On Monday the 22nd of October I started my transition year work experience module. I started my first week of work experience working with my local St. Mary’s National School in Ballygarrett. My first day started at 9 o’clock in the morning. I started by heading straight to the reception to hand in my work experience evaluation forms that were for my past principal and employer for the week Niall Madden. These were to be filled out after my week of working so I could look back and see how my week went. The next thing that happened was I was handed my timetable for the week which was what I was going to be working from for to know where to go and where to be through out the day. The first thing that was on my timetable was that I was going to be joining junior infants at a time during the day that was called Aistear. I learned that aistear was a time of the day where the kids could play as well as learning and each table had a different theme. So one table had art where they were painting and decorating Halloween masks to take home to show their parents. Another group would have role play so as a Halloween theme that table would have there own part of the class room where a shop was set up to make potions and they would have to use there imaginations to see what kind of things to make. And the last table would make patterns using Halloween shapes like bats and pumpkins so that they would end up with there own unique patterns. So it was really nice to work with the kids and watch how creative they are.

Next day I started at 9 o’clock again. This time I spent the first hour of the morning in the reception answering phone call, laminating and taking messages. I didn’t really like that as much as the teaching and working with the kids but at least I tried it. After that I headed to senior infants to decorate cookies for Halloween. They all had a witches hat to decorate and a bat to decorate each. They were all so cute and at the end of that they gave me a cookie to have with my lunch. Lunch times were nice. I would be out on yard and the kids that I would be in class with would come up to me and tell me there stories and show me things like leafs, pine cones and acorns for there nature table. Later that day I went back to senior infants to do aistear with them. I went with the art and crafts table and we would have to paint the leaves on there autumn trees but they could only use there fingers. They were all so good and creative and really liked me being there.

It was Thursday the 25th and it was my last day in Ballygarrett National school. Everyone had to dress up because it was the last day before the Halloween midterm and I thought I should joined In so I done some skeleton makeup and the kids loved it. That morning I was back in with junior infants to paint some little monsters that we had made on Wednesday the 24th of October. They made the monsters because they were learning describing words and they had to make a monster that they could describe really well. So they painted them and all of the monsters looked great. So then I said good bye to the junior infants and went to senior infants where I finished painting the trees with them and then I helped them with there spelling and writing work books. At home time I had to say good bye to everyone and I was really going to miss the kids because they were all so good and so funny and nice that I was going to miss them but overall I was really lucky to get that opportunity and I really enjoyed my work experience with the primrary school and everyone there and also would definitely consider teaching when I’m older.
By Rebecca Connor