Day 19: The last day

Today it was my last day at the school. I went to the English classroom with the Fifth and sixth grade teacher as usual.  In the classroom, the students worked in an activity from the text book in which each student was given the same chart but with different pictures on them. These were design top work speaking in a way that student A had to ask some questions to student B, in order to find out what the main character was going to do on the days which were not shown on their own one, by using the structure: “to be going to + verb”.

I spent the classroom helping some students with their doubts, and correcting some others when needed, or encouraging them to participate when needed. When they finished, I asked them to ask questions to their partners about their future plans by using the same sentence formation and structure, and that is what they did. At the end of the class, the teacher showed the students a video about a boy who was able to speak eleven different languages, and asked the students some comprehension questions about it.

She took the opportunity to tell some British cultural aspects and also some world politic geography, which would provide the students with some extra overall knowledge about the world. There is not much to say about the two following sessions, as were almost equal to the first one. Having to teach different groups, the teacher repeated the session and I repeated my actions.

After the break I went to a different class with the third and fourth grade teacher, because on the timetable I was given said so, meaning the only difference was that instead of doing the last lessons in the afternoon, these would be held instead of the last morning hour, finishing half an hour later. I was asked to help a student with difficulties finish the book. It did not matter the king of exercises he had to do, as with or without cassette I helped him do all of the exercises, doing the speaking by myself. In this case, it was all vocabulary I knew the pronunciation of very well, having not to fear giving him wrong input at all. After the end of the lesson –which by the way was shorter than the usual morning ones-, he had finished 5 pages from the book.

After that happened I went to the Standard English classroom, and the fifth and sixth grade teacher did the same session with another group.  There I told the students that today it was my last day at the school, and after some greetings I thanked the teacher for all I had learnt at the school center, wished her good summer holidays and said good-bye to the staff at the school center.

I still cannot believe I have finished my stay. I will miss both the students and the teachers here badly, but I will keep with myself everything I have learnt from them, as if in a way a piece of each one’s regards and experience was always with me. I do not regret having come to this school at all, being able to apply all I have learnt here to my lessons as a future English teacher.

Day 18: The fourth session

Today I have been to the tutorial room with the teacher and showed her my last session. She said I would be doing it today, in the second hour. Despite thinking the writing activity was really challenging she allowed me to do it in order to see how I managed to develop it.

In the second hour, I went to the fifth grade classroom with the English teacher, and I began my session by telling the students I had seen they had been working with songs about Tintin in the music festival and on different activities at the school. Then I asked them if they had read some comic books, and which ones. They named many of them and I told them that, as they had been working with verbs in past, today we would read a story about Tintin. I told them that the story hypothetically happened some years ago, and asked them which verb tenses we would use to describe it. They answered that past verb tenses.

Then I told the students there were two different types of past verbs, and asked them which ones I was talking about. Some students raised their hands and answered those regular and irregular verbs. I drew a chart at the blackboard with two columns; one for each category, and asked the students for some examples and also the differences between the first and the second verb types. Then, I said now we knew how to write verbs in past –the students had also worked verbs in the past through my previous sessions as well-, we would be reading the cartoon story.

I asked the students to read the brief explanation below each cartoon I had prepared, by filling the gaps with the different verbs in their past forms. Some of the verbs were already known by the children but others not. I told them nothing was wrong if they did not know some of them, because it was not an exam but an opportunity to learn some of them. I told the students to write down those verbs which came up and were not known by them on the blackboard, as the students read the different cartoons. During the intervention, I made sure all the students followed, and in many occasions I made gestures or simulated situations in order to convey meanings, which worked very well. After some cartoons, I made oral comprehension questions about them, asking for example why they thought Captain Haddock did not want to go with Tintin at the beginning or if Tintin thought his friend was still alive when he wanted to rescue him. As the students read, I helped them with pronunciation and some verb tenses, written down at the blackboard the ones they did not know already.

When we finished reading, I told the students I would give them a worksheet with some cartoons. I told them it was a summary, so they would not find all of them on the worksheet. Then, I told them they would have to order the events in the story, and then try to explain what happened to Tintín on each one, by using their own words or the verbs and expressions they had in the chart. The ones the students showed more difficulties with were the combinations of past and infinitive verb combinations, but I managed to tell them their meaning by asking them to tell me what a combination I wrote meant in Catalan. Once the students had finished numbering the cartoons, we made a global correction, and I asked each student to explain what was happening in the first, second, third and so on and to show which one it was to their partners. After that, I told them to begin with the writing of the story.

