In 1989 I began to attend St James' Primary School in Wakefield.

        The subject courses I chose were selected because I enjoyed the subjects and also excelled in them. Another reason was that I felt I could pursue a career in one of these fields.

        I do not have a single favourite subject, but I do enjoy science, English, Child Development and History as I have a strong interest in these areas. During the Child Development course I have learnt numerous skills and I have learnt a great deal about the development of a newborn baby to the age of five years. During this two-year course I had to produce two pieces of coursework about a chosen subject area, which would be 50% of my final grade. The two pieces of coursework consisted of a research study into a topic of my choice, which was “Healthy Eating Habits”. The second piece was an observational study of a child, observing their development over a period of six months in the four aspects of development (physical, social, emotional and intellectual development). I enjoyed the second piece of coursework the most as I felt I learnt a whole new skill in observing the progression of a child, and this was the most enjoyable as it was more practical than the other piece of coursework as I was personally able to interact with the child. This confirmed my idea and career interest in working with young children and I think from this course I have now some background knowledge on Child Development.

I have also in school I had the opportunity to work with younger pupils who have had learning difficulties and helping them with their reading. For one year during free time in school I worked as part of the Paired Reading scheme. From this scheme I was able to give something back to school and also to the pupils.  I think working wit the children was very interesting and I was able to experience working with children with learning difficulties, which is another future career aspect in working with children. Also during the Summer Holiday of the year 2000 I also had the opportunity to work as part of the Kettlethorpe High School’s Summery Literacy Programme. This too involved me working on a one to one basis with a younger pupil in paired reading and also guided writing activities. This again was valuable experience and gave me some knowledge of working with children with learning difficulties and it was a very enjoyable experience. This is a subject area I feel I have found most enjoyable.

In English Language I have always found some difficulty, which hasn’t affected may grades dramatically but is a subject area that I find is my weakest point. But over the past two years of my GCSE course I feel I have progressed a lot, to a standard of which I am very proud. I particularly feel that from the help of my subject teacher I was able to progress to this standard and I am very grateful to them for the help, which I have received.

At the moment I fell I am either learning new skills or improving on those I have already acquired. With the new skills I am beginning to realise my strengths and weaknesses. I have found that I have a good ability to understand and listen to other people, which enables me to grasp new ideas and progress further.