrlin, A. Gustavsson, H. (2015) ‘The Importance of Music in Preschool Education’ Australian Journal of Teacher Education 40(7) [Online] Available at: http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2598&context=ajte (Accessed 10/12/17)

Technology in the classroom

Technology in the classroom

Greetings bloggers, in today’s post I will be talking about technology and its place in the classroom, as well as giving an insight as to some of the dangers of technology in the classroom.

We cannot escape the fact that technology is becoming more and more common in the classroom, and I’m not talking about ICT lessons, interactive white boards, iPads and laptops are not uncommon to find in almost every primary school classroom. This rise in the popularity of technology in the classroom is not something to be feared, but something to be embraced; change can be a scary thing in the education system, but technology is advancing fast and we need to ensure that we do not let foundation phase pupils get left behind, give them the digital competency they need to have a fighting chance in the world of work

Whilst I was studying my A levels I did work experience in a year 6 class of a primary school I used to go to, when I was in that school there was little to no technology or electronic resource, we had a little computer suite with computers that were way before their time even then. When I went back to that school for work experience I was amazed to how much it had changed in regards how many electronic resources were available, it then got me thinking, the year six class I was teaching would’ve been a class that experience white boards and text books as I did, but they also have experienced how technology changes lessons.

I remember asking pupils around the room if they think using the iPads and interactive white boards were better and of course they all agreed, why wouldn’t they, I believe using iPads in the classroom can be extremely beneficial if executed correctly, I will now list pros of technology in the classroom

Pros

Inclusion- Technology not only comes in the form of iPads and whiteboards, but in things like mobility, you can get pieces of technology that augment people with severe physical disabilities and enable them to write and even talk.

Making learning more fun- It is obvious that a child would choose to have an iPad in front of them over a book, even if the exact same thing is being displayed, I think this is because of a few different reasons. Colours are far more vivid on an electronic device, which really captivates children and makes whatever they are looking at less dull than a book, you can interact with the page and zoom in and out, which can not only be more entertaining, but can be more practically useful for children with visual impairments.

Learning life skills- in the future, almost all jobs are going to require some form of digital competency, and I believe having technology actively used in the classroom in the foundation phase will set the groundwork for that. Technology also has an impact on new topics that can be taught in schools, many schools have welcomed coding and learning computer languages into the classroom which is something that was unheard of when I was primary school. Children and young people cannot just be consumers of technology, it is important to teach them the knowledge and skills required to understand how technology works, in order to be digitally competent in an ever-changing workforce.

As you can see there are some strong pros to having technology in the classroom, I will now explore some of the cons of having technology in the classroom

Cons

Cost- obviously this technology is going to be expensive for schools, iPads can set you back £600 a piece, which means children may need to share, 3 children to an iPad for example, but this has more implications than you think. (Bergen D. 199) Says that teachers may have to rethink their more group orientated approach in order to adopt a more individualized approach to learning, Bergen says this in a negative light, but I see it not as con because you need to rethink your teaching strategy, but as a pro, because if your teaching style is more individualised, you’re ensuring more pupils are learning at the same pace and nobody is getting left behind.

Fake news- Social media as a massive part of any young person’s life and fake news is everywhere. Fake news is not only purposely false news, but its false news made to look as authentic as possible, and without further exploration of a posts sources, young people can easily believe anything they read which can influence their minds, and their research. Sites like Wikipedia which is not strictly a fake news site, but a site of which anybody can edit can be dangerous to a young person’s research and this means that skills like source evaluation will need to be taught at a younger age which I suppose in the long run could have positive implications.

E-Safety- This ties directly in with social media, anyone can find anything out about you if you’re not careful through social media so again, new skills will need to be taught to ensure children are safe online.

A reoccurring theme throughout the cons of technology in the classroom is new skills needing to be learnt and not to contradict myself but the new skills that would need to be learned to be digitally competent are skills that can be used throughout life, source evaluation and keeping myself safe online are skills I use almost every day.

In conclusion, I think it is fair to say that technology is not going anywhere and therefore should be embraced and exploited in the most positive way. Pedagogy needs to be revisited and lessons need to incorporate technology

References

Doris Bergen (1999) ‘Technology in the Classroom’ Childhood Education 76 (2) pp.116-118

Graham Donaldson (2015) ‘Successful Futures’ Available at: file:///D:/Donaldson%20Report%20-%20Successful%20Futures%20-%20Independent%20Review%20of%20Curriculum%20and%20Assessment%20Arrangements%20in%20Wales%20(1).pdf (Accessed 8/12/17)

Creativity in Primary Education

creativity in primary education

Greetings bloggers, today I will be discussing creativity in primary education, I will be discussing the importance of creativity and what it means to be creative. Generally, we associate the term creativity or being creative as doing this like painting and making things, but in reality, creativity can be a very complicated subject, it stems a lot deeper than just arts and crafts. When talking about the definition of creativity many theorists believe that creativity at its core is a process of problem solving, building bridges between pieces of information in order to be more productive; Maslow said that he observes no correlation between psychological health and productive achievement when it comes to creativity. What I take from Maslow’s statement is that creativity (not exclusively within regards children) doesn’t mean there is a problem that needs to be solved, you can be creative just for creativities sake, not everything a child does has to be for a reason, its innate for children to play and be creative without reason to.

