The year before starting my PGCE, I decided to take a year out and work as a TA to gain some more experience in school! I applied for a job as a 'Learning Coach' at the University of Cambridge Primary School. This role appealed to me massively due to it being 'more' than a TA role because your sole purpose was to 'coach' the children and take on more responsibilities than your 'standard' Teaching Assistant might. I loved the whole idea of the school. UCPS is the first University training school in the UK and prides itself on being an innovative professional learning community for teachers.
From having the desire to undertake my teacher training the year after at the University, UCPS drew me in in so many ways due to its connections to the Faculty of Education, to its wonderful status of TA's and their responsiblities, which would help me take the first step to becoming a teacher! Also all of its amazing training opportunities that I could be a part of! The school had a lot to offer me - so luckily I got a job!
Here are some pictures of the school as well as a link to the website if you're interested in finding out more about it. The school building itself is an incredibly interesting place and was designed with research in mind to optimise learning and creativity! The whole curriculum design and pretty much everything about the school is research informed, so is full of innovative and unique ways of teaching and learning. You probably won't find another school quite like it!
I worked mainly with Years 1 and 2 and worked as a 1:1 to two children sometimes as well! I loved being with this age as a TA and really enjoyed getting to be creative with the teachers when planning playful learning activities. The school had 'learning streets' between classrooms and outdoor areas that had a theme which linked to the topic that was being investigated at the time across both year groups. The learning street and outdoor areas were then transformed to accommodate the current theme and immerse the whole place into the topic! We had topics such as 'Cold as Ice', 'Turrets and Tiaras' and 'Circus'. For our Circus themed day we all came in dressed up as circus themed acts and had a circus company come in and teach us some tricks! It was a fab day and we even had an ice cream cart come onto the playground to give us all circus snack!
One of my absolute favourite things about being a Learning Coach, was having the opportunity to run my own clubs. I am a qualified Gymnastics coach, so I ran an after school Gymnastics club for KS2! The children put on a display to their parents at the end of the year which was amazing - I was so proud of them! The fire alarm did go off half way through this however so I had to lead all of the children and parents out onto the playground... Minor disaster haha! However, it was still fantastic. I also ran 'Travel Club' which when children were asked at the end of the year what their highlights were, many of them said my club - so cute! I will do a whole post on this though as it was my favourite time of the week!
Another highlight had to be the Year 2 sleepover! We had nearly all 90 children in Year 2 to stay over night at the school for a sleepover! Yes it was chaotic and no we hardly slept.. however it was so lovely getting to be a part of most of their's first night away from home. We played games, watched films with popcorn and hot chocolate, us staff had an Indian takeaway haha! The Head Teacher read them a bedtime story and they were then allowed to read in bed before lights out. I ended up finding some big bean bags and sleeping in the resources room to try and get some sleep... so it was an interesting night and one I will always remember.
I was part of the teacher's Reading for Pleasure group which was what got be back into reading and inspired me to read children's books! I have been sooo into children's literature and research into the ways to promote reading in the classroom ever since, so I am really grateful I had the opportunity to be a part of the group and learned so much from it! I will be posting many book reviews on this website which are also on my Instagram!
Leaving UCPS was a very sad day. I loved my time there and gained so many valuable experiences that I will never forget. I will take forward a lot of what I learned there into my career as a teacher! Here are some of the wonderful gifts I recieved when I left!
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