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Gibb's Reflective Cycle

I am trying to get back into reflecting on my professional practice. I had learnt about Gibb's reflective cycle in Module 1 and we discussed this again during Monday's lecture, so I thought I'd go through the cycle reflecting on something that often occurs in my practice and came up for me this week.

Description- 3 year old, new student getting upset about entering a ballet class without an adult.

Feelings- It can often feel stressful trying to cater for the needs of the new student and not exacerbate their distress but also not disturb the learning of the rest of the current students who happily enter the class independently. 

Evaluation- Good and bad. It was good to see the progress of the new student when she was taking steps to try things independantly towards the end of the class. Bad because another student then started to mirror the new students' behaviour and wanted to be with her parent, after previously being settled happily in the class for a while.

Analysis- I think this didn't go so well because the new student arrived late and the parent was not aware that parents do not attend the class. This caused disruption during the class on their arrival when I had to explain this to the parent. In my experience, young students can get upset when arriving late to a new class for the first time because it doesn't give them a chance to settle with the group before commencing. 

Conclusion- If parents are made aware of the class set-up, that students participate on their own, and are advised to come early to classes this may help new starters to settle more easily.

Action Plan- To work with the dance schools I work with to create some detailed welcome info they can provide to parents/ carers and also some clear signage to put outside the classroom to help parents/ carers with how they can best support their child to enter the class independently, ie, not entering the room, putting ballet shoes on before entering and most importantly positive encouragement.

At this point in my inquiry proposal I will now begin to reflect on the experiences I've had teaching SEND students. So I can triangulate my experiences with the primary and secondary data I will collect.

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