CORNWALL: DÍA 10 DE OBSERVACIÓN

DAY 10. Friday, March 17th, 2017.


KINDERGARDEN CLASS- Treloweth school


In the morning all the classes of the school get together at the gym and sit in rows by classrooms. Each teacher has previously picked a student from his/her class to praise and be awarded student of the week. That student will come to the front and once he/she is there he/she is there, they are given a letter for his family telling them about their great behavior, manners and hard work of that week. Once they are at the front, their classroom teacher stands up and very loudly says why he/she picked that child that week.
Once this is done they need to pick the class of the week, for that, they get a chart full of diamonds, which the teacher keeps marking daily anytime the whole class is behaving, really nice. Then the head teacher starts saying numbers and if the classroom teacher has that number of checks in the diamonds he/she remains standing, if not, he/she sits down. The last teacher remaining is giving a chart that says diamond class to proudly show by their door.
For our surprise, Sarah, the girl responsible for the teaching of Spanish at this school had prepared a beautiful song that the whole school sang for us. It was very emotional. At the end of the song they told us to stand up and head to the front of the school were they gave us a beautiful bracelet as a present for our time and stay at their school. It was all very emotional.
After this emotional moment I head back to the Kindergarten classroom.
They start the day of reading a letter that some mystery friend has left for them and then they dance a wake and shake song. The teacher always joins and dances with them and keeps encouraging them and making nice comments to each child.
After that the kids go play in different corners: 1) Role-play area with disguises of all sorts 2) Number line, where they write the missing numbers. 3) A table with long white paper and high frequency words where they can copy as many as the want with different felt tip pens. 4) An area with recycles materials, rubber bands, rice, sand, where they can create different musical instruments. 5) The teacher is showing some of the kids a picture and they have to think of a sentence with that photo and try to write it on the board.

YEAR 1 CLASS- WRITING
I came back to the year 1 class I visited at the beginning of the class and they were finishing their final writing piece, putting together all the other parts of their stories they wrote in previous days. At this moment they were given a whole hour to do that.
Once many of them finished, they were put in pairs so they could read their stories to a partner. They were very happy to share their stories. They will switch partners every once in a while to read their stories to different kids and also here new stories.


Por Maria Josefa Gonzalez Roces, profesora del CEIP Moreno Espinosa , Cebreros, Avila.

CORNWALL: DÍA 9 DE OBSERVACIÓN

DAY 9. Thursday, March 16^th, 2017.

YEAR 2 CLASS- Treloweth school

The teacher and the TA in this class are really welcoming and take every possible opportunity to explain things to me and also to ask me questions about my school system and how we do things there differently from here.
First of all the teacher asks them about their lunch choices and while they were doing that the principal came to congratulate them for the great work they are doing and how well they behaved the day before while the general observations with principals from different schools took place.
After this, they dance a wake and shake dance. (YOUTUBE: JUST DANCE KIDS) This way they start the day off with energy. Sometimes they also dance this wake and shake videos in between lessons.
WRITING
They start with some interactive games in the whiteboard. They need to match statements, commands, questions and exclamations.
Before the game starts the teacher tells them to sit straight and give him a smile, so he makes sure every student is ready.
He makes sure they all know the answers to the questions before a kid gets up and goes to the board to match the sentences.
Yesterday they wrote a description about a pirate and did a report on how life as a pirate is like.
If a kid isn’t paying attention the teacher says: Peter, that’s your warning.
They go through the different parts their writing piece is going to have talking a text about fire fighters as a model.
Parts: Title, introduction, subheadings, conjunctions (and, because, so, also), technical vocabulary, summary/conclusion.
They read the text about fire fighters and they identify these different parts together and they highlight it in different colors using a ruler.
It takes them a minimum of 3 days (3h) to produce a nice piece of writing. (0.Explore the topic) 1. Plan 2.Writing 3.Improved piece. This has more stages for the higher grades.
Plan-Brainstormed questions

1. What jobs do pirates do?
2. What clothes do pirates wear?
3. How do they survive in the sea?
4. What do they eat?
5. How do they find treasures?
6. How do they have fun?
7. How do they stay clean?

PRAISE: HIP HIP HORRAY.
1 hand on 1 hip and say HIP!
1 hand on the other hip and say HIP!
Hands up and you say: HORRAY!