As the students were writing, I was moving from table to table solving their doubts and helping them with some verbs. The lesson was said to be super challenging by the English teacher, but despite the differences between students, I managed to teach everything. The students showed motivation and tried to write the story again, performing the quite well with my help. At the end of the session most of the students had finished, and some had not, so I asked the teacher to give them the worksheet as homework or to finish correcting it in another English lesson. The lesson was perfect today. The students were challenged and I almost did not need to call any students’ attention due to disruptive behavior. I only advised one child not to make unnecessary noises with the pencils so that we could hear his partner who was speaking and that was all. The students learnt, were motivated and rose to the challenge of reporting a story in the past.

After finishing my lesson, I went to the P5 patio at the roof of the building and stayed looking after the children. Some of them knew me already from the English sessions, and I asked them about the games they played and so on. One who had problems with a partners had solved them and befriended him. A child showed me a quite original toy consisting on some paper strips which could be moved with some plastic mechanism, forming different shapes. I found my English teacher at the roof, and I explained her I usually came to the playground in the roof when she was out, instead of the one below, and I stayed there in order to learn more about the children.

After that, I went back to the class and helped the teacher hang science project pictures on the wall and another teacher unhang different ones at the moment. From her I learnt that the students would be developing some activities next week, in a trip where some monitors arrange activities and games for them to play and different schools met and attended the event. Back in class, the children were told to create their own story out of a chart with different actions and possibilities to choose from, in order to create a simple story in the past. Today, I participated a lot in the lesson, solving the students’ doubts and answering their questions about the exercise, at the time I encouraged them to work. Both groups developed their own activities, and I even took the chance to encourage a student to write his own book (later on) now he knew how to write past tenses, telling him maybe he became a millionaire with the book sells and was able to buy a million play stations, in regards to his answer of preferring to play computer games instead, and the fact they had played who wants to be a millionaire in my previous session.

Today I have told some of the staff it was the day before my last day at the school. I have learnt a lot of things here and I do not regret having chosen the school at all. The teachers were truly competent and I have had the chance to learn a lot from them. I will miss the teachers and students both.

Day 17: Back on 5th and 6th grade.

Today I have gone with the English teacher to the reading session, as usual. She had come from the trip, together with the sixth day students, all of who had behaved very well. Despite having some issues at the beginning of the school trip like becoming dizzy due to bus sickness, the student had a lot of fun during their stay in Switzerland.

In the first classroom, we have corrected the extra work sheets I had prepared for the London session, all of which the teacher gave the students to finish as homework for today. Some students did not do them, but most did, and we all made the global correction. Then, the students were told to do some exercises about that they had done over the last weekend. I move through the table and helped the students with some doubts, although most 5^th grade students did not have doubts nor questions about it, so the session ran smoothly. When most of the students finished the exercises, the teacher would ask some students to approach the digital blackboard in order to proceed with the global correction of the exercises. At the end of the class, the students sang “Yellow Lemon Tree song” in a karaoke version.

In the next classroom I was told today the students would be taking four lessons in the morning and no sessions in the afternoon, due to the recent schedule spring/summer timetable modifications. Now, the students were shown the other classroom’s drawings about science, as well and their own ones, together with some comments on which ones were the best, and which ones needed some more work. The teacher showed the students the different drawings for the students to see, explaining her opinion on them. After that, students were asked about the vocabulary on all flashcards from the science project, and then about the objects they still did not know.

In the next session after the break, the teacher drew a chart in which different materials and actions we could apply to them related to their properties, and gave the students more detailed explanations about each action’s meaning.  Once they knew, the students were asked to complete with ticks and crosses the relationship between objects and applicable actions through the chart. The students were excited because nurses had come to the school today in order to give them vaccines. They were called in groups of four and once they were done, they were replaced by different ones. At the end of the lessons, the students were shown a song by Simple Plan. The last session was quite similar to this one, repeating the exercises with another group.

Day 16: The sixth grade students’ return from the trip

Today I have attended the first-and-second grade teacher’s reading lesson, previous to the English lessons. The students have been following the reading of the same book aloud, as usual, following a whole group approach. This allows all the students to follow, as the second grade students become more easily distracted, and by asking them randomly to continue, the teacher makes sure all of them are following.

