primary school

[doofqueen]

Primary school

I am doing my b/teaching and b/arts degree and i was curious as to which subjects you liked and disliked in primary school and why?

Just didn't like the subject/no interest?
Felt you were no good at it?
The teacher didn't present it in an interesting way etc?

Do you think if it was taught in a different manner you could have liked it or had a chance to be good at it? What could have the teacher done to have helped your enthusiasm with it?

Is you favorite and non favorite subjects still the same now as you have matured as an adult? Did you love art but now have no interest in it and vice versa?

What about your favorite did you like?

The actual subject itself or the way it was taught?

The 6 kla's (key learning area's) are;

*Creative arts
*English
*Science
*Maths
*Pd/health/Pe
*Hsie (used to be social sciene...ie cultures and societies etc)

Mods...could you make a poll at all please so people could vote what they liked most and what they least liked?

sorry if this is a boring topic but i would really like to be a good teacher and would like a better grasp on how to get my future student motivated and excited about being at school and learning. I want my kids to wake up in the morning and say "oh cool, it's a school day...miss doofqueen is teaching us this today..YAY!"

 

[onetwothreefour]

er. for some reason i can't figure out how to create a poll. so give me some time

anyways, art was my favourite subject, though as long as the teacher was good, i pretty much just liked to learn new stuff (except for religious education which was the biggest amount of bullshit i've ever been subjected to, and had absolutely no part of a state-funded school's curricullum).

art was great though (i wasn't fantastic at painting - though it was fun - but clay kicked arse ), and i really enjoyed sport too - any chance to get out and compete at stuff. i was pretty good at maths/englishy kinda stuff too, so that's probably why i enjoyed that

 

[Dandy]

Primary School -- great times.

I basically loved all the subjects I had. The reason for this being good teachers and an equally good school.

That being said -- Science was the least enjoyable because I felt we didn't have enough time to really do anything. It was all very basic experiments that were repeated year after year, and all general science concepts. I think that this subject was the "forgotten" subject in a sense, I got the impression that teachers did it because they had to (most would have opted to sweep it beneath the rug) rather than taking pride in teaching it.


I like all my subjects and was really good at all of them except for music because I didn't put any effort into it.

Hands-on/practical tasks are the reason I enjoyed so many of the subjects. I reckon incorporate these wherever you can and you will be fine.

 

[TiTTy]

Hands-on/practical tasks are the reason I enjoyed so many of the subjects. I reckon incorporate these wherever you can and you will be fine.

^^ agreed

My fav subjects were Creative Arts, maths and PE.

I luved PE and creative arts because it was something different from sitting in a boring class room listening to a teacher ramble on. I liked maths because I was good at it.

As i got to high school I lost interest in Arts due to superficial teachers and got more into my sports as I could relate the teachers more. Was unphased by the other subjects- kind of did them because i had to.

Never was interested in social science- history seemed to bore me stupid even with a good teachers and hands on learning.

 

[onetwothreefour]

just trying to sort this all out...hopefully the poll is fixed now (i had to change it from multiple to singular responses), so, if you've already voted, please do so again

(WOOHOO I KICK ARSE )

 

[Killing_time]

Bluelighters = Druggies = Fun with Crayons = I think there's a trend.

 

[doofqueen]

^^oi answer my questions damn it. I'm trying to learn how to teach future generations of children

and i can't wait to make art with a whole bunch of kids..."now children today we will be making wings for arts and crafts to go with our 'enchanted forest' book we are reading for english" hehehe

Thanks 1234 for your attempts at changing it

 

[haste]

My favourite was drama - we used to put on mini school plays in class every friday - it rocked. ahhh my dreams of becoming and actor

I also used to love story writing aswell - still do

 

[anna!]

I didn't vote, because I loved every subject in primary school.

I loved doing research projects, they were the best. I used to spend soo many hours making them look spanky and cutting out pictures from travel brochures and colouring everything in. Such fun.

I was big on creative writing as well, I loved that.

When I was in year 4 my teacher actually let me take the class a couple of times. I had lesson plans and everything, and I got to mark their work and use stamps and stickers. THAT was cool

I also loved maths, because we spent most of our time playing maths games - like mental shootout. Coolest game ever. And computing was great because again, we just played games all the time. Ditto for drama and music - except that my music teacher had a tendency to spend the entire lesson telling us stories about the war.

And I loved PE, because we played a lot of team sports and I love team sports. And Ricky Ponting came and coached Year 6 football!

Oh, and in maths once we made a huge shopping centre. We were in groups of about three and each group made a shop front and sold various bits and pieces (mostly food, I think) for real money. I think at the end of the day we had to give our money to the school, but it was SO much fun. I think that and the episode of playschool when John and Benita made a supermarket are the reasons I'm studying business

I guess I was a bit of an all-rounder at school. -gets on podium- I was good at everything so I enjoyed everything, right through till I finished school. But the subjects I enjoyed the most continued to be, like Dandy said, hands-on ones, interactive ones, ones with games or groups. Things that kept me interested.

Oh, the other thing I was going to say was that my Year 2 and 3 teachers had a "rewards" system, to keep us excited all year, I guess. Every time we wrote a story or did well in a test or read a whole book or something, we got points or stickers. If we got enough points, or after a certain number of stickers, we got a big prize. It was cool. I got a glue stick.

