Second Week of Teaching Practice

The second week of our teaching practice was about me and Katka teaching English to the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 8th grade. After the first week of observing we knew very well that it is possible to have all lesson in English and the pupils would understand. We weren't quite sure about the 5th grade because Rebekka did not use much English when teaching this class but we tried.
To sum up activities we did:

• 3rd grade: We used computers to make the lesson more attractive for pupils. They usually use www.manythings.org but we found another website: www.britishcouncil.org/kids and taught them a song: "I Can Sing a Rainbow". Moreover, we played some icebreaking games such as: Saing names as quick as possible, Simon says and How much do you like. Next lesson we also used computers for about 20 minutes to introduce the fairytale about Little Red Riding Hood to children. After that me and Katka played the fairytale using puppets. Some children really loved this activity. We made them more active by giving them puppets and everytime they heard the name of the character they were holding they had to raise their hand. I think that teaching English to the third class was a succes and we made it without difficulties. We also managed to use computers in our class but not for whole 45 minutes because it would be boring both for pupils and teachers.
• 4th grade: Teaching English to this class was a kind of challenge because there were 23 pupils. Some of them are already very good at English. However, some of them refused to talk to us. Because of the big number of pupils and not enough space in the classroom it was difficult to use some movement activities. We chose the topic: "Birthday" and "Parties". In the first lesson we taught pupils some new words and they also learned a birthday song: "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". They also created a birthday invitation and it was quite a nice lesson. Next lesson we wanted to teach them some verbs concerning preparing a party. We intended to use Total Physical Response but it did not work in the end. The mood in the class was not suitable for this activity so we had to change our plan on the spot. This lesson lacked a moving activity, so it was a bit boring, although we prepared it carefully.
  
• 5th grade: Altough pupils from the class are not used to having whole lesson in English, we hade to do it in English because our Danish really sucks.:) Surprisingly, nearly all pupils understood our instructions without difficulties and everything worked well. We talked about food with this group. We used a drawing activity (pupils had to draw their favouritte meal and others had to guess), we played: "How much do you like", we sang" Five Fat Sausages" (without the music because the recording did not work :), and played another game which included clapping. Our next lesson was supposed to be about learning a pancake recipe and practicing cooking verbs. We really planned it carefully but however the lesson was canceled because of a concert. So we went to the concert instead. The last lesson with the 5th grade was about preparing pancakes and milkshake. We gave pupils instructions in English and they were also given a handout and they worked very well. We were amazed at how nice pancakes they prepared.:)
  
• 8th grade: Teaching English to the 8th grade was wonderfull. All pupils were very nice and friendly and it was a pleasure to teach them. We did not do much grammar with them but a lot of speaking activities. We talked about stereotypes and images that represent certain countries. We used role play and they really enjoyed being "someone else". We also talked about travelling and searching for a holiday destination and we had some jokes as a conclusion of our teaching. We also revised adjectives derived from countries.
  

To Sum Up: Teaching English to Danish pupils was a wonderful experience. Due to their good level of English it is easy to have all lesson in English only. I specially enjoyed teaching English to the 3rd grade because the children were very sweet and keen on our activities. We could also use activities that we cannot do with adult learners because it would be too childish for them.
Else was also satisfied with the job we did and praised us a lot, which made us happy.:)
At home I will try to use English more when teaching beginners because I could see that when you use very simple English and help yourself with gestures and mimics they can understand you very well.
It thrilled me that there were mostly 15 pupils in each class. It is ideal for language teaching because pupils have more opportunities to talk.
It was also to teach in pair with Katka. We complemented each other very well. While I was asking pupils, she wrote on the greenboard and vice versa. Also planning lesson in a pair was much easier and funnier.

First Week of Teaching Practice

The first week spent at Haderslev Kristnefriskole was about watching, observing and getting to know each other.
We have seen English classes in the 3rd, 4rth, 5th, 8th and 9th grade.