In the first lesson, the students were quite excited, probably because some of their elder brothers and sisters were coming back from their travel to Sweden. Some of them began showing minor disruptive behavior, and at first I allowed them that. However, the teacher asked me to control them, and became more lenient probably to see what I was going to do about it. Later on, the teacher left the room and asked me to guide the students in the watch of a video. However, by that time things had gone worse, having already seen highly disrespectful behaviors in a student towards the lesson.

None of it I was going to allow, both because it was affecting the proper classroom climate for learning and my teaching skills, so I decided to give the student a call of attention, saying very seriously she complained about not knowing English but was not doing anything to change that. I added I did not find it was not fun at all. And that was enough to reestablish the order in the whole class. Then, I displayed the video on the book, and asked the students if they were wearing these kinds of clothes. They said no, and I told them it was because the video was about a clothes museum, and that people used to dress like the ones many years ago. There was a deep silence and all the students were looking at the video when the teacher came back to the class.

In the next lesson, the third-and-four grade teacher asked the students to do some exercises using their text books, and it was quite successful. The teacher showed the students the drawings, pictures and corrections on the digital blackboard, asked the students to do the exercises in their own by writing on the books and then she would ask some volunteers to correct. In the meantime, she was making sure all the students were working, moving from table to table. Then, global corrections followed, where a student had to click at the digital blackboard to show the answers once volunteers had expressed their ideas aloud. The third grade text book begins to be enough cognitively demanding, so the activity worked well.

At the end of the class the clock was setting ahead of time, and when the teacher realized, all the students were ready to go to the playground. Instead, she asked them to show me a song they had been working with. Before that, they had sang the “super sister” song, a quite original, funny and nice song which had been a success at the school festival.

After the break, I went with the third-and-four grade teacher to the second group class, as she was substituting for another teacher as well. There, the students were asked about the seal body parts due to a third grade science CLIL they were working with, and then requested to glue the different words of its body parts into the drawings, where each one belonged. When they finished, they were asked to sing some songs and watch some videos. Here was the child with difficulties I had mentioned yesterday. However, knowing him more it was way easier to help him, and more gratifying to see how he was learning. During the session, I was moving around the tables, helping the children as much as I could. I was participating quite much today, and I am happy about it.

In the afternoon, the third-and-four grade teacher told me to help the students with their science exam and project. While she was coming I was asked to help unhanging some butterfly drawings about the album cover of second grade students. When I finished, she arrived. Here the exams were not filling the gaps ones, but different ones, resembling the Standard English ones focused on level with some Science contents as well. I helped the students with the exam and told them what to do next. For the science project, they had to find ideas for keeping the environment and make some drawings with text, from the ones given at the book. After that, they had to classify the different animals in the rainforest into the specific groups: mammals, birds….and do on. I helped many students here too, and the last session was a repetition of this one, this time with the other four grade group.

Day 15: Aiding diversity

Today I have been asked by the third-and-fourth-grade teacher to help her attend one child with difficulties in the third grade classroom. He showed an unusual behavior, becoming unable to grab the pencil correctly, extremely excited at being asked to write or to face complex tasks, with big difficulties to focus or stay still and calm, and sometimes showing sudden aggressive behavior towards the other classmates.

The teacher asked a child how was she feeling today, and she acted out the way the child felt for all the students to see. Then, the teacher asked the other students how they felt, and the children with difficulties I was with said he was angry. The teacher said that was very good, and drew an angry face at the blackboard. She asked me how I was feeling and I added an extra adjective to the list, mimicking the action by myself.

Then, the teacher asked the students to draw six different faces with the sentences below them, and I divided the students’ attention from the color tray towards the teacher’s explanations, in a positive way. After that, the student threw the colored pencil remnants over the table all of a sudden, and I calmed him down. I asked him to pick up the rubbish and throw it into the box, by showing everything I was doing to him and changing the intonation. He performed the task quickly, but when his partner took the box away from him he hit him in a violent way. Then I briefly told him off, and changed his attention towards the task.

