"Some People Are Gay. Get Over It."

So I supposed I should start off by explaining my heading...we went into the reception area at Tamarside Community College and saw that poster hanging on a bulletin board where we waited. It was interesting to see that in the school, because things like that in the U.S. are sparing. It is a good indication at how accepting the people and society is over here to everyone, no matter who they are or what they are like. It's nice.

So today's adventure at the community college was amazing! The liaison was SO friendly and he took us around the school and talked to us about the whole British school system and how it works then we were able to watch him teach a history lesson, which was very interesting because it was British history, which I know nothing about, but I love history so I enjoyed watching the students work together to put together a time line of events. They had slides that had different dates and events on them and the first task was for them to the events in chronological order. He used the smartboard (which almost every room had in it) to time the students for 5 minutes to get that done, then he also had an iPod boombox near the desk that he put music on while the students were working.
The next part of the lesson was to work in group, boys for one group, girls for the other, and fill out a worksheet with a fill in the blank for each historical event that was on the time line they put in order. The girls struggled with this, but the boys worked together and figured out a system, two people write, the others find the sheets....they had put them out of order after the first activity. I found it interesting how they split up into boys vs. girls a lot in the school. In the next classroom that we went to, the technology (ICT = Information and Community Technology) rooms, had the girls and boys lined up outside of the classroom before class started, then they were filed in separately, then they also put their bags on separate tables, but sat altogether as a class. This was very interesting to me, because in the states we try not to exclude boys and girls into separate groups, but here it seems as a tradition and part of the schooling.

The other part of the history lesson that we saw from our liaison, Craig Staples, was that he had created audio clips with clues on them, and what the children were to do was listen to each clue, trying not to pick the false ones or the "buzzers" which meant no clue or anything. He played each clue as the students picked them and then the children had to go through ruling out different famous people that the clues were about, based on what they had previously learned from other lessons about history. It was VERY interesting to see the way that the activity was set up and the massive use of technology throughout the entire lesson, I loved it! The students were engaged and actively participating....note there was only 7 of them out of 20, but still, it was great to see them work together as a class, but also independently at times. Craig continuously told us that the period we were going to see him teach was a very "rough" group of students, that didn't really care about school, but they did a great job of fooling us because they were well behaved most of the time and worked well in groups. At the end of the lesson he had a section called "WHILT" = "What Have I Learned Today?" He went through a series of slides with sentence starters to get the children to reflect on what they learned in the lesson, what it taught them, how did they learn it, why they liked it, etc. It was very interesting to hear the students' responses, which one boy inputed "I learned that when I behave well, I work better in a group." It was a very mature and great observation to hear from an 11 year old.

The other room that we visited was the ICT room where I watched a lesson on making designs/logos in Microsoft Logo Maker...a program I have never heard of before. It was interesting to see similar classroom management skills used by the teacher, but such a different lesson with a program I had never seen before. We were able to help the children and they were very open to asking us for help calling me "Miss" which was very different for me, but cute! :)

Overall it was a very enjoyable experience and I'm looking forward to going back tomorrow and the Primary school on Thursday, which will be different I'm sure. The schooling lecture we got from Nick today in class was VERY helpful in letting us know how the system works, which helped me to develop more questions for our liaison for tomorrow and also opened my eyes to more things that I will be able to notice, now knowing what the school system is like. Which is SO confusing to us, but simple to them! I am looking forward to doing the podcast on this subject, which I think will be very interesting to hear everyone's different perspective from each school.

Tina, Michelle, and I are going to eat "dinner" with the staff and students tomorrow when we arrive to the school so that will be a good experience as well! I'm looking forward to that, all of the staff is VERY friendly, so I'm sure it will be a very useful experience as well as seeing more subjects/classrooms tomorrow!