 

[shal]

My most favorite part of school was little lunch and Big LUNCH - I think I learnt more in the playground then in the class room. :D - Catch and kiss was always fun.


shals! :D

 

[anna!]

Oh man, I loved kiss chasey.

O/T (maybe I should start a new one?) - did anyone play "war" in primary school? Boys vs. girls, resulting in serious injury? Like, all of lunchtime, every day, for a whole year?

 

[ashaman]

what were my favourite classes? you mean what are my favourite classes?

 

[Strawberry_lovemuffin]

You are going to make the best teacher, doofqueen. You have a child-like quality that children will be drawn to, and I just know you'll be able to inspire them and nurture their little imagainations
(tell them fairies exist!!)

Hehe... seriously. My best teachers were the ones who encouraged me and believed in me unconditionally. I was always best at writing (english), and adequate in every other area, except PE. I absolutely HATED P.E, with a passion. Why? Because those who werent' so good at the physical stuff were made to feel foolish and inadequate. There was always "teams" and your ego was crushed when you were picked last. It was the worst breeding ground for over-compeditiveness and click-iness... if you were a little overweight (as I was) you were ridiculed and left out. Hey, what's not to like? 8)

I think teachers could do better at teaching PE by noticing the discomfort of those slightly physically-challenged students and including them more. Make them the team leaders. Play some games which don't involve RUNNING. And no PUNISHMENTS.... this was, granted, many years ago, but we were made to do laps around the oval if we didn't come up to scratch. It was hell.

Anyway, back to English. I loved that purely because I was good at it, and the better I got at it, the more praise was heaped apon me and the bigger my head grew . In Prep, I wrote and illustrated a book called "Tubby the Koala", which is bound and laminated and still in my primary school library today (24 years later).

When I wrote Tubby my teacher at the time sent me to read it to the Grade 3 students!! Hehe. I guess that was my first experience of being rewarded for something I'd done, and that set me up for a lifetime of faith in myself. It was like that most of the way through primary school... my grade 4 teacher in particular, Mrs. Caddetti, kept telling me (and everyone else) that I'd be a famous writer one day. That year I wrote a series of detective stories, started a school magazine, and my confidence grew in leaps and bounds.

Primary school is so, so, important. It's where you decide in your head if you're good at something or not. It's where your sense of self-worth is established, and hopefully, nurtured.

I'm sure you'll do a great job.

 

[middle finger]

In primary school I always enjoyed maths, science and anything to do with sport. In highschool my love for Pd/H/pe and science contiinued, but maths started giving me the shits. Good luck doofqueen. I think you'll make a good teacher.

 

[Raz]

I agree with SLM, I reckon you'll rock as a teacher...

My favourites were anything where I could be creative and which wasn't rigidly structured--creative writing, art, that kind of thing. I was one of those kids that everyone else always turned to for help with academic stuff, and had books put in the school library, did posters for the school, that kind of thing...then in high school I discovered Nick Cave and the joys of depressed lack of motivation, but that's another story altogether...

I pretty much liked primary school all round. Like Dandy said, I had good teachers who actually cared about us as people, and they were very supportive. The only subject I hated with a passion was PE. Though I know it's hard to imagine with my He-Man like physique these days I was quite the tubby little Raz as a kid, and as a result I kind of sucked at anything which required physical exertion. Add to that the fact that my mum kept me wrapped in metres of cotton wool, and I was terrified that anything I did would hurt or kill me. So I wasn't very big on physical activity. I actually thought until about halfway through high school that I couldn't do too much exercise, because my mum had always drummed into my head that my body wasn't strong enough to handle the exertion.

But that's all a personal thing I guess...I had teacher who tried really hard with me to get me to enjoy it, they were just up against some fairly unfightable forces....

--Raz--

 

[bumble83]

doofqueen - what state are you in?
I'm in my 4th year doing b/teaching and b/applied science (human movement), in victoria we have 8 KLA's - the arts, english, health and physical education, LOTE, maths, science, SOSE, technology

 

[syntech]

i loved art and still do.
as i've gotten older i've been even more influenced by my teachers. i only recently realised how excellent my old school in WA was. and how much i deteriorated with my learning when i moved to tassie.

art is a really hard thing to teach, and to mark so it can go terribly wrong for one person and great for the next.

 

[doofqueen]

awww thanks guys for saying i would make a great teacher. It's nice to hear that people have confidence in me because truthfully the more i learn the more i think "OMG there is so much to do and link and kids think so differently etc etc" and i panic and think "can i actually do this?" so thanks for the encouragement

Anna..there was not one subject you actually prefered or disliked then another? you nerd hehe no that's really great to hear actually, enthusiasm in education is important especially when your young

SLM...fairies DO exsist..what are you talking about?

Bumble...i'm in my second year and i'm in NSW ...mabe there is eight and we haven't gotten to it yet? *shrugs* although are you doing high school because that's maybe where it's different?

Thanks for all the replies people, keep them coming

 

[bumble83]

i'm doing primary school too!!
there are the 8 KLA's from prep to year 10 - then VCE for us here in Victoria.
It's nice to talk to people who are doing the same as me, cause the usual response i get from people when they fine out what i'm studying, they say "what would you want to do that for?" which is very frustrating. Good luck with your studys!!

 

[Jubas]

gah
i don't even remember having different subjects at primary school!
it was just one big subject wasn't it?
what the hell is going on?
where am i?