Hi,
I am a PGCE student about to start my final block placement which is very important and will decide if I am going to be a teacher.
I have completed a short teaching practice in Year 1 and so have already got to know the children and staff. They're lovely, although I have concerns regarding an inclusion issue in the class.
When teaching lessons I became increasingly reluctant to plan to use/rely on the Interactive Whiteboard due to one SEN/possibly autistic pupil in the classroom. (The teachers tell me that he is suspected to be autistic so that is how I describe him here.)
Its really interesting, to meet him and see what a different perspective he has on the world, but I am totally overwhelmed just by learning to teach and dealing with a huge range of learning abilities. Be aware I am a student and the teachers have lots of additional training and of course, experience.
Teaching this child is a totally different experience from any teaching experience I have had before, and for example I can't expect him to keep records of his own work as he doesn't write so I have to take photos of or photocopy things such as, how he can arrange prepared resources to show understanding(he is extremely intelligent and has an amazing memory and a wide vocabulary beyond many of the other children in the class, it is how to extract?this from him that is a challenge).
Although I have begun to think about how to include him in my lessons and have had a go at this, what I have observed is that he is usually in a separate area of the classroom doing a separate activity with the TA. Whilst the teacher will discuss the Learning Objectives with the Teaching Assistant before a lesson, it appears to be very challenging especially for people who are not trained to teach autistic children.
I am concerned about the content of his teaching, but as a student teacher at the front of a class of 30, my main focus has to be on the classroom of children in front of me, if I turned my back on them to focus on one child then it would descend into chaos. Although the teacher is usually close by, she wouldn't tend to interfere or remove the child from the room for me, she usually works with a small group of children while I teach the main group.
Issue 1) The child runs into the classroom to play with the computer, this means he could/often does close down work I am creating with the children and it could be lost or he can interupt the lesson. It can take a good few minutes or he may just refuse to leave the computer. I don't mind being flexible and talking to the children or writing on a small board, but I can imagine during an observation having to explain, why I didn't make full use of the IWB.
Issue 2) This child could be in the classroom joining in many of the same activities as the other children, although he really doesn't write or sit still for long. Should I be planning more activities which would include him more, I did try this a bit and feel that if I started planning with this child in mind I could with a lot of hard work, make sure that he was always included in working towards the same Learning Objective as the other children. On the other hand, most of the learning objectives for the class would be best met for the majority of the children by doing simple writing e.g. story writing which he just will not do. Have tried getting him involved in acting out a story with figures which I could have then recorded but this didn't work, he wanted to do something completely different.
Issue 3) I worry about the other children, although it is not very serious, when we ask this child to sit down on the carpet he literally tramples over the other children to find a space to sit down.
Does anyone with a bit more experience have any tips for me to get through the next term?