This second week of practice I’m teaching myself. On Monday, the day before I had to teach, a lot of questions:
- Will the pupils like me?
- Will the pupils eat me?
- Are my lessons good enough?
- Will they listen to me?
- Will they do what I ask them to do?
- …
Well, I’ve been teaching for 2 days now and I’m still alive.
My second lesson was art class, it was based on Keith Haring and I must say the pupils worked very hard. First they say a powerpoint about the works from Keith Haring. They got inspiration out of it. Then I explained what they had to do. Luckily Ellen was there to explain a little bit in Danish. I made to examples so they could see what the final result had to look like and then they started. Everyone was very active, they were drawing, cutting, coloring, designing,… all the time!
Organisation: The pupils worked individually but they were sitting in groups so that they could share their inspiration.
Communication: I told and showed first what they had to do. After the explanation they worked and I helped them were it was needed.
Type of activity: This is an art lesson so it was a creative one. They had to design something from their own. They were very active and worked very hard. Every pupil could work on his own speed and could draw whatever he/she wanted.
Materials: I used powerpoint, my own examples, pictures from Keith Haring on the tables,…
Language: This was a cross curriculum lesson. The pupils can speak English so they had to speak English in art class.
I really liked teaching this lesson. The pupils listened to me, they showed me their works, they asked questions,… Even the teacher said me that it was good and that she will use the same lesson next year!
My third lesson was an English lesson about Belgium. I made a lot of effort by making a corner work with a lot of materials! I made a ‘true or false game’, a smelling corner, a word grid corner, a comic book corner, a quiz,… So a lot of trouble for 1,5 hour learning about Belgium. But my work is been rewarded: the pupils came to thank me and said goodbye after class, shaked hands, wished me a nice afternoon,…
Organisation: I made 6 different corners within each corner 3 of 4 pupils. The pupils had to work together in the most corners. In one they had to work individual.
Communication: I explained first what they had to do and what they had to take. After this the pupils had to go to work and I helped when pupils needed me.
Type of activity: This was also a creative one because I made a lot of materials with just the things I have brought from home. The pupils had to be active to make it work. First I thought that the classroom would explode if they work in groups but they didn’t shout, screamed,… at all! There was a lot of differentiation. In every corner they learned something different then in another one. At the end I planned a quiz about the things they had learned. It was a big surprise for me that they remembered the most famous places, persons, comic books, smells,… from Belgium. They probably remembered a lot of things because they didn’t realize that they were learning, they played games…
2 points that weren’t so good:
- There were 2 mistakes in the word grid.
- I didn’t have a surprise for the winning team. (The pupils didn’t said anything but I thought about it at the moment they won…)
First I was a little bit afraid that this lesson would be too difficult for them. But as you can see on the pictures, it was just for them! Now I know that this lesson works for 8 year old children, I can use this in my own practice in 3 weeks! Woehoe, one lesson more!
