Rationale of Lessons

The theme of the three lessons that were taught was ‘animals’. One reason for this choice was that the class had this as their topic during the previous term and enjoyed learning about them; during block placement the class were also scheduled for a trip to the zoo and so this theme slotted agreeably into the children’s learning. For the English lesson the stimulus was the picture storybook ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’ by Judith Kerr – this was chosen not only because it went with the t0heme but because there were an abundance of opportunities that could be derived from it; it is also renowned for being a popular storybook for children, it is currently rated 4.9/5 stars from Waterstones, as well as being a personal favourite. Furthermore, the stimulus chosen for the maths lesson was a picture taken during the recent trip to the zoo of ten penguins. This image was used because it was one that a member of the class had taken and related to the children because they had seen these penguins and this meant they were enthusiastic about using it in their learning; it was also a good representation of the mathematical concepts that we were going through during the lesson. Lastly the stimulus for science was an image that I had taken in the school grounds of a bird eating food and it was explained to the children that this was something that we were going to be investigating. Not only did this provoke interest in the children as it was directly linked to the school, it gave the children an indication about the investigation we were going to undertake. When linking the stimuli to the focus child, using images was particularly effective as the child is new to English and so was able to contribute and actually understand the tasks that were se...

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..., James and CREMIN, Teresa, 2010) Learning to Teach in the Primary School, 2nd edition, Oxon, Routledge

BOALER, JO (2009), The Elephant in the Classroom, 1st edition, London, Souvenir Press Ltd.

EGGEN, Paul and KAUCHAK, Don (2000), Educational Psychology: Classroom Connections, 5th edition, New York, Macmillan 2001

HARLEN, Wynne and QUALTER, Anne (2009), The Teaching of Science in Primary Schools, 5th edition, David Fulton Publishers

HAYLOCK, Derek and THANKGATA, Fiona (2007), Key Concepts in Teaching Primary Mathematics, 1st edition, London, SAGE Publications Ltd.

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Web Information:

Lancashire County Council (2006), Talk Partners: A guidance booklet for schools. [online]. Last accessed 22 April 2014 at:

http://education.ky.gov/educational/rta/Documents/RTATalkPartners.pdf