Learning strategies!

This week vas very exhausting because of all the courses and homework we have to do and not to mention the practice placement! But it is better to get used to it, because we are going to work like this until the end of our abroad work!

I was teaching in the 3th grade in english this week.

In the 3^rd lesson I was teaching the 3th grade in English. It was a good experience again and still challenging in a way because their mother language is German. I was teaching them about senses as their theme was “Our five wonderful senses”. In this lesson I was focusing on the touch sense (Fingers), but the learning outcome was for them in fact to learn some important adjectives in English like “it is cold, it is warm”. I used pictures so they could understand did adjectives and a lot of body language, because I wanted to keep the CL in English. But we also translated them into German afterwards so they were 100 percent sure what the adjectives mean. It took a long time to teach them the adjectives, but it is normal in TEFL in a 3th grade in Switzerland. Afterwards they were working with the adjectives in the worksheet and I was correcting them when they finished it and gave them other advices to adjectives. Ursula liked that I took things and allowed the children to feel on them so they really could understand which adjectives we were talking about. She also said that she liked my humor and that It gives a good classroom environment because small children feel safe when the teacher allows a little bit of humor and is funny also.

Also wanted to mention something about the school and how it works. in the 3th grade, where i am spending the most time (also going to teach the 6th grade), there is 21 pupils. 8 boys and 13 girls. They have an "Elevbog" which works the same way as in Denmark, but in the small grades they get grades from an early age. Two times a weak the children have the day off at 12 and others days at 15. A important thing to mention is that their lunch break is from 12 to 13.30 and the children NEED to go home. For those who can't go home, because the parents are at work, there is a place next to the school where those children can spend their lunch break. But they can't stay at the school. A thing i don't like is that it is usually divided that boys work with boys and girls work with girls. In the 6th grade i experienced that they divided the class in two in a French lesson, so the boys went with a male teacher and the girls with a female teacher. Couldn't see the point in that! This school is a primary school, which is from 1st grade to the 6th grade only. There is another school which is a secondary school(7-9 grade), so they couldn't really understand when i said that i was becoming a primary school teacher and that i would like to also teacher from 7-9 grade maybe. :) But all in all i'm of the opinion that the pupils are very well-behaved children and that they know what is right and wrong, so it is very easy to work with them, when looking on behaviour.

Just wanted to mention on of my courses which i like the most and is most relevant for me! It is the course i have on Wednesday. It is Learning strategies and it is so relevant and exciting. This week we learned about the direct learning strategies. We sat in groups an made practical examples on how to give strategy instruction to the direct strategies and how the children can use them. I found it so excellent that i am going to use a memory strategy instruction in my next lesson in the 6th grade in English( My mentor Kathleen is also coming to observe me so wish me good luck :) ).


The professors and teachers at our courses are very nice and kind jus to mention :)


All from me now!
Alen