Reflective Journal

Block 3,Week 2
School Placement, 17
th
21st March 2014, Presentation School Galway

Silk Worms
It can be hard to judge the reaction in the classroom to a PowerPoint presentation.
This week, I had prepared a short presentation for the second year class on the four
main types of fabric, as part of their fabric manipulation textile scheme. Last week, I
had given them an introduction to textiles by showing them a brief history of the
subject. Afterwards, I felt that the class had not fully engaged with this particular
aspect of textiles. I was therefore unsure as to how they would react to learning about
fabric classification, but I wanted them to learn about the basic fabric types and their
properties. I had not anticipated their reaction when they discovered that silk worms
spun silk. Worms! one student exclaimed - she couldnt believe that worms were
part of the silk-making process - she had learned something that she had never heard
of before. She turned to the girls beside her to discuss this newly acquired knowledge.
I wished I had put an image of a silkworm up on the slide as well and, if the art room
had WiFi, I would have sourced an image for her straight away. The class reacted in a
similar way when we discussed cotton. Most of the class did not know that there was
such a thing as a cotton plant. I was completely taken aback by their interest and
enthusiasm and could have gone into much more detail in the presentation on this
particular subject. So, they were not the only ones to learn that day! I learnt something
too. You can never really predict how a class is going to react to a particular subject
until you try it.

Engaging First Years
My first year group started painting this week. This was my first time to teach
painting and my introductory class was to prepare brown paper, by painting it white.
Even this simple painting exercise brought an air of calm into the classroom that I had
not seen before. I had asked the class to bring in objects to paint for our still life
composition. A lot of the class brought in dolls, teddy bears or items that had their
name on it. I was reminded that these first year students were still very much children
and still very much on the brink of becoming teenagers. With this class I had prepared
a slide show of different images of greyscale compositions and got them to observe
how many different tones of grey they could see. I am now learning to try to bring in
all of the class into my questioning and not just those who put their hands up, as this
latter group is generally the same people all the time. If no one in the class puts up
their hand, I name a particular student to answer the question and then ask another
pupil to comment. I am beginning to realise that in doing this, the students are
participating more in the discussion, which allows them the opportunity to articulate
and voice their opinions. It has taken me until now to adopt this approach, which with
the benefit of hindsight seems obvious now.