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.
iruzkinik ez:
Argitaratu iruzkina