I pointed at the different faces on the blackboard and asked him what that was. As he answered, I gave him the tray again in order to make the different drawings and told him how to draw the different faces. He showed good predisposition towards the task, which I supported with positive reinforcement and oral interaction. The biggest issue was when he was asked to write the sentence in English under the images. I managed to make him do the first one, but the task made him utterly nervous, so I told the teacher and she told me she would try to make him continue. After a few unsuccessful tries, she gave him a different task which he could perform; also cognitively rich but which did not require as much coordination.

In the meantime I helped another child do the letters smaller, by making him repeat the last words he had written in a more suitable handwriting. I also showed through mimic a girl what was what in her confusion between hunger and thirst. The first one managed to considerably improve his performance during the lesson. I also made him talk by asking him questions about what he had drawn or written.

When the bell rang, I went to the small patio in the roof, where the playground for the youngest children was located on. There, I talked to some children and the teachers as well. I learnt the first group was quite difficult to manage and that half of the children’s parents were divorced. I talked about many things about the children and the school and helped some children who were verbally fighting each other.

I asked them what happened and told them if they disagreed on something; they had to talk to each other in order to try to solve the problem rather than fighting. I told them we adults at the school sometimes disagree on something and we discuss in order to find for the best solution or one which suited us both. Obviously I did not use these words but simpler ones, and the child understood, apologized to his partner and went back to play again. I also spoke to some children who asked me about my name and the subject I taught and joked with some others.

Back in class, this time I was with the first-and-second grade teacher teaching second. I was asked to make some children a re-exam in which they had the opportunity to repeat the parts they wanted to improve from the last one they did. I took them to another room and told them to place the rubber in the middle of the table for the ones to be able to use it as well, and that if they talked I would pick up the exam back and they would lose the opportunity to have a higher mark. It worked and the students showed a good behavior and finished the exam correction early. As they finished, I sent them back to class.

 In the afternoon, the same teacher as the last class one made a standard lesson with different listening activities and a speaking one about clothes where I showed them what as I wearing. The classroom went well, because the activities were appropriate, meaningful and cognitive-demanding for the children to work with. In the last hour, however, we had the first group, and it was more difficult to manage, as the teachers had said before. The text books in this case, however, had too easy tasks for the children to perform, mostly about repeating words, matching them to their drawings and coloring or gluing stickers.  I think the teacher is aware of that too, because sometimes she complements the book activities with extra ones she prepares, more meaningful and cognitively demanding, in order to prevent the children from becoming bored due to the easy and repetitive manner of the text book ones.

Day 14: While the 6th grade students are travelling abroad…

Today I have gone to the reading session with the First and Second grade English teacher.  I have introduced myself to the students in the class and made sure they were reading the book aloud. These students had no different books to choose from but a single one they were reading in a whole-group approach. This variation was because the student had some pupils with special needs and working with the same book she made sure all the students were following.

In the first hour, I went to 1^st B class, and the 1^st and Second grade teacher introduced me to the students and asked me to help a student with Asperger Syndrome do the exam. I went to a separate room - next to the teachers’ one- with another practical teacher and we helped the student with the exam. He had some difficulties in spelling, but the most difficult thing for him was to understand what he had to do on each exercise. The children had a good memory, and we helped them out in telling him what to do and focus on the task to perform. At the end, he finished the same exam as his peers in time, finishing all of the exercises with most of the answers right.

In the next hour, I went to Third Grade with the Third and fourth grade English teacher. There, she told me to help another student with special needs do the exam his class had to sit on that time. The difficulties this student had were related to how to do the different exercises, and somehow to reading comprehension ones. I followed the teachers’ advice of using colors to find the answers on the readings, and helped her with the rest of the exercises as well, following my tips, indications and advices. I made sure the student would have time to finish the exam, and that she was not given any answer but given learning strategies instead.

I told her to check for word spelling on different exercises in the same work sheet, to highlight important words and to work systematically focusing on a single task, not to waste time looking at the rest until the first one is finished, unless she did not know the answer for the first one. Of course I taught her that through simple indications she could understand, by using the English language all of the time.

After the break I was asked by the third and fourth grade teacher to do an oral exam for the students to sit on. I called them one by one, asking them questions in English. If they answered the whole answer correctly I had to write down a tick, if they missed some words or pronounced it incorrectly different ones, and so on. The exam worked well and the students were usually well prepared. In the afternoon after lunch, I did the same test, taking back students in order. It was interesting to see how many questions in English they were able to answer.