BREAK TIME-10 MINUTES

MATHS
The class is divided in 3 groups to work on fractions (by ability level):
-1 group works with the TA
-1 group works with the teacher
-The other group work on their own, some on fraction problems some on fractions.
*To get their attention: Clap once, clap twice, clap 3 times!

BREAK TIME- 10 MINUTES

When we come back from the break a small group of students is working on phonics in the hall with a TA. They are working on the “ow” sound. First, the TA reads 5 words to them with the “ow” sound in them. Brown, cow, how, down, town.
Then she sounds out the words one by one and they copy each word on their notebooks.
Once they are done, the TA reads a story to them with lots of “ow” words. They go over the sentences identifying the “” so they know it I a conversation and they need to change their voices, ?, !, ect.
The next day they will have to re-read that story doing buddy reading.

Por Maria Josefa Gonzalez Roces, profesora del CEIP Moreno Espinosa , Cebreros, Avila.

CORNWALL: DÍA 8 DE OBSERVACIÓN

Day 8. Wednesday, March 15^th, 2017.

Portreath Primary School

Portreath is a small school in a fisherman village. The school is 1/3 of the size of our base school Treloweth. We are welcome by the business manager of the school. She showed us around and we get placed in 3 different classrooms for the morning. Portreath has a totally different vibes. It is somehow different to all the other schools we had visited so far. It feels like home.

I start off in classroom 3.

They start the morning ordering their lunches and then straight to guided reading. I get a student at a time to read with me. J I loved that.

The girl I read with is a great reader and it was a pleasure reading with her. At the end of her reading I wrote the pages we read in her reading record book together with a little comment.

I then read with a second girl. An awesome experience too.

The class is working on their own version of the “What a wonderful world song”. The kids are rewriting the song adding details about their area and Cornwall. This activity really busts their creativity and they are extremely happy showing me their versions of the song. Their songs talk about their green scenery, their beaches ready for surfers, their Cornish pasties, etc.

After class 3 I head of to class 4.

This class is a mixed between year 4 and 5 children.

In this classroom I get a chance to have a chat with Kim, a TA that is in charge of teaching Spanish to the children of Portreath.  Kim not only teaches Spanish but she also help students with difficulties throughout the school. She tells me about her experience teaching Spanish at this school. Spanish doesn’t have a set time in the timetable. It varies weekly. She is very fond of Spanish language and teaches them about Spanish language and also focuses in culture. Children are very happy to practice their Spanish with me. Kim shows me the Spanish journal the students keep with lots of activities they do during the Spanish lessons. They learn about food, colors, physical descriptions, animals, body parts, etc. Also cultural aspects like Picasso, Los Reyes Magos or Easter traditions and traditional stories in Spanish such us the three little pigs. They also practice dialogs about ordering food in a restaurant and cook Spanish recipes. And they interview their classmates about their likes and dislikes.

The kids in this class are writing the beginning of a myth. They need to invent a imaginary story they that takes place in their village Portreath or in their province Cornwall. In previous lessons they planned for the story they wanted to write using pictures and small notes about their future stories. Today they need to elaborate on the story with their plan as the starting point. Of course they can’t forget to include (where, when, who, what, why, how)

Before the end of the lesson, the teacher picks a couple of examples of children writing and she reads them aloud commenting on the piece of writing. She mentions the good parts and also the points they could improve. She talks in general so they will all check their work and improve their writings.

After this, they swop their notebooks with their partners and they get to add comments to help them improve their writing too. Partners add their comments with pencil.

BREAT TIME 15 MINUTES

After break time I go to class 1.

It was the children play time so I got the opportunity to talk to the classroom teacher, Sam, about our school systems and we got the chance to see the good and less good bits of both schools systems. It was a really productive chat, which I am really grateful I got to have with Sam. I already commented on this on a previous post and the chat with Sam only made my ideas clearer in my head.

The atmosphere in this school is definitely slightly more relaxed than in other schools in the area, maybe because of the place it is located by the sea or maybe because is further away from the major towns of Cornwall. Whatever it is I am leaving this school with a nice feeling and wishing I could be back for some collaboration in the future.

Por Maria Josefa Gonzalez Roces, profesora del CEIP Moreno Espinosa , Cebreros, Avila.

CORNWALL: DÍA 7 DE OBSERVACIÓN

DAY 7. Tuesday, March 14, 2017

YEAR 1 READING

1. Teacher goes through the timetable with them telling them what they are going to do on that day.
2. After that they move to do their phonic work. They review all the sounds and add the new sound “ue”

Anytime she says a new sound she tells them: My turn your turn. Soy they know that they need to listen to her first before repeating what she says.

