Day 2: Second Day

Today I saw that children were called into a different room to read some books during the first 15 minutes, meaning lessons start ten minutes before I was asked to attend to the school center. However, it was interesting to see how children learnt to read in different levels. One child from South America read a book in Spanish, while the rest of the children tended to choose books in Catalan. There is not a library for English books to read, aside from the science CLIL complementary ones, meaning it would be positive to widen the books children can borrow, including books in English too.

Afterwards I went to the next class, and children were asked to sit on an exam about the last CLIL project. It was a filling-the-gaps exercise with a text about looking after the environment. Meanwhile, the teacher asked me to give her ideas on my CLIL project before tomorrow. The problem was with my English Idiom School studies at the afternoon, having to develop my final grade work, having no morning break either due to being far from the school and having to go back home and come back, plus me not having yet seen how the children worked in science CLIL sessions, it was utterly impossible for me to think of a unit planning so soon. I feel overwhelmed by having to prepare my unit planning days before the school trip, having to deal with the University and Language School tasks and exams.

On the next classroom, we went to the fifth grade room and I helped many students with “saving the Earth” project – something different from what they usually do on their CLIL sessions –. In “Saving the Earth” project, pupils had to work in groups to make sketches of drawings about ideas to save the environment, with a brief explanation of each drawing. One student had already finished and come up with really catchy slogans and incredibly funny and effective ideas. Other groups had more difficulties and one student said he did not know English –probably because he had recently joined the school-. I helped them all, telling them what to do and giving them ideas, and it surprised me what a high level of English understanding most of them had, being able to speak to them in English all the time. They had more difficulties in writing, because the school focus is on speaking and listening, but when the students used their English, their oral level was higher than the standards.

After the break, we went back to P5 class and repeated the same activities we did last day with another group. I liked dancing and singing, and I was already familiar with the lyrics of the songs from last day, but I found it especially difficult to adapt my low tone of voice to the teacher and infant pupils’ high-pitch one. Still, I managed to perform it quite effectively.

I wish we did some storytelling which is what I am better at! But I cannot complain, as the children love songs, and I am learning many of them. Furthermore, today I was more confident than the first day, speaking more to the children than usual. In the afternoon, I helped 5^th B students with their “saving the Earth” projects and the 6^th grade ones with doubts about grammatical errors and unknown words.