Twelfth week of my school placement

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.

Eleventh week in my school placement

It seemed like it would last forever, but the last week is here! Oh, and we are all sad to say goodbye.

The week went by quite peacefully. The group in the fourth grade of Primary missed two lessons, which add to some others over the past few weeks. There are weeks when bank holidays, school trips and other events pile up and the English teacher needs to manage those interruptions the best she can. The pre-Primary groups have been doing fine, and they are following the lesson-plans set up by the teacher.

In the last two weeks I have also been attending a group of second graders in Primary, because next Tuesday I will be taking over one of the English teachers, and I wanted to get to know the group a bit beforehand. I took over her once she had a burial to attend, but next Tuesday it will be more intense, because I will have five lessons: two 4-year-old groups, two 5-year-old groups and one group of second graders in Primary. I am happy and excited about this.

The only group where it might be a bit more difficult to perform the lesson will be the first one, because they will have a new pupil in the group, and another pupil who has been away for several weeks will come back. The whole group was terribly excited today about the new friend who will join them tomorrow, and it hasn’t been easy to calm them down and guide the class. Besides, the pupil who will come back next Tuesday has Special Educational Needs and he will most likely need some days to adjust back to school. One of my former classmates, who is doing her school placement with this group, will stay during the lesson to help me manage the group, so I am sure it will go well. This afternoon I have planned all the lessons with the English teacher, so everything is set up.

In the last few weeks I have been working on ways to interact with the groups in such a way that they will follow the planned activities without me having to raise my voice. I hate shouting; I dislike noise, and this school is very noisy. Well, to be fair, ours is a noisy country in general, and this particular school is only maybe a bit over average. The noise is especially bad in the corridors and the stairs. Children are not noisy by nature, I believe; we make them noisy. And we make them noisy mainly by shouting at them. So I am determined to be a teacher with a reasonable tone of voice, but it is not easy, especially when children are used to being shouted at. Still, I think I have made some progress with these groups since I took over the English teacher conducting the lessons. Tranquility is a desired feature for me in a school; it is a condition for learning, and too often we ignore it.

Tenth week on my school placement

This week there is a growing feeling that this is about to end; the countdown has begun and soon the school placement will be over. What a pity! I am having a great time and learning a lot, and after having a taste of what being a teacher is like, I don’t want to leave.

I am happy with how the week went by. My second lesson with the storytelling for the fourth graders didn’t go that well, because the introduction to the story took too long. On the second story, I tried to get those students who usually don’t take part to participate, so I directed my questions to specific students, instead of opening them to the whole group. Since I picked the shyer students, they took much longer to answer, and we spent more time than the previous week in the pre-task phase. So now I know that I need to strike a balance between rhythm and wide participation. Other than that, it went down well. The whole group of students got involved in the two lessons and they took the tasks very seriously. I am very grateful and happy.

The pre-primary lessons were great this week. There is a group where the class atmosphere has been deteriorating in the past few weeks, so I decided to share with the 5-year-old students very clear objectives for the lesson yesterday, and it worked. I gave clear instructions regarding the activities we would do, and particularly about how I was going to mark the transition from one to the next, stressing the words I would use. I was pleased with the result, but we still need to work a bit more to set our routines.

I was also very happy with the way things went in the 4-year-old groups, particularly one of them. Besides modelling the main activity in the lesson (making a collage on a sheet with 8 pictures and their corresponding texts, to create a “dictionary” for the unit) using an example made by myself, this time I asked one of the students to come to the front and we went through all the steps together. Being more explicit than other times might have helped some of the students, because one of them, who usually produces quite poor work, did wonderfully. He was so proud of his work that he kept walking around with it in his hands and didn’t want to collect it.

That incident got me thinking about diversity and high expectations. This particular student that I just mentioned comes from a family of immigrants; one can easily tell by the colour of his skin. Since I first got here he didn’t pay much attention in class, often he would be playing with objects around him or with the student next to him. He wasn’t tidy at all when it came to cutting and glueing or drawing, and he tended to do the minimum effort that would be allowed. I think I was told that he was like that, and I have to admit that I just accepted it. Yesterday he taught me a big lesson. It is easy to talk about highest expectations for all students, but it is much harder to apply that principle being honest and fair as a teacher. A teacher needs to be constantly questioning the opinions given by other and their own opinions, to see if they are honest and fair, or just based on prejudice. Always looking for what will prove them wrong, more than for what will prove them right.

Ninth week in my school placement

This has been an important week, because I did my first session to collect data for my dissertation. I had a one hour lesson with the 4th graders where I introduced the topic of my autobiographical story through an open discussion, then we went through the questions they would have to answer after they listened to the story, then I told them the story, and then they answered the comprehension questions. So, if my questions were not well designed or my storytelling was bad, there is no going back.

Next Monday we will do the same activities, but based on the story of the unit they are about to start. That way, I will have data regarding two different types of stories, told in a different way. Too many factors will differ between both set of data, and being a small case study, the sample will be small, but it should allow me to reach some conclusions, nevertheless.

The pre-primary lessons continue being challenging, as I have taken over the role of the teacher. In some lessons she is not even present, like this afternoon, when she spent the whole lesson in the corridor with a student that doesn’t want to take part. It is her way of punishing the student, but I think he quite likes the attention. Taking into account what we learned on the psychology of education, her strategy shouldn’t work, but we will see. Apparently, the student agreed to take part in the next lesson.

