Good morning, welcome back to my blog,
In this blog I am going to reflect on my first week at ESPE. Overall, I think the day went very well and I developed my understanding of how Mrs Smith delivers her sessions. Experiential learning is broadly defined as “learning through experience” or learning through doing certain activities and undergoing different experiences (Cohen and Nite, 2019 & Kros and Watson, 2004). This is a process I can complete during my own work experience to help me improve my own performance. Before I started my work placement, I created four learning objectives to help me identify the key areas of improvement for myself.
Learning objectives:
- Becoming more confident when delivering sessions.
- Delivering small parts of the session/ teaching to small groups or individuals.
- Develop my own knowledge of starting your own company and what it involves.
- To improve my problem-solving skills during sessions that don’t go to plan.
Over the course of my work placement I am going to blog a weekly diary of events to allow reflection and improvement to take place. During the first session I was very nervous and only observed the first session. This allowed me to relax and understand the process of how to deliver a gymnastic session to a large reception class. Throughout most of my first day I observed each session and just helped the children on a 1 to 1 basis. This helped the children develop a relationship with me and become more comfortable in my surrounding. If I was to reflect on my first day, I would tell myself to not be as nervous because it was an enjoyable experience, so I didn’t need to be worried. By experiencing the nerves on the first day this will hopefully allow me to feel more confident in future weeks which will then help me work towards one of my learning objectives.
References:
Cohen, A. and Nite, C. (2019). Assessing Experiential Learning with a Critical Lens. Sport Management Education Journal, 13(1), pp.1-10.
Kros, J. & Watson, K. (2004). Improving operations management concept recollection via the Zarco experiential learning Activity. Journal of Education for Business, 79(5), pp. 283-6.
SD2200 Work Placement 