First days of practice

Today and yesterday we went to the Hertug Hans Skole in Haderslev. Carlos, Eliska and I will do our practice their. Before going to the lessons everyone had to come to the gym. There was a morning opening. Everyone had to sing songs and after that we went to the classroom. It's a nice beginning of the week. Everybody sits together before they have to listen and pay attention in the classroom.

We did an observation in an English lesson with Brigitte. The pupils are 11 years old. They chose a subject for a presentation a week ago. Now they had to finish it en present it. The pupils worked in pairs about an animal. They had to present it in English. I think it's a good exercice. The pupils can choose an animal according to their own interests and they had to speak the language. They could talk as much as they liked. If they can't speak English very well, they kept it short. Others spoke for a longer time. We would call this differention. They were very creative: they made drawings, collages, printings,... . It was a very creative, activating and differentiated lesson. The pupils worked also very independant. They could chose the way of presenting it, what materials (paper, computer,...) they used, chose their own words, look them up in a dictionary, ask the foreign students,... . When the children didn't understand something the teacher was never far away to help. This is also a way of teaching in Belgium. We are very pro differention.

I have one negative point about this class: they a sitting everywhere, are talking,... It's a different way of discipline and respect here. I will have to get used to it because in my class they can harldy move or I have seen it!

After the English lesson we went to the gym with Rikke. The pupils from grade 3 had sports. This was very different from Belgium! Boys and girls have gym seperate. The teacher had only 14 girls to teach. They had a warming up that I will keep in mind, it was a good one! The pupils had to run in the hall. When the music stopped, the teacher said an exercice like touch the red line with your nose, touch the blue line with your elbow, touch the blue and yellow line with your hands,... After they warmed up, they played some ballgames. Some were simmilar to the Belgian one, others I didn't know. The pupils asked for Belgian games next time, so I will prepare a whole lesson of Belgian games that we can play outside.After the lesson all pupils have to shower. Pupils in the school were I will be teaching they don't take a shower after gym. I can smell them already!

On Tuesday we saw the 11 year olds. The teacher scared me in the morning by saying that she shouts alot and that the pupils are noisy. But it wasn't totally true. They were very nice and they came immediatley to us with a few questions about our names, country's,... So after we met, they started making name tags and painting easter eggs. They made them from klay last week and now it was time to paint them. They worked individually for about an hour and when they finish they have to work in their books. Every single pupil has a book where they can write, paint, cut,... . It's good and I think it will stimulate their creativity. Every one does something different so is very differentiated. The pupils know what they have to do and the teacher walks around to watch and help them.

This was a curriculum crossed lesson! The teacher is also an English teacher and the pupils had to speak English in art lesson! Very interesting because I find it very hard to work crosscurriculum with language and an art lesson.

Tommorow we will teach this class and I'm looking forward to teach them. It's a very nice class and hopefully they will work with me!