These last weeks I want to concentrate on getting as much direct experience as I can, so I am happy with the way things are turning out. But doing more leaves less time for thinking, that is true, and I can see why it is difficult for teachers to reflect on their practice, because their schedules have no time allocated to that. There is time for giving lessons, preparing them, planning them and assessing students, but there isn’t a slot named “reflecting on what you do, how you do it, why you do it and what for”. But getting time for it is crucial, no doubt. Sometimes, I think that instead of engaging in the trivial smalltalk which generates in the staffroom, teachers would better use that time for “useful” things, like reflecting. But, then again, I think that socialising is also very important, because it can help create a sense of team. I don’t know; today I am too tired to think more clearly, I am afraid.

Eighth week in my trainee placement

This week has been short too, as we had San Sebastian in the middle. I have been reflecting on my school’s policy regarding English teachers, who have to pretend they are native, and also on this trainee placement compared to the previous two.

The week has been intense, especially because after Christmas we decided that I would take over the pre-primary teacher in one 4-year-old class and one 5-year-old class. So now she watches and I perform, and we discuss afterwards. Compared to my last school placement, when I took the teacher’s place everyday, this time is different, because I hardly have any time to plan and prepare with the teacher. Last year the teacher and I went to school 45 minutes before lessons started (she used to do that, and I joined her), so we had plenty of time to plan the day and discuss. I got more directions as to how to do things. This year, we only have time for short directions on our way to class, because the teacher has other lessons before, and so do I. So, this placement is giving me a chance to work on improvising. Of course, I have read the teacher’s guide, so I know the description of each activity in the unit, but most of the times I don’t get to see how my teacher performs it before I do. This has some pros and some cons, but I think it is good learning. I know that the teacher is there, and that she will step in if she sees anything too wrong, so I feel ok with it. The experience is close to being sent to a school to take over a teacher who is on leave, which is the main work experience I am likely to get once I finish my studies.

One of the days I came out thinking that we did a fantastic lesson; my storytelling was good, children were really into it and participating a lot… Other days I saw many things that needed to be improved, mainly planning the activity itself.

Last week I had a meeting with my university supervisor for the school placement, and he suggested I wrote more about general topics, like diversity etc. So far, I have been writing about those aspects more closely related to English teaching and learning, although I have mentioned that at the end of the day, the questions that interest me the general ones: how do you create a positive learning atmosphere? what should you do with those who feel less confident? Most of the times, I have dealt with those topics in my blog, because for some strange reason I feel like those thoughts belong there, and this diary is more related to teaching English.

From what I have seen so far, English lessons can be hard for those who I called the “gourmets of education”, especially due to aspects linked with the management of time. English lessons in pre-primary last 30 minutes. In primary they are a bit longer, 45 minutes, but since we walk up to collect each group in their regular classroom, and take them back there once we finish, they end up lasting 30-35 minutes too. English teachers run on a very tight schedule. For example, in pre-primary, the material we use is planned for 45 minute lessons, and since we only have 30, we have to “compress” activities a little. If a child has a bad day and poses “problems”, often they are asked to leave the classroom. I have also seen that not all children get the highest expectations from their teacher. Am I happy with that? No. Do I have an alternative? Being just a student, I can’t claim to have a solution, but I am determined to try something else if I ever get the chance to be a “real” teacher. You can’t just give up without even trying. That attitude doesn’t match the ideal teacher I have in my head.

English classes have an extra source of diversity, compared to regular lessons, as many students attend English lessons outside school. I think we should take more advantage of that than we do, and take this information into account when we set groups in the English classroom. That way, we could make sure we apply heterogeneous grouping and encourage cooperative learning, using peer tutoring as one of the main tools to develop lessons. There is a lot to do in that area, from what I am seeing in my placement.

This trainee placement compared to the previous two

This trainee placement is very different to the previous two in several aspects. To begin with, I am doing it full time, whereas the previous two were part time. That means that before I spent three whole days at school and another two days at work every week, and I extended the duration of the school placement to complete the foreseen hours. That worked out wonderfully for me, because the three days when I went to school I had several hours after we finished at 16.30 to continue working on things related to the school placement, such as writing my diary, or preparing activities and lessons. I have to say that my second trainee placement felt way too long, especially because the university didn't allow me to start early in order to finish together with the rest of my classmates, which forced me to continue with the trainee placement until the end of june, way after our exams had finished and everybody else was enjoying their holidays. That took me to decide that it would have to be full time this time. Of course, that means that I hardly have time out of the school hours to work on my placement, which I hate, because I have to work at the same time.

Another big difference is that my previous two experiences were as a "regular" teacher trainee, and this time I am getting to see the life of the "specialist" teacher. So, before, I spent the whole day with the same group of children, and now I change every half an hour or 45 minutes. That is a considerable difference, and it is important to see if you feel comfortable with so much change. I must say that both have advantages and disadvantages, and I would be happy to try any of them as a teacher in the future.

My previous two placements were in the same school, with the same teacher and the same group of children. The pre-primary unit where I was placed was much smaller than my current school in the third placement, which is also a big difference. This larger school has more space, especially for storing and for teachers to work in, which is nice.

Finally, before I only had contact with pre-primary children, and this time I have English lessons with children aged four and five in pre-primary, and children aged six, seven and nine in primary, which is also very different.

