Today was my first day back at school after the mid-term break. As we had lectures last week i don't feel like i had a complete break yet it was nice to have no lesson plans to do for a week. I had a good French class today as we completed a quiz on personality tests in French, the students certainly seemed to enjoy it anyway. My German class was another story however. I feel that i spend so much time disciplining students and come out of the class feeling totally drained. Things settled down in the second half of the class and i eventually feel like i got some work covered with the students!

We had a really good guest speaker for Special Educational Needs this evening. The gentleman who gave the talk was enthusiastic, easy to listen to and extremely motivating. What he spoke about in terms of student's abilities to read texts really applied to some of my classes.

We have a busy evening in college tomorrow as we have a number of meetings relevant to finding a job in the future. Hopefully it will be beneficial and will give me some ideas for teaching prospects next year.

I have to head home now as i've a busy few days ahead of me, preparing my SPHE project for Wednesday and my German presentation on Switzerland for Thursday. My Webquest has been put on the long finger until next week, although i did manage to find some useful websites for it.

Mid-term break here already!

It seems like no length since the school Christmas holidays yet we got our February mid-term break last Friday. My supervisor arrived for her third visit which i had expected but was also dreading as i didn't think there would be good attendence on that particular day due to the holidays. Thankfully the visit went well and in the end it was a relief to have another visit out of the way. I will only have one more visit from my supervisor after Easter and then my teaching practice will be nearly finished. I really can't believe how quickly this year is going!

College is going fine at the moment. I have an SPHE assignment and a German presentation on Switzerland due next week and once they're out of the way i can really concentrate on the WebQuest for Edtech. I met up with Nicola this week so at least we have planned what we are doing. I think we have come up with a good idea for our webquest. It will certainly be interesting to do research on our topic and i definitely feel i will use the webQuest with a class at some stage in my future teaching career.

I spent the last week considering my options for next year and have applied for a teaching job abroad. Hopefully all will work out and i'll be able to get a job and put what i've learned on the PGDE course this year into practice!

Semester two kicked off to a good start!

Due to a family bereavement i was absent from college last week so this week was my first week back in college for semester two. Thankfully it got off to a good start as our exam results were announced yesterday. The majority of students were pleased with their results.

A new module on this semester's schedule is Special Educational Needs which i think will be very insightful. I feel it is important to learn as much as possible in this area this year as so many students are diagnosed with different learning difficulties in our schools. It will be interesting to see if the lecturer's show us suitable methods to teach these students in a mainstream classroom. It is definitely something which i would like to learn more about as i find it very difficult to provide activities in a class to cater for every student's needs.

School is as busy as ever, with the mocks finishing for Leaving and junior cert. students tomorrow. We are getting our mid-term break tomorrow for a week which i'm really looking forward to, although it seems no length since the Christmas holidays! Hopefully i'll get a chance to work on my webquest and powerpoint presentation and my SPHE assignment during this week.

Roll on second semester

It's been quite a while since i logged into my blog account. Since the end of November i've completed my exams - all went ok apart from psychology. I think we'll get our results next week so i will know my fate for the summer then! I spent two lovely relaxing weeks at home for Christmas. It was really nice to get a break from college and school for a while.

I've been back at school since the 8th of January so at this stage i've settled in to the school routine. I'm expecting a third visit from my supervisor during the next few weeks so fingers crossed all goes well. During our first week back after Christmas all the PGDE students had a meeting with our school principal. She painted a very gloomy outlook for our job prospects in Ireland next year. As a result i'm considering heading to Canada to teach in the French region. The way i see it, it will give me the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. I'll be able to gain some valuable teaching experience and get the chance to do some travelling!

At the moment we are busy doing power point presentations in EdTech. I've found the last few lectures really beneficial as i had not realised there was so much you could add to a power point presentation to make it interesting.

Next week is the start of the second semester for the PGDE and while i am dreading getting results back from the exams, i am looking forward to starting lectures again and catching up with everyone. Block students will be back on campus so it will be interesting to hear how they got on. Heres's to an exciting and successful semester for everyone!