1. Then they move on to review the writing of words with the “ar” sound.
2. Next they read their high frequency words (green words) and then the story of the week that accompanies the new sound they’ve just learned.
3. They read the story in pairs or threes, pointing at each of the words with a Popsicle stick so each child is focused on the same word at the same time.

Until this time the teacher was only teaching half of her classroom and right after she finished with the phonics the other half arrived, they sat down and were given papers to start writing a story about a topic of their preference. This second group that have just arrived were working on phonics too with other teachers or TA’s. They are the higher tier of the classroom.

1^ST 10 MINUTE BREAK

YEAR 1 MATHS

-They start counting from 1 to 100 in 5s.

-They start doing additions with their fingers. Teacher shows them 10 fingers. Then she removes 1 and says, how many more we need to make 10? Kids reply 9! Teacher keeps removing fingers and they tell her how many more to make 10.

-They count from 1 to 100 in 10s.

-On the whiteboards she has some number sentences prepared, these number sentences have missing numbers, they need to add something to make the additions correct. 5+__=9, __+6=7 etc Teacher lets them work on their boards while she passes by checking what the kids are doing on their boards. They are given 3 minutes to complete the task.

-They review their answers together. Making gestures like 5 fingers for 5, arms crossed for plus or arms parallel for equals.

-After this they move on to describing 3D shapes. First they watch a real life video about 3D shapes we see daily around us. Cubes, spheres, pyramids, cuboids, and cylinders. Then they learn vocabulary that will help them describe this shapes. (faces, square, rectangular, circles, no edges, flat face, curved face, point, sides)

-After the videos the teacher takes out a bag with shapes inside. She describes a shape she is touching inside the bag and children guess and justify why did they take that guess, by explaining which of the words the teacher used help him/her guess the 3D shape.

-After that teaches takes some plasticine and creates different shapes for the kids to guess and then describe.

-One the whole group explanation is finished. They go to their groups and they play with shapes, describing the shapes to their group mates so they can guess. Each group in the class has a name they chose at the beginning of being a group.

-Once they are done, the TA hands them in the learning intention for the task and a picture they’ve just printed of them playing the shape guessing game and they glue it in their Math Notebooks and they need to write a descriptions for each of the shapes, At least a sentence for each of the shapes. (Silent work)

2^ND 10 MINUTE BREAK

YEAR 1 WRITING

-They sit on the carpet and the teacher displays on the IWB some of their writing pieces from yesterday and they look at it and they analyze the good and things to improve in different writing pieces from different students.

-They check specially: Capital letters, full stops, finger spaces, use feeling and verbs to write about actions, and use “and”, “but” and “so” to link ideas in a sentence. They do this with a small rubric they call their “Marking ladder”

-After that the teacher, with the help of the children writes a small text to show them a good piece of writing that could serve them as an example for them to look at after.

-Sometimes she stops to sound some words out it their spelling is tricky for the kids.

-The teacher pretends to make mistakes to they notice. For example starts a sentence or writes someone’s name without a capital letter, doesn’t leave finger spaces or “forgets” to write the full stop.

-She encourages them to put question marks at the end of sentences to make them more exciting.

-When thy finish writing their text they read it all together. Making gestures for capital letter (arms in a triangle), full stop (fist pointing forwards) and exclamation marks (hand goes down and punches)

-After this whole class work they are sent to their tables to start writing their own text. First they glue their objective and their marking ladder and then write their own texts. They are writing about the problem part that happens in the story. They start off by coping the text they have written together and they take it from there.

-When there are 5 minutes left she tells them to stop writing and look at their marking ladder to check the piece they’ve just written. They put ticks in the items from the marking ladder they have incorporated in their writing piece.

Por Maria Josefa Gonzalez Roces, profesora del CEIP Moreno Espinosa , Cebreros, Avila.

CORNWALL: DÍA 6 DE OBSERVACIÓN

DAY 6. Monday, March 13, 2017

Roskear Primary and Nursery School

-In this school the assistant head teacher welcomes us and she gives us a tour around the school showing us all the classroom and explaining how their school works. She is very pleased to tell us about their school and asks a lot of questions about schools in Spain that we happily answer.

-We start off at the Nursery classroom where they do the register and then they review the spring vocabulary they are learning at the moment.

