03 August 2010

My 5th grade Practice form class

Today I wrapped up my first 7 days of Practice School with the 5th form class. They took their test yesterday and for the most part did a not-so-great job. I'm not sure if it was my teaching or the fact that I was teaching these kids as if they had been studying English for 3 years, when they had actually never studied it. I'm going to lean to the latter strictly for the reason that I'm pretty sure that was the case.
Regardless, today we wrapped up. We went over the test, played hangman, played musical chairs, UNO, and a snowball game (with the encouragement from my resource teacher who said the games needed to be productive). Overall the week finished up well. I am much more comfortable in the classroom and teaching by myself, I finally understand the 4MAT lesson plan, and I learned more ways to teach to get all of the students active and involved.

After lessons (and lunch!) we also talked about Academic dishonesty in the classrooms. It was fascinating to talk about what exactly happens when a test (or homework) is given. The kids get more and more creative as the teacher gets more observant and strict about copying. In fact, the teachers here even tend to turn a head when cheating is going on because the students (and schools) need to look good in order to receive funding. This goes so far as the kids even cheat on the baccalaureate- which therefore causes Universities in other countries to turn a head when they see a good score on this exam because they don't know if the students got that score in a legit façon, or they cheated their way through it.

I'm not going to write more about this now because I'm not sure if it's ok, so I will find that out and then continue this post if I can...

In the meantime, check out the pics of my kiddos!










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