Day 8: The school music festival

Today, in the first hour, I have gone to secretary and asked for the practical coordinator. It turned out she was there, so I told her about the work plan and signature, and she asked me to come back during the break, as she had to explain me what I would be doing the week the English teacher will be travelling to Sweden with the children.

Then, I went to the 6^th grade English speaking class with the English teacher. She had prepared two worksheets with an untidy room and items or objects to find. Students were placed in pairs and they had to ask each other questions in order to find the items they did not have on their drawing in contrast to their partner one. The students had to work with prepositions. I was helping the students all the time, correcting a student’s unfinished natural science project from the last day and helping the children formulate correct questions in the past, at the time I was giving them some tips with vocabulary and preposition meanings and usages.

At the beginning it was difficult for me to explain word meanings without having to use too complex vocabulary for them to understand. However, I grew better with practice, as in the second hour I did not have any trouble in defining or explaining anything the students asked me or that I saw they needed some help with, by only using English. I think in two more sessions I will do it automatically, without having to grasp for the best way to define or explain something in English, in a way that could be easily be understood. I made sure all the students worked, and we rehearsed the lyrics of the music festival once.

 During the break, I went back to secretary and the practical’s coordinator signed the work plan. After the break, the students went to the gym and practiced the dance and English songs for the festival again. Sometimes I told the students to help me with the furniture arrangement and helped giving my view on some aspects which could be polished, as well as positive feedback to the children who put a big effort into it. Thanks to the tutor indications, the children managed to perform the dance in a more coordinated way than last days’.

In the afternoon, I talked to 5^th grade tutor: today is the big day! And he laughed. I went to the classroom and took the children to the gym, where the music festival was going to take place. Many parents attended and in a few minutes the room was crowded with visitors. The students of 5^th and 6th grade performed different songs with a piano base and some others from the respective English course books. In the end, of the act, the students performed the dance, which was a success. Making the students sing and dance in English at the same time caught their parents’ attention, and greeting at the public as they were leaving the scenery with the music was also wonderfully successful. During the act, I sometimes talked to the parents and about where they could sit, helping the teachers to establish the necessary order in the crowd. In the end the music festival was a success, and we went happily back home.