Classroom environment

    On the 15th of November, I was in Smart school on my practices. In this blog entry, I would like to focus on the classroom environment. I observed 4 lessons:

*Project - class 7

*Two English lessons - class 4
*English lesson - class 5
    The first lesson in class four was in a rather small room. Children were sitting in irregular rows, desks were only for one person, and there were only 7 children in the classroom. At the back of the classroom, there was a carpet and a big chest of drawers. Teacher's desk was in the corner, next to the window. On the walls, there were posters made by kids.

(pink- teacher's desk, green - board, brown -students' desks, blue- carpet, grey- chest of drawers)

    The lesson was very practical, it was about transport in England. In the beginning, a teacher made a quick warm-up and asked children how they can move around London. Then she played with them in "hangman"  game, with a word ‘tube’.  After that, they listened to the recording about people travelling on a double-decker bus. It was a very funny story and children had fun while listening. Then they made an exercise to the listening.

    After that teacher gave children maps of London underground, wrote useful phrases for giving and asking about directions and then she asked questions. Children were very engaged in answering those questions.

   Next teacher divided the children into pairs. Students who were sitting next to each other were working together. They needed to choose a place and ask for directions. Most of the time they used English but sometimes they switched into their native language when they had problems with saying something or when they started talking about topics that were irrelevant to the activity. When the teacher saw that they stopped talking about the activity she asked pairs to perform their dialogues in front of the whole class.

Listening and task were taken from www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglishteens. I think that the lesson was interesting for kids because they were not bored. The listening was very funny so they listened to it with a big interest.

   Lesson number two was in grade 4. Here children used course book “THINK” by Cambridge University Press. I was surprised by the level of the book which is A2. The teacher told us that this is a difficult book for those kids so she needs to prepare additional exercises. Here the classroom was bigger, also with a carpet at the back of the classroom. Desks were in regular rows and there were 12 children. Kids were sitting in pairs on the one side of the classroom and on the other part in threes or fours. One boy was sitting alone. A classroom was colourful with posters and rules on the walls. A topic of the lesson was present simple.

    The teacher started a lesson with a warm-up. She made a ball from paper and she was throwing that ball to students. A student that caught a ball answered teacher’s questions. Questions were about their hobbies, likes and dislikes and how often do they do something.  After the warm-up, they opened the books and talked about the picture connected with a text that they were going to read.

The next step was reading. The teacher pointed at kids that she chose for reading. Children that were not chosen were unhappy that it wasn’t they turn. The teacher told them that they will read it once again. Children were reading two times, with roles division. When someone started disturbing, the teacher said that kid name and he or she realized that something is wrong. After reading the teacher asked questions connected with a text. One boy didn’t know how to answer in English and started talking in Polish. The teacher told him that she doesn’t understand him. She asked one girl to answer her question in English and then she told that boy to repeat that answer. After that children had a break and on the next lesson, they wrote a test.

    The last lesson that I saw was in class 5. There were 17 children in a classroom. The children had English for the first time with that teacher because their teacher is pregnant so now they have a replacement. The topic of the lesson was "an extraordinary school". A Teacher used course book "THINK 2".

    The lesson started with a warm-up. The teacher asked children what they were doing yesterday. When children made a mistake, the teacher corrected them and then they needed to repeat the following sentences correctly. When the teacher was asking questions, the rest of the class didn't listen to answers of their colleagues at all. The children were talking with each other. The teacher wrote 'break' on the board and said that she would wipe off one letter for bad behaviours. Each letter was an additional task for children. The teacher played a hangman with the children. The words in the game were the title of the lesson, which was "extraordinary school". The teacher asked children for synonyms for the "extraordinary" word. After the introduction to the topic, the children opened their books, discussed the picture from the book and listened to the recording. Then they did the tasks from the book.

    In conclusion, I really like the way of organization of the school. In each room, children have a chest of drawers that they can use. In the classrooms, there are also materials that children can take, such as, paper and crayons. In each classroom, there is a carpet which is excellent for discussion and various tasks. The atmosphere in the school is very friendly. There are no bells, so children don't sit in a classroom, waiting to hear the sound of a bell. Teachers use many different materials, not only course books and they are choosing tasks that are interesting for kids so they are more motivated to learn. So far, I have not seen a lot of discipline problems. Teachers have interesting ways to maintain discipline and they are really good at it.