So, altogether I think I will get a quite global view on teaching in pre-primary and primary, which is great.

Pretending to be a native teacher in the EFL classroom

English teachers at the school where I am having my trainee placement pretend to be native English speakers. My school supervisor told me about it when we first met last summer. When she told me, I didn't think anything about it. Later on, when the new academic year started, we were told by some of our teachers in the Foreign Language Learning and Teaching Minor that that wasn't a good policy, mainly because it set a bad example regarding multilingualism, as students would have a monolingual English teacher, who apparently made no effort to learn other languages, while they had to learn English.

On December 3rd, when we celebrate the day of Basque language and culture, children put up a show at school; some classes sang a song, others made cookies etc. The 4th graders whose lessons I have been attending all along sang a well known song that challenges the listener to speak Basque, and starts saying something like "We speak Basque, why don't you join us?". Well, that morning, when the teacher and myself went to pick them up and take them to the English classroom downstairs, children sang the song pointing at us, and they had every reason to do so too. So, yes, pretending to be a native English teacher who doesn't speak Basque in a Basque school is not a good idea.

There are even more drawbacks to this policy. For instance, it makes it impossible to share with the students the struggles the teacher went through to learn English, which is something that helps create a good atmosphere and is encouraging for students. Equally, the teacher won't be able to share how they overcame those hurdles and show how far they got, setting an example. On the other hand, raising metalinguistic awareness pointing out similarities and differences between English and the students' L1 or L2 is prevented also. And, then, it creates awkward situations, where the English teacher can't speak with any student's parents in front of them, unless they do it in English, nor can they speak with the rest of the school staff in any other language but English. Finally, if the English teacher gets caught speaking Basque or Spanish students will feel cheated at and a bit stupid for having believed the teacher, which won't help create a relationship based on trust and respect.

The English teacher should be able to make students understand and accept that the English lesson and/or classroom is a place and time for English only, without cheating and lying.

Seventh week in my school placement

This week is being quite different from the previous ones.

Firstly, I learnt the stories for the two pre-primary grades, HH4 (Don’t cry) and HH5 (The hamster), and I have started performing them in class. The first I did was the hamster, and it was alright, although I had a few mistakes; I didn’t know that this time I had to say the dialogues in such a way that students would be able to repeat them after me, so I didn’t leave enough space for them to talk, and when the little boy went to the pet shop to buy the hamster, I forgot to play the part when he pays for it! Other than that, it was ok.

The next day I told the HH4 story, and this time I did leave time for them to repeat the dialogues, although they didn’t repeat much. They were quite engaged and followed the story with interest, so I was happy. I also did the finger puppet dialogues we usually so as an opening and closing routine for each lesson, but I do those quite often, so that wasn’t much of a novelty. I also went to an HH4 group that I had never been with before to tell them the story, invited by my supervisor in the school, which was great. She told me that stories come out better as you practise, and she was absolutely right.

Since I was feeling more confident and freer to take active part, I proposed to my supervisor (the one that teaches only in pre-primary) to change slightly the opening puppet dialogue where a child asks for permission to go to the toilet. As we have done it so far, the student wants a wee, but since the hamster’s story has introduced the concept of poo (the hamster poos around the house), we changed the dialogue so the student would say he/she wants to poo.

Secondly, yesterday I took over my supervisor in the HH4 lesson, as she had to go out. I found out just in the morning that I would be doing the lesson on my own, so there wasn’t time for any preparation, but it was ok. I just needed to do the opening and closing rituals, which I know by heart by now, and run an activity where children had to draw the heads of the two characters of the story, cut them, fold them and glue them to make two puppets. They did similar puppets in the previous story, so they knew pretty much what to do.

As usual, the most difficult part was to manage the group. I took advantage of them being peacefully sitting in a circle when I arrived, as their “regular” teacher was still around, and I started straight away with the opening ritual. I find that leaving no time for children to be idle while they are sitting in the circle is a good idea, because otherwise they start to look for something to do which seems interesting to them, and that usually goes against the teacher’s interest. After the opening finger puppet dialogue, I introduced the activity, and I am happy of the way I did that too, as I got a couple of them to produce some output as well, so it was ok. I did make a mistake, though: I didn’t stress that they had to draw the heads first, then fold the paper, then cut, and then glue.  As a result, when I gave out the printed sheet to each student and they went to their desks, some of them started cutting first, and once they were concentrated on their activity it was hard for me to get their attention and explain that it was drawing first, and cutting afterwards. I should have made sure that all instructions were given before handing out the sheets. It wasn’t that bad, because it didn’t really matter that much if they cut them first, as we were going to have time to finish them that day, but it is something to bear in mind for the next time. Giving clear instructions seems very easy and straightforward, but it isn’t, for me at least.

Another little problem that arose during the lesson, which was entirely caused by my lack of good planning, was that some children finished much earlier than others making their puppets, and I had no other activity to offer them. I couldn’t ask them to sit in the circle still for another ten minutes while others finished, so I let them wander in the classroom. They engaged in very positive activities, such as taking the puzzles out and doing them, but when the rest finished and I wanted them to sit back in the circle to do the closing routine, of course, they didn’t want to, and I don’t blame them. Nothing too bad happened; just one little girl who got angry and refused to sit with the rest of us for the closing finger puppet dialogue. It didn’t worry me, because she does very well, so not taking part in the puppet dialogue once was not going to harm her at all, but it made me think about the incident afterwards.

