Skills Planning is essential to my role as a teacher.

At the start of each school year I have to meet and coordinate with my department colleagues to decide on the schemes of work, projects that we are going to undertake and what evaluation criteria we are going to use. For this school year we decided to plan for myths and legends of Spain and the UK. We studied castles, traditional stories and basic history. I helped to design units of work that incorporated grammar and vocabulary into the learning. The classes incorporated cookery classes which we all enjoyed. We have decorated the school with elements of British culture such as a double decker bus, telephone box and we have made signs that are in both Spanish and English, posted around the school so that the learners always have visual clues to the other language. I regularly meet up with students and their parents to give feedback on their work. Whether for doing something positive or if something requires urgent attention; the lines of communication are always open. I have had to prepare reports termly and yearly for parents and senior members of staff in Spanish and in English One of my current classes has a high content of gifted children. They have additional support, however in class they use movement, drama, and I have made a special set of interlocking shapes in which they channel their creative energies. I have discovered surprisingly that those who are at a more advanced stage of their learning additionally enjoy the variation that these activities provide I use a variety of teaching methods to motivate and inspire children. In Guadalajara with year 5 and year 6 classes we used a team work approach to the topic of Roman London. The children designed simple maps of the city and labeled them in Spanish and English with landmarks that that still exist today. This was a combined history, literacy and numeracy class; the children had to use coordinates to find treasures and landmarks on their maps. For literacy classes I use a variety of resources. Guided readings, powerpoint presentations, reading aloud, know, want and learn charts to name a few. Readings of late have included, James and the Giant peach, The Gingerbread Man and leveled readers from the reading key internet site. I use phonics and sight reading strategies to give scope and depth to all abilities. I use an investigative approach to mathematics and science. I like children to use their efforts in exploring. As an example In Melilla with a year 4 class, we studied the topic of Angles we used the shapes of the windows, doors and tables to measure, tabulate and calculate. We followed this up by going into the playground to discover and contrast the shapes insides with those that we could see outside. Last year we combined a literacy and PE class into an Olympics obstacle course. We used an exercise called a running dictation around an especially constructed route. The outcome was for the children to listen carefully to their classmates, collect and remember a word then bring it back to class to discuss and write paragraphs on the importance of participation in sport.

Expereince I view my pastoral duties as a compliment to my teaching. I meet with parents to discuss progress and to help them decide what can be done to improve their childrens learning; I have an open door approach and am always ready to take on extra challenges to improve quality. In Pamplona I acted as social coordinator. To help the teachers bond and enjoy the school year with another colleague I organized a book crossing and fun gatherings such as secret Santa. I feel comfortable working in multi-cultural environments. My experience with the British council in Spain has made me adapt to cultures of different faiths and backgrounds. I have learned to appreciate cultural differences and have become sensitive to their specific needs and thus give a more inclusive approach to teaching. In class my guiding principles are centred around effort, listening, helping and to enjoy. Team teaching has been the norm in my current school in Torrelvega. This means that there is a continuous feedback between both teachers and planning has to be concise. I generally find that discipline/motivation is easier to implement and the children have the advantage of have 2 teachers in class. I base motivation around 3 elements, listen, help and effort. These are my guiding principles in the classroom; Id like to add a sense of humour to the list also! In Pamplona one of the extra responsibilities that I took on was to be a social coordinator. With a colleague we organized fun activities such as secret Santa, and book crossing, I also dressed up as Lady gaga for carnival festivities, which was entertaining to say the least. Training MY PGCE with QTS more than amply prepared me for short, medium and long term planning and I have received ample regionally organized training sessions since completing my QTS. My most recent was an in house training on updating my digital skills as a teacher to enhance the childrens learning so I learned how to use applications to convert images to sound and vice versa, animate, and to understand more the hardware of the digital classroom. The quality of training that I have received by the British council has been of a very high standard; the latest course authentic progress in reading and writing made me consider how poetry and drama can enhance pupil participation in the classroom. A doctor of education in Guadalajara showed us about the importance of individual learning styles and we had to design worksheets that would enhance pupils learning by using multiple intelligence strategies as proposed by Howard Gardner. As a group we produced a working booklet where we could adapt and use worksheets to individual learners needs In Melilla, we used several strategies to use smart boards and looked closely at their applications to use and create texts, shapes, diagrams, enlarge and reduce pictures, import documents and to create spider diagrams to create whiteboard organizers

I am aware of the changes happening to the national curriculum such as children are expected to learn tougher concepts earlier. My personal long term goals as a teacher are to prepare children for and have an appreciation of the world and to take responsibility for their lives and actions. I believe that education is social and not only an academic process. I foster this via cultural school exchanges with partner schools, Comenius projects and by inviting in parents and grandparents to participate in the learning process