Day 5

I spent my last day in Class 4.  Being with the older children confirmed that this is the age group I want to work with in the future.  My future work experience in Sweden is going to be in a year 5 class.  I am hoping to set up a pen friend exchange between these two classes, so watch this space!

The day started off with a multiplication test, followed by a spelling test.  As the class has two different years in it, two different tests were done.  I have seen this in the past where one group has to wait until the other group has finished.  This was not the case here and something that I really liked.  The group waiting were given a list of words to look up in a dictionary and record the reference.  This was an excellent way to utilise this extra time.

I got even more ideas from the PE lesson.  The teacher had spent some time training in New Zealand and had got the idea from there.  He played 3 pop songs and did simple routines to the songs.  Each song had approximately 4 different routines in them that were repeated at different parts of the song.  One of the songs was "Who let the dogs out".  When they sang these words, they did a pawing action and made a woofing song.  It was great fun and enabled the pupils to really let go and get crazy for 20 minutes.  I worked up a real sweat and everyone looked really happy.  One thing that really surprised me was that the boys and girls got changed for PE together in the classroom.  This is a school policy that I really think should be changed.

More similarities and differences.....

• The children wear a school uniform and the teachers are expected to dress smartly in England.  In Sweden the children don't have to wear a uniform and the teachers can wear anything they like.  I prefer the English way and believe that smart dress can have a positive influence on how I am perceived as a teacher.
• There is more lesson time in England than in Sweden.  
• England offers a more varied approach to learning that appeals to all of the childrens' senses.  This is something that our teacher training in Sweden is geared towards and I believe one of the reasons a foreign exchange is a part of the course.  It is a real shame that a more varied approach was not adopted in the school I have experienced in Sweden.  A big problem, in my opinion, are the behaviour issues, stemming from a lack of consequential discipline.  When I was on work experience in Sweden and had planned a practical lesson it was difficult to execute it because of behaviour problems.  

I have to add that the two schools I am comparing are very different.  The Swedish school I was in last year was in a suburb of Gothenburg with a high immigrant population, where there are language and cultural challenges that are absent in this English Primary School.  The school I am going into for the next year is socially equivalent to the one in Marden.  This is going to be interesting!