Six months, that's a quarter of a way through the PME! 🤯
The four months that have passed, since my last update, have been busy ones. We had our Pedagogy 1 assignment due, and the first two assignments due from Pedagogy 2.
Ped 1 was particularly tough, largely because it coincided with the Summer months! In hindsight I definitely don't recommend going down the country on holidays for the two weeks before an assignment due date... That aside, I really enjoyed the subjects covered on Ped 1; Visual Arts, Drama, Music and PE.
Said holiday came in the form of a trip to Killarney (Co. Kerry) with friends and family. I did try getting up early some mornings to do college work, but it was a better plan on paper than in reality. We packed a lot in the two weeks from swimming to hiking, cycling to road trips, and everything in between. Now that we're back in Level 5 restrictions I'm particularly glad I took a holiday when I could, plus I'm very happy with my Ped 1 results - so all's well that ends well! (Even if it did cause a massive amount of stress at the time...)
In a way, the one upside of tighter restrictions is that there's less distractions from work. Between the restrictions and the colder weather creeping in, I've gotten much more into a routine and am definitely more organised with college. I'm also loving our class WhatsApp, would be absolutely lost without it and can't wait to some day finally be able to meet everyone in person...doesn't look like that'll be any time soon though!
Last week I submitted the first half of Ped 2 assignments; maths and ICT. I used Nearpod to create my ICT resource, and I'd really recommend people to check it out - particularly in this time of online learning! It's a great way to create interactive lessons, quizzes and for students. It can do a lot, so you'll need to spend some time playing around with it all, but it's very user-friendly!
I'm currently working on the second half of Ped 2 assignments, which are English and Gaeilge. I'm a bit nervous about the Gaeilge assignment, so I'm going to give myself a full 3-weeks to get through it. Light the candles for me! 🕯️
I've done a lot of work on my study space recently, and it's almost done - these things take a while, particularly in the middle of a pandemic! If you can, I really recommend having a monitor for your laptop. Spending every day hunched over my laptop was giving me a lot of shoulder pain. One of the best additions to my study are hardcopies of the Curriculum and Teacher Guidelines, I had found it difficult working with the digital versions so luckily found a girl on Instagram getting rid of hers - it's the little things!