What surprised us in:

• The Third Class:nearly all class was taught in English and pupils could understand the instructions without difficulties. Else used a lot of gestures and mimics to intensify what she was saying. All the activities were playfull and very funny and children enjoyed them thoroughly. Else uses a lot of songs, chants, poems and games to make children engaged in the class.
• The Fourth Class: It was very similar to the Third Class. Else also uses games, chants and songs when teaching English to this class. Moreover, the pupils are used to working on computers during the class. They use webpage www.manythings.org with plenty of games and excercises focused on English grammar, vocabulary, spelling and listening. It was quite shocking for me that each child has got a notebook. It is quite unusual in the Czech Republic.
• The Fifth Class: This class is taught by Rebekka, who is not a qualified English Teacher. She does not use English a lot when she talks to her pupils, although her level of English is pretty good. The majority of the lesson is in Danish. She does not use a lot of warm-up activities and there was also no summary in the end. Therefore her classes were not very beneficial for me.
• The Eight Class: Else is really great with small children but she seems to me a bit hopeless with teenage pupils. She is extremely kind but when teaching English to older pupils, she should me more strict and energetic. I also suggest that she use more activities to make pupils busy. When they are busy with taks they have no time to be naughty and loud.
• The Ninth Class: Surprisingly, there are only girls in this class. The ninth class is supposed to take a major English exam. Therefore, the classes we saw were focused on practising for the exam.
  

To sum up: I really like Else's teaching style when she teaches English to children. She knows a range of different activities to make her classes interesting and funny for children. However, when it comes to teaching teenagers, she is not energetic enough to make pupils work properly.
Rebekka is a nice teacher too, but she should use English more in her classes. When 80 % of a class is in Danish, you cannot call it an English lesson.

Teaching Practice at Haderslev Kristne Friskole

On Wednesday 7th we had the last session with Iben and we talked mainly about our teaching practice and how to get prepared for it. We came to the conclusion that we don't have enough ifnormation and we do not know what we are expected to do, which is quite a stupid situation, especially when you don't know the language the pupils speak. But on the other hand it's a serious challenge. :-)
On Thursday 8th we visited our teacher-trainer Else Wiwe at Haderslev Kristne Friskole. She's such a nice person, very friendly and kind. She gave us some information about her English classes at Haderslev Kristne Friskole and about her pupils and then we visited an English lesson in the 9th class. We became part of the lesson as we were in groups with students and talked with them about the Civil War in the USA, stereotypes, national identity and racism. Such difficult topis but we were amazed how good English some students can speak. Wonderful!
Else also invited us to the children performance in the gym and we were happy to go there. The performance was really funny, there were two choirs - one from Haderslev, one from another school and we really enjoyed it, no matter we didn't understand a word in Danish.:-)

Drama in Aabenraa

On Tuesday a group of 13 people set off to Aabenraa to have "Drama and movement" class there. This class was taught by Flemming Rassmusen. First we played some icebreaker games and then tried to express ourselves through gestures, mimics and movement.
We also did little acting and created a poem, being inspired by music and a picture. The poem of our group is as following:

What a sad day today
All I eat tastes like clay.
My heart is broken and never will be fixed
and all my feelings are utterly mixed.
Without a soulmate, without a single friend
I find myself in the country of Neverland.
I just wish I could to go Legoland.
Istead I have to walk to the graveyard
But I cannot walk

my steps are so hard.

After the lesson we went for a walk to the beach and then went home tired but happy.
On Friday we used masks a lot. First there were some warm-up activities (based on running and imitating) and then we acted. We were embryos discovering our own bodies and the world around us, we also created a story corresponding to a music extract and we also reflected what we had done during those 2 sessions.
In my opinion, both classes were very beneficial and I enjoyed them thoroughly. Some of these activities could easily be used with pupils.

Visit to Favrdalskolen

On Wednesday 11th we visited Favrdalskolen together with Bodil, our Special Needs teacher. At first we had some difficulties with geting up and finding the right building but we made it in the end:-)
The school consists of many huge buildings and it reminded me of a maze. I wonder how pupils can find their way there.:-)
We were guided by the headmaster himself, who was very nice, friendly and informal. In the Czech Republic headmasters are usually very formal and they also wear suits.

The school was nicely decorated with pictures, paintings and drawings. All teachers we met were very nice and most of them were really young.
We were lucky to see an excerpt from a children's performance and we also saw2 blind children (a girl and a boy) being engaged into normal classes.
We also visited a class taught by an English native speaker named Tim. He told us that he usually teaches one class for all day and next day they have another teacher.
Tim showed us what he did with children. It was a magical calculator - 7 sticks covered with numbers that enable you to multiply. Incredible.
The school is very modern, though built about 25 years ago. There are many computer labs, a library, a big gym and a theatre hall. They have special classrooms for cooking lessons and for woodcrafting, too.
To sum up: The atmosphere in the school was really relaxed and we all liked it a lot. One visit to a school is 10 times better than one day spent at university.

