Today was an interesting one, and tiring I'm afraid....without much sleep the days seem much longer, and harder to get through. Tomorrow I will be well rested up however, because I am SO excited to see Stonehenge and Bath!
Class today was interesting, I thought that everyone so far that I've seen has done a GREAT job on their digital stories! I'm learning a lot through watching them! Good job girls! :)
We didn't get to learn much about the podcast today because of the internet being down and such, but I plan on doing a bit of research through the wiki and iTunes tonight to get myself more acquainted with it....because it still is all a bit fuzzy to me. I'm pretty sure that it is all just like a talk radio show, but the synchronizing and things are making me a bit more confused...as well as the ninja video! lol I did love the segment on the cyber nation and all that we saw and learned about it, it's crazy how much technology is growing! Speaking of that today when we went and ate in on lunch with some teachers and students we saw something that I had never seen before! When getting lunch or things from the vending machine, the students fingerprint is scanned and then what they choose, the price is charged to their student account. They can add money or their parents at any time, and they just do this for the vending machines and lunch and things of that sort to pay! AMAZING! The liaison said it was a great thing put up a couple of years ago because many students were getting money lost, stolen, or they would be gambling during school, so the fingerprint scans got ride of the reason for them to have any change or money in their pockets. I thought that was very interesting and a great technology that would help problems like that go away in schools.
After lunch we were each taken to a specific subject classroom that the liaison had set up, and left there to observe the class. I was put in a 10 year group (15 year olds) in a science classroom. The layout of the room was similar to any high school science room I have seen, with lab tables/stools, electrical outlets, sinks on one side, and lots of posters hanging around about science. They also had a smartboard like the rest of the classrooms, which the "Miss" = teacher, had a slide show projecting on. They first went through a short lesson on how plants grow. They then did an activity where they planted some seeds on a cotton cloth in a petri dish, got the cloth wet and were going to make a table for how tall the seeds grow the rest of the school year. (They go on summer break in about 10 days, and start school back up again the 2nd week of September.) The Miss then went through a small run through of the life stages of a human, and talked about gestation and growth. They then did an activity where they cut out pictures of the different stages of life in the magazines and then pasted and labeled them in their notebooks. I really didn't see the value in this but I later found out that this was a lower level class, which still didn't make sense for how easy the activity was and how old the students were.
As far as the behavior of the students I was overwhelmed yesterday with the good manners and group work, but today, I saw different. It was like a normal classroom to me I suppose, with teenagers anyway. They all wanted to talk while the teacher was talking, they made comments about anything and everything, and all the teacher did was "shush" them every time and wait for them to be quiet. No demerits, no punishments, just a "shush" and a wait. I suppose that I haven't seen the students enough to know how they behave on a regular occasion, but this was interesting to me that she was so laid back when these students were not respecting her at all. But I only observed her one period because she had not expected me to stay any longer. We saw another home ec class and talked to 3 or 4 girls in there about America and what they thought of us and our "accent"...they said it was "lovely" and they talked to us about music and about that their school wasn't really that bad, but everyone says it is. They also talked to us about our language and how it's different...we also talked about the mall, places to go and things to do here and in America and Michigan...it was quite nice. :) The girls were very friendly, the most friendly students I met during my time there, so it was great to finally talk to them and get their input and thoughts on things of our culture compared to theirs.
I am extremely looking forward to Stonehenge and Bath tomorrow, as well as going to the primary school on Thursday!
Off to plan for London!
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