Thursday 19th April Today we all went into Haapsulu gymnasium to teach 5th graders (11-12year olds). We need to prepare and teach a lesson focusing on nature studies. As part of the interactive program we were expected to incorporate some form of film into the lesson. We spent most of yesterday planning and preparing, making sure that we were fully aware of our lesson plan and what activities we wanted the children to do when. Our lesson was made up of two 45minute sessions, we were required to give the children a 15minutes break in the middle complying with the schools regular routine. We planned to complete a short ice breaker game to enable us to become familiar with the childrens names. Unfortunately we were only able to catch a few names due to the shyness of children and the short period of time. After completing the game we delivered a PowerPoint presentation, we took the presentation in turns in order to demonstrate different elements of our own countries, recognising the difference between the cities and countrysides. We encouraged the children to discuss every element making the lesson interactive and practical. This made sure that every child was involved and participated throughout the lesson. The first half of the lesson was very successful. The clock in the classroom was broken which confused our timing make us think we had more time, this caused us to add in an extra activity which disrupted the sequence of the lessons. E.g the children completed a brainstorm, then word search and then presented their brainstorm. The word search should have been the last activity to complete if time was remaining. The children were very excited to film using their mobile phones. The second half went very smoothly and the children appeared to understand the task and where happy to interview and film each in English. Personally I was very impressed with their English! The issue that arose within this session related to technology. As the children were using their own devices the computers were unable to identify the software required for transferring. As a matter of flexibility we used the children's phones to watch their films this was ok as we were working with a small group of children. Overall we were happy with our teaching taking into account the different culture, language, children, adults and culture.

I would like to tell you ...

Yvonne, Merlin, Amy, Maria

New start