I would need to have an alternative activity to offer to children who finish activities early, so they have something else to do. Then again, I thought that it would be a good idea to take advantage of the skills of those who finish first to teach their peers, so that was something that I could do the next time. My supervisor has just told me that that is something she does, as well as playing the song that goes along with the story and asking them to dance freely while they listen to it.

So, those were the main learnings that I got out of yesterday’s experience.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that it was the right moment to change my schedule. When I first started the school placement, I had in mind to change the schedule after Christmas, so I could concentrate on some grades only, and take more active part in the lessons. Seeing that I am taking more active part in the pre-primary lessons now, I have proposed to both of my school supervisors to stop attending the 1st and 2nd primary classes, and concentrate on the two pre-primary grades, plus primary 4th. That way, I will be able to take part in the same lesson with different groups of pre-primary, so I can watch how my supervisor does it and then do it myself with another group. They have both accepted, so from next week on, I will start with the new timetable.

I also plan on asking my pre-primary supervisor to let me lead all the lessons in the two HH4 and HH5 groups that I have been following since the beginning. It is much easier to lead the pre-primary lessons than the primary lessons without knowing the lesson-plan in depth, because their structure is much simpler and stays the same from one unit to the next, while primary lessons are more diverse in their contents, and I couldn’t take over the teacher without very thorough explanations beforehand, for which we have no time, unfortunately.

Well, since I have gone long enough for this week, I will leave the topic I want to build upon for next week.

Sixth week of my school placement

This first week of the second term is very short, as it started on a Wednesday. I guess that is good for all of us, teachers, students and trainees, because it will give us the chance to enjoy a soft landing into the new year, as it were.

I was curious to see if the English teachers in my school intended to start with the regular contents straight away, or they planned to have a first transitional lesson. Both of them told me that they were going to continue with the usual lessons for several reasons: in pre-primary, children lack the communication skills required to talk in English about their holidays; in primary, they had plenty of days before Christmas when they did other activities and, besides, they already talk about Christmas in their regular classrooms, so the teacher sees no point in repeating the same conversations in the English lesson.

I also think that it is good to enter into full school-mode as soon as possible once the holidays are over. Maybe you can have a special warmer at the beginning, but other than that, going back to a known routine helps us all to focus.

This week we started with the new stories in LH1 and HH4. I loved the way the teacher performed the LH1 story with all students in a semicircle dramatizing it at the same time. They enjoyed it a lot, and the teacher did it very well, using gestures, intonation and speaking very clearly.

Having a chance to see how stories are first told has made me realise that it is hard for the teacher, who needs to memorise the exact words of a quite long narration. It is all right for a teacher who holds a permanent position, because it will be challenging on the first year, but if you are a teacher who just arrived on that day to school to take over a teacher who is on leave, it seems impossible to be able to follow the lesson as it has been designed. That is a great problem I see in this method, and there is no easy way around. I would like to build up on this topic next week, as I feel that it might have some negative side-effects for the teacher.

Some children don't like Christmas (either)

A small incident which happened on Thursday got me thinking. During the lesson with the second graders they made a very nice Christmas card, with a tree and two tabs that stuck out, where they glued Hocus and Lotus. The cover of the card had two lines, to write who it was addressed to, and from whom.

The child who cut into pieces the Christmas drawing we did the day before cut this one too straight away, so he was grounded and sent to his regular classroom with their usual teacher. Most children decided right away who they would give the card to, and chose mum & dad, or just one of them, or grandma. But there was one girl who said she wasn't going to give the card to anyone, and when I asked she said the card would be for herself. She did colour it and decorate it, but she didn't seem awfully happy. When the child who had been sent to their regular teacher came back, she also broke her card.

I found it odd, but when I started thinking about it, I thought that maybe Christmas is a difficult time for some children, and some of the things we make them do don't help. For instance, there are groups of students where roughly half of them have divorced parents. Maybe for some of those, giving them just one card and telling them to choose who to give it to is not that nice. Maybe they don't know who they are going to spend Christmas with yet, maybe the person they would like to give the card to is away.

Just like Christmas can stir things inside for adults, sometimes becoming disturbing, it can happen the same with children. But most of the time we think of them as being immune to such feelings, as if they lived in a fairy tale.

So, I thought that instead of making a card to give to somebody else, Christmas could be a good occasion to make a card for them, just to show. For instance, they could make a card where each of their classmates wrote something they liked about them, giving them a wide range of structures they could use:

• I like your... (hair, eyes, smile...)
• You are good at... (football, Math, drawing, making friends...)
• You are... (nice, a good friend, generous...)

That way, they would have something nice to keep for themselves and to show to whoever they wanted to, without having to choose anyone in particular.

Fifth week of my school placement

This week is being more relaxed, as the LH1 and LH2 groups finished all their lessons, and the HH4 and HH5 groups too. So, we have been doing Christmas decorations, and watching Christmas films, like the Smurfs’ version of A Christmas Carol. Having that in mind, I spent all day out yesterday, visiting Habe’s library, the EHU’s library and having a meeting with my university tutor for the school placement. That way, I collected a few more books on my undergraduate dissertation and got to know Habe’s library, which I found really nice and full of interesting things.

