Week Three

Professional

The excitement is increasing this week as we prepare for our two day placement in practice school, we will find out the name of the school this week and the partner who we are to work with. I myself am very nervous about what to expect and what differences I will see within the school environment, however I am put at ease by the Americans who have already been placed in a school. They have given glowing reports about their mentors and the students; our Irish friends Ciara and Michelle have also been in practice schools from September and they also have a lot of positive things to say about the children and teaching environment.

My picture for class

A lot of what we are learning in class focuses in on other cultures within the Erasmus group, this week we had to pick a picture that represent our country and then present it to the group. I choose to focus on the city of Belfast and the titanic, the past of northern Ireland has been asked by different people and I find sometimes it’s very hard to explain to people, but it puts us in better stead for the future when trying to explain something so deep routed in our past and present to children we will be teaching. Thankfully we found out that our fellow Erasmus don’t have to harsh an opinion of Northern Ireland as we originally thought.

Austrian castle

I found out a lot of interesting information about other people’s cultures, for example the people from Finland use saunas quite often and are missing them a lot when studying here. Latvia has a huge music festival every five years with around 13 thousand people in attendance. Austria has a lot of lakes, castles and mountains; from the pictures we were shown it is a truly beautiful country. Most interesting is the political situation in Belgium between the Dutch and French side, something that I was completely unaware of until I came here.

What I have learnt this week has sparked some creative thinking in how I would apply these types of discussions to a classroom, the NI Curriculum(2007) suggests that children should learn about some positive and negative changes in the locality caused by human/natural events and that some human events in the past impacted globally. Within the topic of children’s place within the world I think that it is very important to teach children about many different places and cultures as I myself has been inspired by other people’s cultures and greetings ( i.e. kissing on the cheek when greeting people or saying goodbye) and had the ability to compare them to my own culture and learning, I find that children would find it equally as interesting and beneficial. It is important that a child learns to find their own sense of place in the world, Owen and Ryan (2001) highlights that children when developing a sense of place, will start by showing an interest in the world in which they live ad then begin to notice differences and ask questions discussing what they like and dislike and how they can compare it to their own culture. The ability to compare and contrast cultures and environments is an important skill for children to learn.

CCEA (2007) Northern Ireland Curriculum, Belfast, CCEA.

Owen,D. Ryan,A.(2001)Teaching Geography 3-11,The Essential Guide ,London,Continuum.