A fairly full on day, decided to go to the Primary school this morning as from next Tuesday one of the Lycee teachers wants me Tuesday mornings! I went to Hermione’s class and Seph’s. Their programme is all set, has word by word lessons, flashcards premade (with all the instructions, step by step, CD’s worksheets, activities etc…Pick up and go! As we finished listening to a CD in Hermione’s class next door’s was still playing. About 10 seconds behind! It is all so structured and, DARE I say it, very well done. For English anyway.I do presume every subject is like this with very clear progressions. I have seen the books for most subjects. All the children have the textbook and workbook for every subject which is used at home too for homework. I think this definitely has its advantages; all children get exactly the same curriculum and coverage!
Mind you…when I arrived in Hermione’s class the teacher was handing back written tests and recording scores. All names got read out and their score said , if it wasn’t good you got a bit of a grilling :Didn’t you understand…It was simple…Nothing written here… but all in a tone of disapproval and humiliation. This of course is very important because if you don’t “pass” a year you repeat until you do! Marks and hard work are everything, not much laughter nor personal discussions…eg ‘News’, it is straight into it. No mucking around!
I have also seen the odd clip around the ear, book on the head, many “shut ups” and even an ear twist and pull along the class! Teachers tend to be gruff and have clipped answers ‘Non’ more often than not.
As I write this Nev is suggesting that he likes this system more and more!
Naturally the day finished with the diabolical English club…… they are so not used to our teaching methods, I just had the children all sit on chairs in a circle, not at desks – a teacher came in and was stopping the children from shifting the furniture and looked at me strangely when I said it was ok and that was what I wanted!
Tomorrow we are off to our medicals (heard nothing back from the email) we have to be there at 0730!
Oh…..BIG news…..I got “the letter’ I can go to the bank tomorrow and get the account working! Wahoo!!!!!
Also as I was in class this morning it snowed! Still not enough to hang around but it is cold…. Not sure what shoes you wear when in snow for a while – I can imagine ours all getting ruined and water marked…if anyone knows what you wear please let me know as I have a feeling we will need them as I guess they don’t snowplough the footpaths and we will need to get to supermarket us stops etc…
The bins of grit are all strategically placed around the town and we also saw a 4 wheel motorbike with a snowplough on front today!
Perhaps we will also need a snow shovel to get outside…. Brrrr..
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Yes, I think there's a lot to be said for text books - at the risk of sounding terribly old-fashioned. What we do in NZ is reinvent the wheel constantly, and with varying standards too. I think that people think that text books means rote learning. No - but they are really good to have as the baseline for your interactive and inquiry learning! It's interesting now that I'm studying again myself. I enjoy the teacher 'telling' us stuff. And I enjoy tests and finding out my marks! Gosh, I might get the sack.
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