Week Seven

Professional

After recovering from a pretty spectacular weekend it was time to get back to work, that work started on Monday when we began teaching children a few songs in English, typical Irish songs that are somewhat easy to follow and play on the guitar. We taught them the Wild Rover and Belle of Belfast city, I tried first of all to teach them the song just orally by getting them to repeat the lines back but it worked far better when they had the words visually to see as well, most of the class seemed to enjoy this although some of the boys did not want to sing but they pretended to join in anyway.

caterpillars

We also had a trip to a learning centre were the children would learn something about different animals, of course I didn’t really have a clue what was being said but the children were nice enough to translate for me and I could look at the pictures and diagrams and know the general idea of what was going on, I enjoyed the look on their faces when they were told a cow had four stomachs and regurgitated grass to chew on after it had been digested by the first two stomachs. The most interesting part of the trip was cycling through Cuijk with the class, I was in the front with a girl named Robyn, I had no idea where I was going and just had to follow the directions Robyn was giving me. The class were so well behaved I was amazed, you can hardly walk somewhere with a class at home never mind cycle, on the way back I was at the end of the queue with a girl named Debby and we had a lovely discussion about our favourite places in the world and where we wanted to travel to.

English workbook

This week we also had caterpillars in the classroom, as the children are working on a WAU project that involves them caring for different animals. They will combine this practical work with some research and then make a slide show about how they cared for their chosen animal, they can look after butterflies, chicks or frogs ( vlinders, kippen or kickers). This is very similar to the study of  the life cycles of some animals, as well as learning to be responsible and take care of another living thing, in doing this the children are developing self awareness, problem solving skills, self management and working with others NI Curriculum (2007). I had the opportunity to observe an English lesson, the video they watch and the words they listen to are all in a very posh English accent, very different from my own, I read out the words along with the computer so that they could hear the differences in accent and pronunciation.  The best thing about the class is that they can use their common sense and own initiative, they know when they are finished work what they should do next instead of the constant stream of hands up asking what their next task is, it’s brilliant to see and something that I will try to progress in my own teaching when I return home as it relates to competence 7  and competence 19 found within the GTCNI teaching competences.

Lastly we had a class talking about our tour to the west for Dutch culture and society, we will visit Delft, The Hague, Ridderzaal and the Dutch parliament. I’m very excited for the trip and I hope I will gain a lot of cultural insight.

General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland (GTCNI) Teaching: the Reflective Profession, Belfast, GTCNI. (Available through www.gtcni.org.uk)

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