Earlier in the week I wrote on my blog about some problems in my interactions with children. At the end of the day, in all my school placements my struggles are always around the most basic aspects of teaching, which have to do with relationships, communication, understanding, negotiating, connecting. In summary, I am mostly interested on what the teacher can do to create the conditions under which learning can occur. The didactics of subjects (maths, science, English…) don’t really worry me that much; I think they are easier to acquire. It is the other part of being a teacher that I am most concerned about.

Well, and now back to what I had planned to write about. Before I started my school placement, I knew I would enjoy being with pre-primary children, because that is what our degree is about. I also thought that I would find primary students a bit of a pain in the rear end, being pre-adolescents trying to find any crack that could enable them to challenge you. But it turned out I really enjoy being with them. I don’t see that much of a difference between pre-primary students and the students of the first two primary grades, but there is quite a gap between those and the fourth graders. Fourth graders are more mature and more interested in the world, and others; they reason in a different way, and the interaction with them resembles more what you could have with adults, in some senses. They are more interested in socialising and all that goes with it, and I find them very interesting. I am experiencing the reason behind the set up of the stage into three cycles (P1-2, P3-4, P5-6), and I like it. I haven’t had a chance to visit the 5th and 6th grades yet, because I hate to leave out any of the other lessons in order to attend those, but I am sure I would see another big gap between the fourth graders and these last two as well.

I will finish the week full of homework for the holidays. In these last weeks, I have downloaded all the Eleanitz material, copied the Artigal CDs and DVDs, and during the holidays I will study the new lessons we will start in HH4, HH5, LH1, LH2 and LH4 in January. That means reading the teacher’s guides, the stories, listening to the songs and rhymes, watching the performance videos and reading the activities which we will be doing during the first six weeks of the term (each unit takes around six weeks to complete). I will also need to write a final draft of the theoretical part of my undergraduate dissertation and design the practical part of it, so I can put it into practice after the holidays. It seems like an awful lot of work to do! We’ll see how much I get accomplished.

My screw ups of the day

It is only when you actually do things that you can fail. In fact, as you do, you will inevitably make mistakes; that's life. Today I had a couple of those, not really awful mess ups, but important enough to stick in my mind for the whole day.

Both were with what most people would label as "bad students", which is no surprise, as most teacher's screw ups happen with that kind of students. I like to think of them as the "gourmets of education", following the ideas that authors such as Daniel Pennac have stated over school failure. Some students are the "wild boars of education", omnivores who will succeed at learning, almost regardless of the circumstances. Others are much more exquisite in their taste when it comes to the what, how and when of education, and those are the ones who pose a challenge to the teacher. I like that sort of students, because they force you to try your best, and they always teach you new things.

My first screw up of the day was with one of the second grade students, a 7-year-old. He teared the drawing of one of his groupmates, so I asked him to get some sellotape and fix it. He has a hard time when it comes to making up for having messed up, but during these weeks he has come to respect me and he does obey if I ask something like that of him. First, he took a piece of sellotape way too long and stuck it carelessly, which didn't fix the whole tear, so I asked him to get a smaller piece and stick it carefully. Maybe I should have stopped after that first try and call it even, but I feel that doing that would have sent him the wrong message ("that's all I can expect from you, after all"). After fixing his group mate's paper and me thanking him for that, he turned to his own drawing and started cutting it up with the scissors, ruining it on purpose. I told him not to do that, but he continued. I didn't stop him. After cutting the drawing into small pieces, he coloured it carelessly with crayons, while he had been using felt tip pens to colour neatly before the incident. Shortly after that, it was time to tidy up and finish the lesson; I asked him if he was going to store the drawing in his plastic sleeve, he said no, and he put it in the bin.

The incident lingered in my mind for the rest of the day. As I was coming back from work I thought about why I had let him ruin his work on purpose, and what I could have done instead. On the one hand, I didn't stop him because I was aware that I was saying no too many times, and he needed a break. Then, I also had doubts: should I allow him to do as he pleased with his work, since it was his, after all? Should I allow him to experience the consequences of his act and learn from it? You have to weigh all those things in seconds and give a coherent response to a child, and it's not that easy. So, at the time, I decided to let him do as he pleased. But a small voice has been bugging me all day, saying that he was taking it out on himself, and that I sent him the wrong message: "you must respect your classmates and their work, but you don't need to respect yourself". For a kid who is already labelled in school that is a very wrong message, and that alone should have been enough of a reason for me to prevent him from ruining his work. Instead, I should have sent him to the paper bin and asked him to cut into small pieces a bunch of scrap papers from there. That way, he could have calmed himself down without harming himself.

The second screw up has been in the afternoon, with a 5-year-old. This is a more difficult one, because so far I haven't come up with any ideas yet. A boy has lost his temper and thrown the colouring pencils violently on the floor, so I have asked him to pick them up. He has refused and entered a spiral where he would throw more pencils and more violently, so I have taken away his drawing from him and told him that he could have it back and continue colouring once he picked up his mess. He has even complained that one of the pencils had been dropped by another classmate, and I have asked her to pick it up, which she has done, and I have thanked her for it. He has continued to refuse and when he has started kicking the pencil case I have taken it away from him and taken him out in the corridor with me to try to calm him down. He has tried to run away, and continued to get more agitated. Since I don't know much about this particular boy, and the regular tutor was in the teachers' room just across the corridor, I have taken him there and she has taken care of the situation. The boy has run away and started to throw away coats in the corridor. I have asked the tutor what she does in those situations: "physical containment" she has answered, so now I know. She has forced him to pick up the coats and I have gone back into the classroom, where I had left the English teacher with the rest of the group.

