Index for Inclusion

We had to work for a few weeks with the "Index for Inclusion" by Tony Booth and Mel Ainscow. The first week we had an activity that we would focus on an part of the index where we found interesting and present it in the class in groups of 4 of 5 people. We would alternate between groups and everybody would have a chance to talk about it. It was my first with such an activity, the alternation in people presenting the different parts made everybody focus on different points and sharing it with the class, everybody having an understanding of all the different points eventually.

And later we had to pick a statement from the index and use it to interview the school staff and students to see if the inclusion was used in the school. Our topic was: "The buildings and grounds are developed to support the participation of all." The purpose of our investigation was to find out if the school facilities were build to support the inclusion of the kids with disabilities.

Our teacher kindly arranged meetings with some of the teachers in a school that I have been to observe many times. Our groups' teacher had a traditional Southern American male name "Merle" but she is female. Although she was quite nice to us, we were worried that we were being trouble for her because she wasn't used to being interviewed in English, happily other teachers helped us translating some of our questions. The part of the questioner that involved the  school plan were related to school administration, we couldn't get an appointment with some one from the administration, so I have decided to go back to school next day and make a different questionnaire like survey with the teachers and parents. Comparing the teachers' and the parents view. After I have spend a couple hours at the school, interviewing teachers and parents I have realized that the teachers and parents had completely different ideas of the environment of the school. I have put the points where teachers and parents disagreed, the teachers seemed to be optimistic but parents were not content with the kids education environment.

Teaching Experience

Today we had a class of 6 graders as guests in our classroom. We had to teach them a topic of choice in 3 groups. The first group was ITEP students and the other two were ERASMUS.

We started with the teachers leaving the classroom, because the pupils knew them very well. The topic of the group was, “Fastelavn”, the Danish version of Mardi Gras as it was celebrated a few days ago. Couple students were selected to translate the teachers’ talk and instructions if some of pupils didn’t understand. Most of the students were involved in the discussion and the class ended with the group discussions of each teachers’ nations’ respective version of ‘Fastelavn’ excluding Scotland because they didn’t it. Overall it was a entertaining class, the costumes worn by the teachers added a fun layer to the class.

The second class had the topic of countries’ of the teachers. It started with forming of the groups. The abundance of personal traits and features that the groups were based on made me think that it was going to be a chaos. But the pupils did a good job of communicating and finding the group that they belong. It was nice to see that pupils could act on their own, but it could be better to control the process in order to prevent the possible chaotic situation. Again, the class ended with a group discussion about the teachers’ countries.

I was in the third and last group. This was going to be my first teaching experience and to be honest I was terrified. We started the class with a hangman game with the words of ‘all about me’ and ‘interview’. After we introduced ourselves and our topics, pupils had to interview each other and talk about themselves in pairs, and to fill out a worksheet about their pair. There were three different worksheets the pupils could choose from depending on their level of English. After the ‘workshop’ session we followed a similar path to the previous groups and each of us set in one of the 4 groups of pupils and let them interview us and talk with them. We ended the class with a game in the school yard where we formed a circle and used a tennis ball to draw to the person that we wanted to ask a question. Overall I think we did a good job of involving everyone in the class with the games and interviews. The topic also was a great way to get the pupils attention as everyone likes to talk about the things they like.

For me, kids being eager to share their thoughts and ask questions made the process of the teaching easier. While I didn’t interact with the whole class as one of my classmates mentioned, it was a good first teaching experience, because I got to work with my group of pupils and see that they were very active. 

Teaching Observation

Today we went to observe a class of 8 graders in a Danish school. In the first semestr I been in this school before for observation, it was a class of six graders. Even though it was the same school, there were significant differences bitween the classrooms. We were told that the school had different divisions. The classroom of 6 graders looked cleaner, more modern, the position of the seats were made to make it easier for the teacher to reach kids and vice/versa, the seats in the 8 grade classroom was in plane rows like a traditional classroom.

The first lesson was Danish, and of course we had difficulty following the class, the teacher translated and told us the plan for the class. The pupils were given a text had to answer the questions related to the text in 15 minutes. They talked about a trip to Berlin and where they wanted to visit.

The second lesson was German. The students were working with a pop song called "Monster". Strange choice of music perhaps but students were quite engaged with their task, they had papers to fill related with the lyrics.

We had to make snapshots about the students, the teacher and the student in foucs. I was focused to the students.

We had to make a presentation about our experience, changing the digital format of the snapshot was my toughest task, because I had mixed up the snapshots I had to redo them, and that took me more then other stuff I had to do for our presentation.

My snapshot pattern looked like this after the lessons: