08/05/2019
Hello everyone!
Wednesday schedule was about being an early bird. At 7.30h we had to be at the school for our class observation! So we woke up early, we drank some coffee to help us to stay awake and we were ready for the lesson to start.
Before the lesson, we met Michaela Döse, the teacher who we had the chance to observe, and she showed us some parts of the school: the main classroom were theatre plays and choir concerts take place, some science classrooms, which have speacial tables so that students can make experiments there, and the teachers' room, where they could relax in break times and have some coffee. In this room they also had a TV screen, where they could see every substitution or any important information regarding schedules and school organisation. This was really interesting as I had never seen it before. It was a very good and practical idea in my opinion.
After this short introduction, we had the chance to observe one of her Spanish lessons. The lesson was very interesting and we could learn a lot from it, as we focused on different aspects. During the observations, some of us paid more attention to body language and interaction, among other non-linguistic aspects, as they didn't speak neither German nor Spanish, so that the students who speak these languages could focus more on linguistic observation, such as code switching, instructions, feedback, content of the blackboard, language the teachers uses, etc.
The lesson was mainly in Spanish and it was really interesting how she used German, and in punctual cases English, to help students understand new vocabulary and grammar explanations. In the class, they worked with a text about Argentina and what do argentinians think of their country. there were different people talking about their country and their opinion on what is for them Argentina.
Students had to prepare the vocabulary for homework and in the class they focused on listening to the first text all together and filling in a table with the information from the text. First, they did one all together as an example and the teacher asked orally to different students for the answers. Then, they had to work in small groups and each group had a text to read and complete the table with the appropriate information. They had 10 minutes to do so and, afterwards, they corrected in open-class. The teacher was writing on the blackboard all the answers and trying to make of all them participate.
The last 10 minutes she introduced us to the students and she explained that one of us was from Argentina so they could have the chance to ask her any question they had either about the country or the text they just read. Yessica, the argentinian colleague, explained her opinion on what is Argentina for her and if she agreed with the people that appeared on the text and Karen and I, who are from Spain, also explained some differences between Argentina and Spain and answered some questions that students had for us.
After the lesson, we could have a coffee with Michaela and we had a talk to get to know her better and exchange different opinions and share experiences in teaching in different countries. It was awesome to have the opportunity to get to know a little bit better how are things in Germany and in Spain in comparison to Kuwait and Sweeden, for example, as we had two more colleagues from these countries.
When we went back to University, we had an introduction to the German school system and we discussed different aspects about it, as we had no idea about it and it was shocking to know how does it work. I personally think that there are a lot of things that should be improved from their system because it lables students from the very beginning and it doesn't allow students to have all the opportunities they should have, among other aspects. However, it was interesting to see how different is education in some countries, such as Germany, China, Kuwait, Sweeden, Argentina and Spain, as they all have pros (and similarities) but also cons (and differences).
Afterwards, we had a 10 minute talk about the seminar that we are going to attend tomorrow at University: Fachdidaktikseminar. Isabel Murillo, our ProPIC coordinator here in Kiel and teacher at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel will host us in one of her seminars and we will have the chance to get to observe her lessons and work with her students as well. I am looking forward to doing this activity as I think that is going to be a wonderful experience!
After lunch, we had some time to work on our e-portfolios. Finally, we had the presentations of our selfproduced videos, we had some discussion and we gave some feedback to each other using Mentimeter app so it was very productive and intreresting to see what the rest of our colleagues thought about our work.
I hope you enjoyed it!