In this second incident, I don't see a clear way to go about next time, or how I could have handled it differently. I know that having gone to the tutor has somewhat diminished my authority, but that doesn't worry me, really. I think it is better to acknowledge that you need help to handle a situation than to really mess up trying to fix it all by yourself. After all, I am a trainee, and that is part of what I am there for. I have thanked the tutor afterwards and apologised for not having been able to handle it by myself. On the other hand, I have not let him do whatever he wanted. I have kept calm as he has lost his temper. But that is just about all I can say I have done all right. I haven't managed to help him deal with his wrath, and I don't really know how I could have.

Both these boys are angry at the world, and they most probably have good reasons to be so. They should be allowed to express that anger and turn all that energy into something positive for themselves and those around them. Helping them in that journey is very demanding for a teacher, but when you encounter a person like that you can't just look somewhere else.

Fourth week of my school placement

This is being a short week too, because there was no school on Monday. Christmas is approaching, and there is a different atmosphere, even if we haven’t started making Christmas decorations and things like that yet.

This week the LH1 and LH2 groups have been doing extra things, because they finished their units last week. The teacher told the LH1 group a story about a little pig, and we have done a booklet of the story and a pig’s mask during the week. The story itself was quite poor, as a story, in my opinion; just a “sugar coating” to review some vocabulary. It was about a little pig who cried on its way home because it didn’t know where its mummy was. It gets in the house and asks “mummy, where are you?”. The mummy answers that in the living room, watching tv. Then, the little pig asks again, and the mummy says that in the kitchen, getting supper ready. Then it is the mummy who asks where the little pig is, who says that in the bathroom, taking a bath. Then the mummy asks again, and the little pig answers that it is in the bedroom, reading. And the last time the mummy asks the little pig doesn’t answer because it is asleep, so the mummy says good night. Even if the story was so bad, children quite enjoyed it, so maybe it was only bad to my eyes. Well, some of them complained when the teacher told the story again today, for the third time, this time with their help.

The LH2 group watched a video on Tuesday, and we will see what we will do today.

Well, I will do as I said last week, and write on the ideas for the practical part of my undergraduate dissertation. I have come to the conclusion that it won’t be possible to propose something out of the blue which will interfere with the lesson planning that has already been set, so I need to think on something that I can use and will be done within the normal lessons. I thought that I would like to know what kind of way to tell the story would engage students the most, assuming that some ways would be more appealing to them than others. So far, I have seen teachers tell stories in different ways in LH: dramatising small parts of the story together with a small group of students, playing a CD with a native speaker reading the story, having students read the story taking turns and using large images with a text stuck in the back from where the teacher can partly read. In HH, we have told the story in different ways too: with the teacher dramatising all roles and students repeating the dialogue of each character, using a poster with stickers for the characters that each student would move as the story unfolded and using a booklet with the story as the guide to tell the story.

My teacher has told me that when they start a new unit, the story is always told with no visual support first, dramatising it together with the whole group. The next times when the story is told they begin to introduce some visual material.

I talked to my school tutor about the practical part of the dissertation I am supposed to do, and we concluded that maybe I could do some research on the reasons behind the ways the story is told in this particular methodology, together with the goals pursued, and analyse if we fulfill those goals in our class. It doesn’t sound absolutely thrilling, but it is feasible. So, I will do some literature research on the Artigal and Eleanitz methods regarding the theoretical background behind the way in which stories are told. I have almost finished reading the teacher’s guide for Artigal, and there isn’t that much I can get out of it, so I will try to find specific articles on the subject.

If I manage to get relevant information, I will concentrate on that and start gathering data when we start working on the new units after Christmas. I might leave out the LH4 group, and attend the lessons of more than one group in the LH1, LH2, HH4 and HH5 grades, so I can watch how the teacher tells the story to one group, and do it myself with another group.

Next week I would like to return to more general aspects, and talk a bit on my expectations before I started the school placement regarding the LH stage, and what reality has taught me. In summary, I thought I wasn’t going to enjoy the LH lessons much, because I thought I liked younger children better for teaching, but it turns out I am really enjoying the LH classes, especially LH4. All grades are very different, but there are reasons to enjoy the experience in all of them, I have found.

Third week of the school placement

This week felt a bit short, because I didn’t come on Monday due to the bad cold I have been suffering. Luckily, I am getting over it and I have been feeling better yesterday and today. Although I didn’t write about it last week, we have had a dysentery outbreak in the school for the last two weeks, and that has been quite an experience too, as it has given me the opportunity to observe how the school interacts with the Department of Health and how these matters are handled regarding communication with the families and so on. Apparently, things are under control and we will soon get rid of it.

Coming back to more particular matters, I will write a bit on group work in the English classroom. The English classroom has a fixed layout, with sets of 4-5 tables and chairs forming groups. So, children seat in groups. The teacher asks them to do some tasks (book exercises) in groups, especially when she thinks the task will be difficult to carry out on one’s own. Still, students tend to work individually and refuse to cooperate, sometimes very explicitly. The regular tutors for each class tell the English teacher that children are used to working in groups outside the English class, but things are very different here. So, I have been wondering where the reason for that could lie.