The last Danish Lesson - the best Danish Lesson.:-)

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the last Danish lesson as it wasn't based on speaking but on creating a poster with traditional recipes. Me and Katka worked in group with Viki and we created a Goulash poster as goulash is popular both in Hungary and the Czech Republic.
This activity was really great but a bit time-consuming. Each group created the poster in its own style and therefore each poster is very creative and original.
The Danish teacher was very nice and friendly, though a bit confused as she thought that we had one more Danish lesson next week.
In the evening there was Czech-Polish-Norwegian night in Student's Cafe. We prepared traditional Czech refreshment called "Jednohubky", one version with cheese and garlic spread, one with fish and onion spread and all people liked it. Norwegian girls baked great waffles and Polish girls had 2 funny games (eating apples in pairs without using hands) and feeding a person, while the feeding person is blindfolded. We all enjoyed it a lot.

God bless Music and Physical Education

I must say that this week I've enjoyed Music and Physical Education most. Both of these subjects were carefully prepeared, included a lot of motivation and we were really active and had no chance to get bored.
Although I'm not much into sport, I thoroughly enjoyed P.E., because Jakob - our teacher - prepared a great number of interesting games for us and he himself was really friendly and nice.
I was also keen on the music lesson as we learned one great song in English and learned some tricks how to use music in other classes. Also the music teacher Else was great and I'm looking forward to seeing her again.
What I did not enjoy at all was the Danish lesson. Our teacher probably wants us to learn a lot of phrases - but the problem is that we still do not know how to pronounce them and she repeats everything twice at most. She also wants us to read dialogues, although we are hopeless at reading in Danish. Less would be more in this case, some basic phrases would be perfectly sufficient for our purposes... I'm really getting under pressure during her lessons as I do not know how to pronounce anything and I'm feeling really stupid.
I quite liked the first part of Comparative Education with Tove Heidemann, as the first part of it was focused on social psychology. In the second part she wanted to tell us something about encyclopaedic approach in teaching. However, the information she was telling us were about 10 years old and the current situation is totally different. Moreover, Tove said she is not a teacher ad you can recognize it very easily as she wasn't able to answer some of our simple questions concerning education in Denmark...
I quite liked Globalisation and citizenship with Torbjorn as we discussed a lot. But 3 hours are too much, although there were some breaks. I also didn't like the idea, that after 45 minutes he let us go for lunch for 45 minutes and then we were to continue in studying. When you have lunch at home you are not feeling like going to school again. In my opinion, it's better to skip breaks and finish earlier than to have 3-4 breaks during the lesson.
Jorn Buch is a real historian - he's keen on everything he's telling us but we are not keen on it at all. Although he should tell us something about Danish history, he spends the most of the lesson telling us some information about Germany.

Danish and European stereotypes

Jete Lauren's classes are always very well prepared and interesting. And Jete is such a great teacher - always in a good mood, helpful and really interested in our problems and worries. We were talking about stereotypes - how they work, why people think in stereotypes and so on.
Before I came to Denmark, I thought that Denmark is quite an expensive countryk, Danish people are quite calm and reserved and that Danish school system is on a very high level. I would say that these ideas are quite true, although Danish people I've met so far were rather friendly and hearty. I didn't have any prejudices against Denmark and I really like this country. Maybe I thought that Danish people are more "green" and environmentally friendly. But I would say that the opposite is true. They seem not to recycle as there are no containers for recycled garbage /paper, glass, plastics. Also at school they waste paper - they use just one side of a paper sheet.
We played an interesting game with Jete. We were supposed to introduce ourselves in stereotypes. You can tell I'm Czech because...

• I drink beer a lot
• I love company and being with friends
• I am quite skilful
• I don't like rules and am quite good at breaking rules
• I often complain about things I do not like
  

Danish, Aesthetic learning processes, Globalisation and citizenship

First of all, I would like to say that here in Denmark there is a big difference in how each class is done. Some of them are lecture-like (Aesthetic learning processes, Globalisation and citizenship), some require our activity. I have to say that I prefer the latter because it's virtually impossible to pay attention to what teacher is saying for three hours, although there are some breaks.
Our Danish teacher tries to make her classes active - we worked in pairs, made circles and practised the Danish phrases, and played a game with a ball. It was all quite fine. But a big problem is that we do not know how to pronounce the phrases correctly. We repeat after the teacher, but the class is too big and I cannot hear her properly. We also repeat just twice, which is not enough. She also said that some activites we do are boring. In my opinion the teacher should never say anything like this because the moment he/she says it, the pupils lose their attention because they do not want to do anything that is boring. I also wish we learned some basic phrases like Good Morning, Thank you, etc... Because when I come to a supermarket, I really do not know what to say.