-The class has 5 corners well differenciated: Computer, builder’s yard, count and match, investigate and topic.

-They give a lot of importance to the red words, words that can’t be sounded out (I, the, said, what, was, me, you, she, be, we) and their green words, high frequency words (moon, dog, high, bird, sun, mat, fit, ship, chop)

-They also have a Learning Wall that displays all the things they have been learning so far with a picture of the activity.

-They also have children observation sheets where they write once or twice per week about what the child has accomplished.

-Library is very well organized into 3 main areas: Nursery rhymes (simple songs and poems), newspaper reports (information facts about different subjects) and fiction (stories that describe imaginary events)

-In this school, as well as the other schools, they have a big number of TA teachers that help in the classrooms and also they have a speech specialist (AL) and a TA in charge of helping those kids which first language is not English (Compensatoria).

-The school slogan, the 4Rs: A good learner is resilient, reciprocal, resourceful and reflective.

-Children participate in the school council so their voice is heard. This is a very important matter in this schools. Everyone needs to be heard.

*Reading wrist bands. A chart with different colors stripes is displayed where children can move their names depending on the amount of books they have read so far. They are given a different plastic wrist band when they move up on their reading level.

Year 2 bulleting boards: Math, Science, Literacy, Reading, Topic.

Year 6. They are very busy preparing the SAT exams they will take in May so there are 2 classes but at this time they are permanently split in 3 groups by their ability levels.

Por Maria Josefa Gonzalez Roces, profesora del CEIP Moreno Espinosa , Cebreros, Avila.

CORNWALL: DÍA 5 DE OBSERVACIÓN

DAY 5. Friday, March 10^th, 2017.

Rosemellin Community Primary School

In this school resources seem to be less than in the other two schools we visited earlier this week.

YEAR 4 CLASS (WRITING)

-Register and lunch preferences

-They start of the lesson sounding out words.

-Teacher makes sure that kids with all abilities are included (visual, auditory, kinesthetic learners)

-The teacher writes the words they read on the board, helped by the children. The phonic method they use in this school is different from the one used in the other schools. Here they use the method “letters and sounds” and in the other schools they use “read write inc”.

-The TA hands in their whiteboards and they start of by writing the alphabet and some sight words.

YEAR 4 CLASS- MATHS

-They start off by counting from 1 to 200.

-This class has differentiated groups by level doing different activities.

1. Number line table. They copy the numbers from 1 to 20 from the number line on their whiteboards. After the 20 they go ahead and do it in 10s up to 100.

2.Addition with blocks. They break the blocks into 2 pieces and add up the 1^st and 2^nd number on their boards. The start with 5 blocks on 1 side of the board and zero on the other side. 5+0=5. Then 4 on one side and 1 on the other side. 4+1=5 and so on

3. Addition facts with domino pieces.

4. The lowest tier has a puzzle with numbers and they keep making the number puzzle helped by a number line.

5. The fifth group

YEAR 1 CLASS

-Teacher is explaining to us everything they do in reading, writing and math. Again we are surprised by the great and creative work they Math and English teachers do over here. Of course NO BOOKS ARE USED. We are thrilled.

YEAR 1 PHONICS

-Kids are divided by their ability and practice sounds with 3 different TA’s!!! Also,  they read their high frequency words.

After they are given their whiteboards to practice some writing. She dictates some of the high frequency words and they try to write them down.

YEAR 2 READING

-The teacher is doing a read aloud and stopping every now and them to ask comprehension questions.

They could have whiteboards to write their answers so that way the teacher could check everyone is understanding and help those ones struggling in a very visual way.

There are display boards in the classroom with smiley charts for each student where they draw a smiley every day they behave nicely.

There is also a display helping them differentiate homophones. Words that sound the same but are written differently and that present a challenge. Or simply words that are written in a very similar way. (Their, They’re, They’re) (to, too) (where, wear, we’re, were) (you’re, your) (our, are)

GOLDEN TIME

-They’ve got a lighthouse displayed in the room with different floors. 3min, 6min, 9 min, 12 min, 15min, 18min, 21min, and 30min and top of the lighthouse (They can bring a toy from home)

- They move up or down the lighthouse depending on their good or bad behaviour or hard work that week.

-On the last period of the Friday they can choose what they want to do for the golden time they earned that week. (games, draw a picture, go to playground etc)

-So this last 30 minutes on the Friday they sit in the carpet, teacher sets a timer and they can stand up and play once the timer reaches the time they’ve earned for that week.