On the one hand, every student has an individual coursebook, which is usually stored in the English classroom. Students know that they have to do their exercises there, and that the English teacher will correct them once in a while (by the way, I wrote about using green pens for correction in my blog last week).

On the other hand, from time to time the teacher will ask them to do an exercise individually, like it happened in the LH2 class one day this week. I will describe it in detail, because I think it is worth doing so.

The teacher lined up all the image-flashcards that had been used in the unit so far (it doesn’t make much sense to me to call them “stories” when they are really treated as “units”) on the board. Meanwhile, she showed one text-flashcard to one of the students, and asked him to read the text aloud and match it with its picture. Most students were not paying full attention yet, and the teacher added that they should pay attention, because later they would have to do “this” (as she waved some photocopies held in her hand). Students took turns matching the names with the pictures. If they didn’t know how to read it in English, the teacher would encourage them to read the text in Basque. The teacher was especially helpful with one of the students, who was clearly blocked while doing the exercise.

Then, the teacher handed out the photocopies, reminded them that they had done that kind of exercise before, and that they had to write their name on top of the page. The paper contained a column with the pictures and another column with the texts, just the same as they had done on the board. She also reminded them that the work had to be individual, that they couldn’t copy or share with their group. She told them that she would correct it afterwards, then give it back to them, so they could put it in their plastic folder. There was an exam-like atmosphere, with the teacher reminding “don’t comment!”as she gave out the photocopies. Some children put their pencil cases (those which open up like a book) in front of them, so the child in front wouldn’t copy (gosh, it brought me back to my childhood, I hadn’t seen it since then!). As children finished, they were told to take out their jungle picture and continue colouring it.

To those who struggled matching names and pictures, the teacher reminded: “you should’ve paid attention, we have just done it on the board, and I told you to pay attention because we were going to do this afterwards”. However, she did give extra help to the child who was blocked before, and each child was allowed to take their time to do the exercise.

So, as it can be seen, students receive quite a lot of pressure to do the work individually. Sometimes that pressure is not very explicit, but there are many signals which students are sensitive to. For instance, the teacher hardly takes her notebook in her hands, but when she does we all know that it is to write down individual marks. I have noticed it, and I am sure students notice it too, maybe not even consciously, but there is a constant message which tells the student that achievement is assessed based on tasks carried out individually. No wonder they are not willing to work cooperatively.

Regarding this last task which I described in detail, it reminded me of the task feedback circle again. In my opinion, and this is quite a wild guess, the teacher unconsciously felt that explaining the whole task at the beginning of the lesson (“first, we will review the flashcards in group, and then each one of you will do the same exercise alone on this photocopy”) would make it “too easy”, so she didn’t warn them clearly on the purpose of the first part of the exercise. It reminded me just of what our teacher at university asked us when she presented the task feedback circle: “when you were a child, don’t you remember having the feeling that you were told to do a reading/listening exercise, and then you were given a set of questions and you realised that you hadn’t focused your attention on the right aspects, because you didn’t know what you had to do in the first place? Didn’t you feel that the teacher was thinking “haha, this time I’ll catch you off guard!”?”. Well, that was exactly my feeling when I saw this exercise being performed in class, and things like this are what bring me to think that the traditional school is still alive and kicking among us.

In summary, the material drives students to individual interaction partly, and partly it is the use and management of that material which drives students to do so. A teacher could use that very same material differently to promote cooperative interaction. For example, when in the LH4 class children were asked to summarise the story in their own words on a draft first, the teacher could have photocopied the page of the draft and handed out only one copy per group, instead of handing out the individual coursebooks. Then, children would have been forced to produce one draft per group and negotiate what to write on it. Since after completing the draft children have to copy it on the pages in their coursebook where they keep the “final version”, they would have done the individual part of the task too.

Well, now it is time to talk about my first English lesson yesterday. It was a 30 minute lesson with the HH4 group. Since they have been working with foods they like and don’t like, I organised the lesson around that topic. My general objectives for the lesson were the following: to enjoy ourselves (both children and myself), to create a positive atmosphere between them and me, to promote the production of output (without becoming obsessed with that).

Taking into account the topic chosen and their previous knowledge, more detailed objectives for the lesson were: widen their knowledge on food, adding three more items to the list they had previously worked with, as well as adding colours and matching them with food; continue practicing with the structure “I like…”, which they had been using before. Since I wanted to maintain the structure of their lessons, I decided to repeat the puppet dialogue they usually perform at the beginning of the lesson. I also decided to keep the tasks simple, so we would be able to do them without rushing (I hate the general rushing atmosphere that English lessons have, caused partly by the fixed timetable).

I decided I would set up the lesson around the song “I like food”, because it contains three items they already knew (biscuit, cake, banana) and three items which were new to them in English (apple, pear, orange), plus the colours (yellow, brown, red, green, white, orange). The song has a simple structure, gives chances for plenty of repetitions of the vocabulary and has a very catchy melody.

