This is it. Last week of school placement. I can’t believe it.
I have been extremely lucky in my three school placements; the school staff have been so welcoming, nice and helpful there are not enough words to express how grateful I am. They have taken me with them for some weeks, treating me as if I were to stay for good, making me feel like I belong, and they have offered all the help in the world. I am absolutely delighted.
This week was short too, because we had a Bank Holiday on Monday to celebrate carnival. Tuesday was a big day, because I took over one of the English teachers for five lessons (two groups of 4-year-olds, two groups of 5-year-olds, and one group of second graders in Primary). We had planned the lessons on the previous Friday, so everything was organised. The lessons came out perfectly well, and I had no trouble at all. Two of the groups were a bit louder than when both the English teacher and myself are present, but it was manageable. So, I can say I enjoyed it. It must be hard if you happen to have one of those days when someone throws up in the middle of the lesson, or somebody misbehaves really badly, or the whole group goes wild. I guess those are the sort of nightmares us rookies have. In a couple of the lessons I definitely felt warmer than I usually do when the English teacher is with me, but it was nothing that taking the jumper off couldn’t fix.
I have also taken some time to at least get a taste of other things in the school. I attended a lesson with the third English teacher in the school, who teaches in the 5th and 6th grades of Primary. They use a different set of materials, and their lessons are more project-based, closer to CLIL. Besides, the teacher is very different from the other Primary teacher; she has a completely different style. She also uses the materials more freely, and combines materials coming from other methodologies. Today, for instance, they were going to use some materials coming from the Amara Berri methodology, where the teacher had worked before.
It is great to see different styles of teaching. It helps you realise that you can be yourself, that you can (and should) develop your own style.
I have also had the opportunity to experience the free-circulation method that the school applies. I have spent a whole morning with three groups, two on their last year of pre-Primary, and the other one in the first year of Primary, during their free circulation hours. One of the classrooms offers several art activities; the other one has puzzles, building blocks and card games; and the third one has some building games and the reading and writing corner. Each teacher stays in one room, and they rotate classrooms every two weeks, because some children tend to stay where their teacher is. Children choose freely where they want to be, and which activity or project they will pursue. Every day of the week they have several hours in free-circulation. Of course, teachers encourage them to get involved in all activities over time, they help them decide what to do, and they push them to go further in their productions. I have also had a chance to see how the assessment is done, as it is quite different from the assessment if you spend all the hours with “your” group. This system needs very good coordination among teachers; they meet twice every week and discuss about problems that arise, or children whom they particularly want to follow.
Children’s productions created during free-circulation can be taken to other classes to be shown. For example, during the morning I spent with them we received the visit of three four-year-olds who told us the riddles they had created, and several of the children in our class went to other classes to arrange appointments to show their work. I very much like the idea of going to another class to show your work, I think it helps socialise and encourages autonomy and self-esteem. I also liked free-circulation a lot. It multiplies the number and size of corners you can have (compared to staying in just one regular classroom), and introduces variables that bring students to face challenges which you can rarely create in one classroom (a wide variety of choices, and having to select one; opportunities to make friends outside your group; very heterogeneous grouping, since children from two grades are mixed…). I think it is a great idea. Teachers also say that it is a heavy burden for them, and that after some time working like that, many of them end up disliking it for that reason.
Finally, I took some time during the week to give some feedback to the fourth-graders about their comprehension tests on the two stories we listened to. I prepared a rubric for each of them, and visited them in their regular classroom to hand it out. They had never seen a rubric before, and I didn’t want to take much time from their regular lesson, so I am not terribly happy about the explanation. It would have been nicer to go through the whole rubric slowly, so everybody understood, but most of them understood it and they were not that interested, anyway, because they know it is not part of their assessment.
As a final self-assessment on the experience, I would say that when I started the school placement I was a bit concerned because I wasn’t going to be able to do it part-time, like I had done the two previous ones. I thought I would have less time to prepare lessons and to think about the things that would come up everyday. I have certainly had less time to prepare lessons compared with the previous two years, as I had to work at the same time, but the experience has been very interesting, nevertheless. After Christmas, when I started being the leading teacher in the classroom with one of the two English teachers I have spent most of my time with, I have been experiencing more or less what it is like to take over without previous notice and with hardly any time to prepare lessons. I observed the structure of the lessons in the weeks before Christmas, and then I performed them after a very short exchange of information first thing in the morning with the English teacher. So, I was sort of improvising after having read the script a couple of times. And, of course, I had the security of having the English teacher in the classroom; my net. It has been a very different experience compared to the other two, and I think it will prove very useful in the future, because it has given me some confidence at handling a quite frightening sight: going into a classroom after being appointed the day before, like all temporary teachers who work for the Basque Government must do when they receive the call offering a temporary job which inevitably starts the day after.
iruzkinik ez:
Argitaratu iruzkina