Overall reflection

     

    In this blog entry, I would like to share with you my overall reflection about my practice this semester. 

     This semester we mainly focused on the observation, as you saw my posts we needed to observe particular elements of lessons. Observations may seem to be boring for some people, but they are not, especially when it comes to school like Smart School. On my previous studies, I have never been in a bilingual school so it was something new for me and I saw plenty of interesting situations and methods. Children have a very high level of English even in class four, and after eight grade they can even achieve a C1 level! Furthermore, thanks to the bilingual school they have interesting subjects like phonics where they learn sounds of English and also lessons about culture, history and political system in UK and USA. In Smart School, kids have more lessons and subject than in normal schools, but they seem to be happy and I think that they like spending time in their school. The atmosphere there is family-oriented, there are not many students so the groups are small and everyone knows each other well. Throughout the observations, I did not notice major problems with discipline. Children in the classroom work with great commitment, when they have to work in groups, they still use English, which shows that they have no problems with expressing their thoughts in this language. I think that this children's approach to school and learning is strongly influenced by the teaching methods that teachers use. They make learning fun. They are not afraid of using technology at lessons, they elicit knowledge from children which makes learning more memorable by linking new and old information. What is also important, in Smart school children learn to co-operate with each other by working in groups or pairs. 

     Besides the things that I really like in Smart School, I would like to draw your attention to things that I have learned. 

     From observing lessons conducted by my mentor teacher I learned fantastic methods of teaching new vocabulary. My mentor teacher always uses flashcards and has loads of ideas for games, thanks to which children will memorise new words easily. In schools in which I previously had my practice, I only saw the introduction of new words by writing them on the board with their translations. The children later had to learn everything at home by heart. Now I saw that it does not have to be that way. Thanks to visuals, games and constant repetition, children learn words in class. They can also practice them later in tasks and conversations during activities in pairs or groups. Furthermore, thanks to my mentor teacher I saw that teachers do not have to use only a book to convert material that is in the core curriculum. She showed me a lot of new websites and applications that I can use to teach so that lessons are not boring, and well-chosen topics motivate students to learn.

     In this semester, I also had to conduct five hours of micro-teaching, which showed me that preparing for the lessons is not so easy. The materials have to be chosen according to the age and language level of the pupils and it takes some time to find appropriate activities. Also now I see that the teachers' work does not end after leaving school because they have to prepare for the next day or for example check tests. Teachers with more experience probably cope with this faster because they already have the materials prepared, but for a beginner teacher, it is quite a challenge.

Despite this, I see that the teacher's work brings a lot of satisfaction. Especially when we can see that thanks to us someone has learned something new.