Aesthetic learning processes had a very promising begining. We played some ice-breaker games and we really got the right mood for studying. However, after the wonderful beggining an extremely boring lecture began. I don't even know how the matter of the lecture could be used in a classroom. If we had done only some useful games and activities like in the first part of the lesson, it would have been much better.

The first part of Globalisation and citizenship was also like a lecture. We learned why it is important to learn about citizenship. Then we worked in groups. We were given a sheet of paper with thoughts of different historians, philosophers and scholars. Our task was to discuss these ideas in groups and choose 3 statements we like and give some arguments and find 1 that we do not agree with. It was quite a good activity but the ideas were really complicated, written in very advanced English and I think that they weren't understandable for everybody. It was difficult even for me, although I study English. But the teacher was very nice and I quite liked this class.

I'm also getting used to Iben Jensen's teaching style. She's a little bit crazy (in a good way), funny and energetic. When she enters the class she's like a huricane and everybody has to pay attention to what she's saying. This time we discussed how to start classes and how to motivate students and we also worked in groups of 3 people and talked about different pictures and tried to find how they could be used at school.

Language and Identity & History

On Tuesday 9th we had Language and Indentity and History seminars. The aim of the first one was to make us aware of our perceiving languages. We drew our language portrait (we placed foreing languages into a picture of a human body and had to explain why we placed them like that). Then we worked in groups and discussed how different nations understand the meaning of different colours. We found out that for some people black colour is a symbol of death and darkness, for some it might be a positive colour. On the other hand, whereas white colour represents wedding and happiness, for someone it's a picture of the death. Also pink colour is perceived differently - some people love it, some cannot stand it. I enjoyed this seminar a lot. The only problem was that the teacher spoke too much, but she prepared her lesson carefully and we did a great number of different activities, such as drawing, creating a poem, reading, discussing, etc.
The History lesson was focused on some key events from Danish history and on the fact that European countries have a lot in common. Unfortunately, this lesson was a bit boring, although the teacher is very nice. In the end, the teacher livened it up because he asked us to sing our national anthems. So we did it and it was fun.

Studying in Denmarkfor more than a week I'm feeling that some teachers here make basic pedagogical mistakes - they speak too much, speak while they are facing the whiteboard and often aren't willing to lead a dialogue with students. They also do not use activating methods and there lessons seem to be scarcely prepared. They just enter the room, play a film or speak and speak and then go away. They do not want students to be active. Their aim seems to be just kill time they have for the class.

Teaching Practice

On Thursday we visited Kristne Friskole in Haderslev. I and Katka took part in 3 lessons - a Math lesson, a Science lesson and an English lesson. Each of them was taught by a different female teacher.
What surprised me during Math was the fact that there was an assistent present during the class. He helped the children with their tasks and also kept an eye on them so that they should pay attention to the teacher. The teacher had a microphone, because of her weak voice and I think it's a bright idea. On the other hand, there was no motivation in the first part of the lesson and also no summary and greeting in the end. When the bell rang, the teacher just went away.
The Science lesson was a way interesting - the teacher wanted to explain how water is being purified. That's why she prepared 3 experiments for kids. However, it was mainly she who was active in the lesson. Children sometimes helped her, but that was all. In the end they had to cut out some pictures and stick them into a sheet with the water ring on it.
The last lesson was the best. The teacher was extremely friendly and helpful and she spoke just in English. She told us that the children are allowed to speak in Danish, but just when they ask or explanation. Otherwise, they need to speak in English. I, Katka, Margherita and Viki became participant in the lesson because we joined the groups of children and pupils were to ask us questions. Then they presented the information they discovered. After that we sang a childish song from our country and than we listened to an English prayer sang by the teacher and her pupils.
After the practice we had a seminar in which we discussed what we had experienced. The seminar teacher told us that they DO NOT TEST CHILDREN in Denmark and the main principal is that they let children do what they like to do. Teachers are also not limited in what they teach as there is no curriculum. All of these facts were quite surprising for me and I must say that I do not like them a lot. I'm used to the Czech system of education which is rather formal.

First Days At School

Our studying in Denmark is divided into a few modules. We are not asked to take tests and exams but to do homework we are given and specially keep this weblog that reflects our impressions of Danish educational system and their lifestyle.
Teachers seems to be kind and really helpful. We were even given coffee, tea and some refreshments during our first lesson. All information given to us was clear and concise and we received a file with schedule, maps and brochures about Denmark, which helped us a lot.
In my opinion, everything is organized perfectly at this university.