Teaching Observation in a Special Needs Class

Today we went to a Brøderup, in the middle of nowhere to a school that looked like red barn structures. Although it looked like it was a barn that was turned into a makeshift school from the outside, it was quite nice from the inside. We were greeted by a teacher who asked who we were looking for, Heidi our teacher arrived shortly with a couple of her students and lead us to the classroom. The classroom consisted of 9 students. Everybody has introduced themselves, we saw the ages of the students ranged from 14 to 16. There were only two girls who seemed quite happy in the classroom but we were told that there were two girls who were absent because that had some problems.

In the seats in the classroom were not situated like traditional classroom, there were for desks in the middle and there were desks in the corners. Students had computers, had some of them had headphones entire time when we were there. We were told that they needed a quite environment without distractions to learn. One of the girls didn't like it when she was criticized, just like me, she also had a painting in the wall.

Maybridge's painting

There was a fridge, a kettle and a sink in the classroom. They were allowed to eat as they might don't have enough to eat at home. There were some fatboys in the corner where they could take a nap if they couldn't get their sleep at home.

In the first lesson the kids worked with song, each student focused on two lines of the lyrics, they were interviewing one another, alternating between pairs periodically. The teacher were asking the pupils how they were doing instead of asking about the task specifically.

We had a fire drill in between the classes, luckily we were told prior to the drill. We evacuated the school and formed lines in school yard, and stayed there for a while and got back to the school.

The other lesson was history. There were pictures of different ages with their names on it, in the page that was projected to the board. The teacher was talking about the each era and then asking randomly about the era to the students.

Then there was a lunch break, we hadn't brought anything to eat with us but luckily there was a cake tasting competition and we had several extremely sweet cakes to taste, I couldn't anything sweet for two days after that.

Cake for lunch

When we got back to the classroom, we saw that it was a just a gathering that we socialized, students talking to each other about whatever they wanted.

Our teacher Heidi was really nice to us, the students were also really nice. A 14 year old girl handed her backpack to me and asked me if I could carry it, I was able to carry it but with notable difficulty, I was worried because I am 22 year old and even I would struggle having it strapped to my back more then five minutes.

Our commuted lasted more then two hours in total, but the beautiful scenery of Denmark made it all worth it, spring is a really nice time to visit the schools in middle of nowhere.