I started teaching practice this week. I am in Renaissance college, an English Schools foundation (ESF) school. I have to wake up at six to get ready and take a bus into Tai Po bus centre. From there I take the MTR to the end of the blue line-Tai Wai. I change to the brown line and get off at Heng On stop. The school is right opposite the MTR stop, so no walking required.
The school is an Australian international school and has a International Baccalaureate curriculum based on the PYP system. Children from every nationality attend the school. There are many local school and then children from the many European and African countries as well as Canada and the US. There is also a good representation from other South East Asian countries, there are a lot of Indians that attend the school.
On Monday I went to a meeting in the staff room and the staff seem to be as diverse as the students. The teacher in the classroom beside wears a hi jab and the RCHK school is very aware of different backgrounds and allowing people to express who they are through religious or cultural attire. The meeting was a chance for the teachers to hear about whats happening in each year group, to bring up any problems or suggestions. The up coming sports day and the problem of spinning tops destroying the tables are some of the things that are discussed.
I will be working with the year five during my time at RCHK. The teacher I am working with is Jo Kennard and she comes from New Zealand. She has been really helpful from the start especially after the observer wanted to come out and see me on my second day, before I had even planned to teach. On Monday Ms Kennard talked to me about the inquiry based learning that is encouraged at the school. She explained that the teachers role is really to facilitate learning and so as a year five group of teachers they always decide what their learning outcomes are for a topic but they give the children a lot of autonomy for the learning process. The curriculum is very skills focused. The school is very committed to developing well functioning citizens of the future. One aspect of this is recognising the importance of technology in daily life. The school has poured a lot of money into technology and as a mac school prides itself on the 1to1 ratio of laptop to child. There are also two desk tops in each classroom but the children can go and take a lap top from a trolley station outside the classroom when they need to.
The children are looking at everything related to news at the moment. So on Monday there was an opportunity for the teacher to link learning with learning profiles-E.g. good communicators and also attitudes-like integrity for writing for the news story. The children are finding, gathering, writing, assembling and broadcasting news. The main topics they are looking at is the Chinese earthquake that just happened a week ago and the Icelandic cloud. It is important to have local and national news. The doors are decorated with newspapers and the bulletins covered with news stories that the children have been bringing in each day.
Morning Routine:
On a Monday morning there is a meeting with all the staff at 8 o'clock, every other day school starts at 8.40 and so teachers are expected to be in around 8 and no later then 20 past.
The children come in from the playground and usually look to see what will be happening during the day. The teacher has a timetable showing what happens every week and then puts in any other special events that will be happening. There is also a daily list for example Art, Chinese//break time//maths,home learning, current events//buddy class and sports. The children usually spend a few minutes in the morning becoming familiar with the timetable. They like to know what's happening and it also makes them responsible for being in the right place at the right time without having to ask the teacher all the time. Every child's temperature must be recorded. They do this at home and write it down in their diary's, this is then collected. Its a precaution the school has taken since swine flu and is recommended by the government.
On Tuesday; There was a supply teacher in because the class teacher was away for training in PYP. Obviously routines were lost but I was able to see how important routines are for children even this older age group. Having a very clear routine saves a lot of time. Also having things written up on the board makes students feel more comfortable, there aren't surprises they know what to get ready for the next lesson.
I really enjoyed attending Spirit morning. Each of the children belong to different houses-Quing, Ming, Song and Tang-The different dynasty's of China. There are children from each age group in the different houses and the idea is to build the school community and give children the chance to mix with different from different classes and years then themselves. The children learnt many chats, sang their house song and got prepared for sports day when the older children will partake in activities in the afternoon against peers. They will clock up points for their different houses. For the younger children the activities are just for fun and no points will be awarded.
On Tuesday I took my first lesson. I taught a creative writing lesson. It was about myths and Tall Tales. I began by showing the children a picture of the giant's causeway and I told them the story of how it was formed. They really loved the story about the Irish and Scottish Giants. We then discussed what a myth was and I told them a tall story about my own life. I wrote up their WALT which was to write a creative story that made an unbelievable event seem believable. Myths and tall stories often weave the unbelievable part of the story with details that can be very accurate about a place or did indeed happen. WILFs were to write in paragraphs and to have a beginning, middle and end. To have a realistic setting, to introduce something fictitious and to finish off the story. We discussed the way tall stories are often told with feeling and emotion sometimes the stories have been passed on through generations that people begin to really believe them and this affects the way they are told.
The most important part of teaching is to be reflective. Reflecting on this experience, I feel that the lesson could have gone better if I'd just focused on one area, like I'm looking for a good beginning,setting a realistic scene, and then taking this further next lesson. Building up the different sections of the story until the children can write one full piece including all the different areas discussed over a few English lessons. The children were also confused between what parts of the stories needed to be believable and unbelievable. Time limitations meant the lesson was ruched. On the plus side, some of the stories were brilliant but there was a range so more work needs to be done to pull the weaker students up. As suggested above spreading the key areas over a period of time will help them bring the areas together to write one good piece which includes all the criteria that a myth or tall story should include.
Wednesday was back to normal with the class teacher back. In RCHK there are specialist teachers for Chinese, music, art and library periods. This means the children have to move around quite a bit but from observing these different lessons its wonderful to see how high a quality of teaching there is. Students are offered experiences and opportunities that wouldn't be possible without specially designed rooms and specialist teachers for these art subjects. It was interesting to watch a music lesson. The children had written their own song, the teacher put it to music and during this lesson the children were recording. The children had to decide as a class what music to put in the background and it was great to hear their efforts. One classroom management method I thought was good for a music class was to make the child who was misbehaving to have to do the opposite of the rest of the children. So if everyone is standing up they must sit down or if everyone is seated they must stand up. This is a reminded to others to behave and makes the child think about their actions. This is only used for a few minutes until they are ready to join everyone again.
I showed the teacher my lesson plans for teaching the two highest groups guided reading. They were okay but didn't fit in with the way the school does guided reading. The teacher's advice was to take a WALT and let the children come up with their own WILFs then as a group we do one example written up by me but lead by the children. Then the children have to read some more pages into themselves quietly and then do their own example in their reading books. The topic was note taking and the idea was to get the children away from thinking note taking is just bullet points. The children were really successful during these lessons and were able to link learning from maths. With some guidance the children choose mind mapping as the best technique for displaying the given material. The best practice that I picked up about guided reading in Renaissance is the Think Pair Share (TPS) strategy. Its quiet common to find that children will listen when the teacher talks but not to their own classmates. The TPS strategy means that the children have to listen to each other. It encourages listening to one another. I told the children they would be asked to share what their partner said. Most of them were able to do it but some fell into the old trap and talked about their own ideas. It was important to give gentle reminders that they were talking about what their partner had said. It would be good to use TPS more until the children really do it well.
Thursday, I took the lower two groups for guided reading. This gave me an opportunity to see what a range their was in reading levels in one class. The children are all reading about news but the lowest group read their book twice. They also do examples in one lesson and concentrate on reading the next. The other groups do both in each lesson and can cope with a much faster pace, in fact require the faster pace to ensure they get the challenge they need.
The children also have assigned periods in the library. An important part of PYP schools is that everyone is trained including the librarians. The children had a few minutes to choose a book and then they sat and read for about 25 minutes. The librarian then called the children over to one corner. She read important notices, told them about book week and a few library competitions-one to come up with a new logo for to go on all library productions and the other to answer questions about the recommended book of the month. I was really impressed with the school library. There were TV screens with top ten book recommendations for the different year groups. There was a section off to one side of computers. Upstairs there are meeting rooms that can be booked out by the older students and by staff as well.
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