In primary school, the main creative subjects are art and music, I will now talk more in depth about these subjects and where they fit in the curriculum

Music

Music can be seen as a controversial subject, it is not uncommon for some arguably close minded people to believe that it is a useless subject and its allocated time should be replaced by the core subjects, although I believe that music teaches you very useful transferrable skills you can use in other subjects, as well as it being a good way to express yourself and therefore, benefit your mental health. Music also plays a massive role in Wales’s rich history and it should be something we are proud of.

I discussed in my last blog about cross curricular learning and how important and beneficial it can be, in summary cross curricular learning is all about incorporating many different subjects and skills into one lesson, and I believe music is the perfect subject for cross curricular learning as it can be combined with any subject, allow me to elaborate:

History- Learning about the history of certain genres of music such as folk music would be a brilliant way to develop music understanding, as well as learning about what living in a certain period of time was like.

Geography- Learning about a musical instruments country of origin would be an excellent way to learn more about specific instruments and about different cultures around the world.

Maths- I think maths is an excellent partner with music, when I got to A level music I used maths all the time, specifically with the way I composed music, any time I composed a piece I would first figure out a time signature and then play around with different note length and I often had to calculate beforehand how many of a certain note I could fit into a bar which may sound simple but was very tedious.

English- English may be the most obvious subject to combine music with, I remember in primary school learning about poetry and we were given a melody that we had to listen to and the sing a poem to that melody, that memory really stands out in my mind as I remember there being no rules other than to create a set of lyrics for a melody.

Science- I did work experience in a primary school when I was doing and on my first day at lunch time the teacher I was shadowing asked me if I would like to give a science lesson and if so what would I do it on, I then had the idea of teaching the class about frequencies and pitch, so I then proposed a lesson where I would get strings of elastic and then have a sort of experiment where the children would pull the elastic and pluck it to simulate a guitar and then add in variables such as pinching the elastic at a certain part and changing the thingness of the elastic, I also taught the science behind putting the ruler on the edge of the table and flicking it. It may seem like I’m going off topic but I just remember that day so well and how engaged the children got with the lesson I think it would be a great addition to the curriculum if cross curricular learning was more common.

ICT- this is a very good subject to combine with music as I remember in my A level days most of the music I composed was on a computer using a program called Sibelius, although a couple weeks ago I attended the workshop with St Nicholas school where I worked with 2 boys who taught me how to use garage band as I have never used it and I remember how engaged and excited they were to be the ones teaching me.

Overall, I’m a strong believer that music is a very good medium to express yourself and should not only be used to exercise creativity, but as an opportunity to really experiment with cross curricular learning.

Art and design

Art and design go hand in hand together, they’re both about combining different shapes, using different mediums and experimenting with different techniques. Art is a perfect way of pushing a child’s creativity to the limit, if you supply a child with the resources they will create something they are passionate about, I remember my little brother used to be obsessed with drawing dinosaurs and that’s all he would do. A work of art is able to have such an effect on people’s social consciousnesses only because it has its own internal logic (Vygotsky L 2004), what I take from Vygotsky’s statement here is that art can resonate with us on deep emotional levels because its art is human creativity in its purest form, art has had a massive influence over science and religion in the past, use the renaissance period as an example.

In conclusion, I believe that creativity is a very powerful thing that we still don’t fully understand. I think that it is important that we, instead of ensuring a balance in the curriculum between creative subjects, and less creative subjects, merge the two and push cross curricular learning to the limit!

References

Vygotsky, Lev (2004) ‘Imagination and Creativity in Childhood’ Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 42 (1) pp.7-97 M.E Sharpe, Inc. [Online] Available at: https://learn.cardiffmet.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/564418/mod_resource/content/1/Imagination%20and%20Creativity%20in%20Childhood.pdf (Accessed:11/12/17)

Psychology Today (2013) Maslow on Creativity Available at: https://learn.cardiffmet.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/564418/mod_resource/content/1/Imagination%20and%20Creativity%20in%20Childhood.pdf (Accessed 11/12/17)

Jyrki Reunamo, Hui-Chun Lee, Li-Chen Wang, Inkeri Ruokonen, Teemu Nikkola & Sanna Malmstrom (2014) Children's creativity in day care, Early Child Development and Care, 184 (4), pp.617-632