Por Maria Josefa Gonzalez Roces, profesora del CEIP Moreno Espinosa , Cebreros, Avila.

CORNWALL: DIAS 3 Y 5 DE OBSERVACIÓN

Wednesday, March 8^th, 2017.

YEAR 2A- WRITING

1. They do the register and order their lunch choices; there is always a meat dish and a vegetarian dish. Some kids take their own lunch.
2. They continue the writing piece they started the day before helped by a displayed writing piece in note-form with no completed sentences. They also go over different sentences and starters.
3. Once they’ve done this they get some quiet time to write what their character looks like, what their characters in the stories did and what they said.

BREAK TIME 1. 10 MINUTES

MATHS

Preparation for the lesson:

Teacher says: In my pocket I’ve got a shape. You need to ask me questions to find our which shape it is. They ask how many sides and the teacher answer 6. They ask how many corners and teacher says 6 again. Kids shout: Hexagon!

Teacher says: I’ve got a total of 1 Pound in my pocket in 4 coins. What are these coins? A student comes up with the solution: 50p, 20p, 20p and 10p.

After this they count in twos up to 50, then the teacher says some numbers, if they are multiples of 5 they need to stand up, if not they remain quiet.

-Multiples of 2, 5 and 10 are basics in their match classes.

-They break numbers into smaller ones so it gets easier to work with them.

Ex. 65-18=2 (20) + 20 (40) +20(60) +5(65)=2+20+20+5=47 so 65-18=47

-Practice time: The class is divided into 3 different level groups. The lower level works with the Teacher Assistant (TA), the medium level works with me and the 2 top levels work with the teacher and on their own.

BREAK TIME 2. 10 MINUTES

READING TIME

-Teacher reads a story aloud. Then they go write about the story following the ERIC technique. E=Explain R=Retrieve information I=Interpret information C=Choice (high level thinking)

-Once they finish writing, as a price, the teacher lets them watch a story in the interactive whiteboard before lunchtime.

Thursday, March 9^th, 2017.

A day at Illogan School.

Illogan school is a newly refurbished medium size school in the Redruth area, its particularity is that there is 2 schools in the same site, a regular school, and a school for children with Special Needs. Most of the time the kids are separated but they share the playground and some activities such us the cooking class.

There is a really impressive number of TA’s at the school, mostly because of all the special needs children they’ve got in the schools that shares ground with Illogan. The amount of TA’s makes personalize teaching much easier.

The slogan of the school is:

ASPIRE, BELIEVE, CREATE, DAZZLE.

SMALL GROUPS

The first hour in the morning is dedicated to help kids with difficulties in small grouping areas in a sort of hall in between classrooms. Kids are not necessary grouped by age but by ability. These groups are mostly focused on sounding words, spelling and reading comprehension.

WRITING LESSON 3^RD GRADE

They are preparing to write a composition about natural earthquakes.

1^st, they discuss the vocabulary they can use to talk about this topic and the teacher displays this vocabulary on the Word Wall.

-After the brainstorming they start writing their compositions about a natural disaster. The teacher gives them a rubric to guide them.

-They need to have a shaking title

-It needs to say what, when and where it happened.

PROS AND CONS OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL SYSTEM

PROS:

1. They most of the time have more than one adult in the classroom. Teacher assistants.

1. The effective way of teaching them quality writing, giving them lots of examples. Modeling for them and giving them practice time.

1. Their reading comprehension is far away better than in Spain mainly because of the amount of hours dedicated to it and the fact that it is a main focal point over here. Plus they have lots of books per classroom.

1. The inclusion of Science and Social Studies topics in reading and writing lessons, making this learning’s more meaningful.

1. The small breaks of 10 minutes between lessons help them to keep their brains active and awake.

1. They don’t use textbooks! The government provides them with notebooks and all other school supplies. What makes every student equal.

1. They don’t focus so much on spelling so the kids won’t stop writing creatively because of so much spelling correction, so their writing flows.

CONS:

1. In Spain, we dedicate more time to teaching and not only focusing on a test. In the UK students go through a lot of testing in their school life that ends up in categories of schools and rankings of students.

1. We give greater importance to subjects such us Science and Social Sciences, Foreign Languages, PE, Music, so our children education is much more complete and varied. 

Por Maria Josefa Gonzalez Roces, profesora del CEIP Moreno Espinosa , Cebreros, Avila.