This is the list of activities I planned: finger puppet story of the child who asks to go to the toilet (sometimes the teacher does it without handing out the finger puppets to students, in order to have more time to do other activities, but I decided to do it handing them out), listening to the “I like food song” sitting on the circle while I did some gestures using flashcards, matching the six food items with their colours on a sheet (one per child, sitting on their tables) after we modelled the task in the big group, and listening to the song again, this time with students having a flashcard each.

So, I prepared some flashcards to use while the song was played. I took my time to choose the images for the flashcards, because attractive and clear material is vital. Since I was going to create a sheet where the food items would appear with no colour, they needed to be images with a clear outline. I am satisfied with the images I chose, and there is only one thing I would consider changing: the red and orange should be a bit more different to prevent them from getting mixed. I also made the flashcards quite large, because sometimes we use images which are so small that when sitting on the circle children can’t see them properly. Here are my flashcards:

Here is one side of the flashcards, with the food items

This is the other side of the flashcards, the one with the colours.

Then I prepared the sheet using the same images as I used for the flashcards:

The sheet to match food items and colours

When it came to planning how each activity would be done, I had in mind my major difficulties from the experience in the previous years: momentum and rhythm. HH is about building up a sort of “bubble of interaction” with the group. First, you have to grab their attention, which is not that difficult, and that’s when you blow the bubble. Then comes the difficult part: maintaining the bubble so it doesn’t go flat due to lack of momentum, nor does it burst. The teacher needs to use the right rhythm and intensity, so the bubble will take the whole group in, and last for all the activity. I have seen it being done in the two previous years by my tutor in the school placement, but it is very hard for me to do. Most of the times my bubble would go flat, so I know that I need to pay a lot of attention to transitions between activities, and that is where I concentrated in my lesson yesterday.

I went for a simple task (matching food items with colours), which was nevertheless demanding, because children only listened to the song once before completing it (we modelled the first two matchings in the big group and then each child was given their own sheet to do all the six items). I also decided to keep it simple when we listened to the song for the second time (at the beginning I thought we could listen to it standing up and dancing), because I didn’t want to lose control of the group. So, I gave one card to each, explained that when each of them heard the colour of their card, they would stick it up on the air and sing along using the gestures and turning the card around to show the food item with the lyrics.

Finally, I recorded the lesson with a videocamera, so I could watch it afterwards.

And now, it is time for my conclusions on the lesson. The first impression was great; the lesson went just fine, we all enjoyed, we finished on time, and the objectives were all met. The English teacher helped me a lot containing children and taking care of the materials (collecting pencils, sheets etc.). So, I can say I managed to do well with her help. On the other hand, I am aware that believing all objectives had been met most probably means that I was either too lenient on myself, or my objectives were not ambitious enough.

Recording lessons is a great tool for self-assessment which I think I should keep if I ever become a teacher. It gives you the opportunity to watch yourself objectively and also to see things which went unnoticed during the lesson itself. Regarding things I need to improve, there are obviously several; for instance, a simple but important one: organise material. I didn’t keep my flashcards held with rubber bands, and as a result one of the children messed them up, which wasn’t that much of a problem, but reminded me of the importance of those small things, especially when you are the only adult in the classroom. Also, I didn’t keep my peripheral view on the classroom at some moments (when I was collecting things and so on), because I knew I had other two adults in the room, and I relaxed even if I didn’t want to. Towards the end of the lesson one of the children refused to participate singing the song for the second time. Ideally, I would have gone to her to see what was wrong, but because I was so concerned with not losing momentum, I carried on without her. In general, I would say that I played conservative, I hardly took any risks, which is ok for a first lesson (even quite advisable and wise), but wouldn’t be acceptable in the long run.

On the good side, I am happy to see that I smiled a lot. I am not very smiley (or so I think, at least), and I believe it is of great importance to smile around children. You have so much to win and so little to lose when you do so! I was also clear in my explanations (I had thought them quite carefully), I addressed children individually by their names to promote interaction, and I got them to participate.

I just did the co-assessment on the lesson with the teacher, and she said that the only thing she would have changed would have been the second time we listened to the song, when she would have had children dancing, instead of sitting down, as I finally decided. She has advised me not to be afraid of losing control of the group, and she is very right, because I have her there to help me if that happens, plus the PT who joins the group to support one of the children.

Well, this is all for this week. Next week I want to talk about some ideas for the practical part of my undergraduate dissertation, where I will be taking active part in the English classes at school in order to collect data for my dissertation. My tutor here told me yesterday that some of the LH groups have already finished the unit that was meant to be done before Christmas, and she doesn’t want to start with a new story, so she needs to think about things to do in these coming weeks. The whole week before Christmas will be used to do activities related to those celebrations, but this coming week she will set up something different.

I will make sure I learn the new stories that they will be working on in HH4 and HH5 after Christmas, so I can take turns with the teacher when we work on them. The problem in HH is that the Artigal material’s planning is designed for schools where they have 2 hours of English every week, and here the teacher only has 1,5 hours. Therefore, she is quite tight and we will not be able to insert extra lessons that maybe I could propose. Instead, I will have to concentrate on teaching the regular lessons taking her place, which will be a very good opportunity too. After Christmas, I will most probably be attending more than one group of HH4 and HH5, so maybe I can watch the English teacher performing a lesson with one group, and then do that same lesson with another group myself.

Oh, and just a final picture to show you the great teachers’ room we have:

Teachers’ room, with computers, printer, journals and magazines on education, part of the material, photocopy machine and coffee machine