Day 1: Joining the school center.

12th May 2014

Today was my first day doing “practices” at the school. After introducing myself to some teachers, I have been sent to the sixth grade class, where my tutor was. She introduced me to the pupils and gave me the schedule and some brief orientations on how things worked on the school.

She told me about her lessons and many things positively surprised me about the group, as these were different from the experiences I had had on previous school centers: she asked me to talk to her students in English all the time during her lessons and said she prepared her own exams, being the ones from the book editorials were too easy for the target children. She also taught and discussed an idiomatic expression a week, using these later on her lessons in order to consolidate these expressions. She even occasionally used phonetic transcription symbols in order to clarify pronunciation issues to her pupils. I completely agree with her methodology, as I believe talking to the children in English all the time widens the amount of input they receive, which is essential for their progress. Later on, I helped the children cope with difficulties by answering questions in English about some homework they had done, and having had a look at the text books and the digital blackboard they used, we moved on to 5^th grade classroom.

Fifth grade group was harder to cope with in terms of disruptive behavior, but I perfectly managed to introduce myself and help the children with their questions. Later on, the teacher made me a brief tutorial where she told me they were all truly busy at the end of the term and she had to go on a school trip, but we will try to do all we can in order to develop my CLIL sessions before she leaves. Starting so fast will be challenging, but I think I can manage to do it.

Then, I went to the teachers’ room to inform the cookers I would stay for lunch at the school, and there met some other teachers. They were all jolly and kind, and joked on how they had mistaken me for the school supervisor more than once. After the break I went to P5, where children were asked to sing songs and play digital blackboard games and activities. The teacher was the same as sixth and fifth grade and I think it is important to highlight how she complemented the exercise input with her own production, enriching the activities and visual support provided on the digital blackboard with meaningful English input. I told her I did not know that songs, despite having heard many, and I was worried I would mess with the song lyrics at first, but soon enough I got familiar with them, and I was dancing and singing the lyrics as well.

After the class I stayed for lunch into the teachers’ room and shared some words with them. In the afternoon, I went to first and second grades with another teacher but different groups. This one had a different methodology, using both English and Catalan in her lessons, and basing on songs and videos on the digital blackboard to provide the students with input. Despite not having as high a level of English as the other teacher, she had good management skills, especially with the second grade students, which were less difficult than the first grade ones to deal with. I tried to put an example and speak to the children and worked white well, but sometimes I did not dare to interfere not to interrupt the teacher, knowing it would come easier after a few days, where I would know exactly when it is ok to do so. Again, I saw all teachers were busy, as a school party was going to take place and all of them were making preparations, having to postpone some school tasks. At the end of the day, I went back home, thinking of the students and the tasks I would have to prepare. It was quite confusing at first but I think I will get more familiar with the school pretty soon.