Goodbye

Hi everyone!

We have to share a sad news. This is going to be our last post on the blog 😕

This semester has been a great experience, totally different from what we are used to, both by the work and the methodology of classes as groups.

At first, I think that all of us were afraid because working with students from different countries was a challenge for us. But, the final result has been better than we expected.

From the beginning, we have been able to organize ourselves, with the categories, sharing our experiences, the class activities and debates, the final work as an educational project and the ideal school. We have conjured up quite well and that has helped us to obtain works that we can feel proud of.

We are delighted to be able to share with you all our evolution during this semester, we hope you have enjoyed and reflected with us on all the issues we have been sharing about education and other topics.

Here we share the last project about the ideal school, in which we show the main characteristics of our school in a creative and different way. We tried to reflect our main ideas related to the categories that we analyzed previously. Hope you liked it!😊😉

Thank you all for accompanying us on this stage or our career and training as future teachers!💓👋

School by projects

Have you ever heard before about the methodology named as "school by projects" or "Educación por proyectos"?😮

It's a methodology that took place many years ago, but it has not been until 2016 when it has resurfaced and become fashionable, after all the educational reforms. But, what does it consist of?

The main difference according to the traditional methodology is that all the curricular contents of each subject are related to each other. For instance, at the beginning of the course or each semester, involving all the classes, teachers will teach in accordance with one topic, which is chosen by the teachers and the management team.

In relation, we find some schools in Spain (Málaga or the one to which belongs the professor of Barcelona who gave us a lecture) that works with this methodology, and it seems that their results are not bad for what is expected of a school that follows another methodology than the one we are accustomed to.

By this reason, we should organize the subjects in a way in which all of them are connected to each other, but we first need to work in a cooperative perspective, so that every teacher collaborates to get the best results by this new technic.

As the teacher from Barcelona said, we have to travel on the map of knowledge, by asking the students questions that make them reflect on them, knowing the main interests of each student through their exhibitions or starting conversations or debates related to some recent news. And always, trying to associate these activities with the units.

Accepting diversity

On one of the lessons, we were shown a video of bullying. There were some things that weren’t right, though.  On this video, all of the people were gay (or if straight, afraid to show it). Another thing was that at the school, boys were learning theater, girls playing football. 

The video started with the girl explaining that she realized she was different already when she was really young. The difference was that she liked boys instead of girls. One day, when playing with her friends and suggesting they would play home, with her and her friend (which was a boy) playing the parents, all of her playmates called her strange and left her playing alone. After this, she was being bullied at school, people yelling at her that she liked boys etc. When she was caught kissing a boy she liked, the girls from her school started chasing her, calling her names, gathering people to help them chase her and when she was finally caught, all the students started to physically assault her. After all this she returned home, where were her parents, asking what happened and who did this to her. Unable to answer, she was sent upstairs to clean her face. She received no support from her parents; they only suggested her moving schools.

In the next scene, she was trying to get rid of the writing on her forehead, which said “hetero”. She tried and tried to erase it, but it only got smudgy. The girl was crying. She prepared a bath, took a razor in her hand and started cutting her wrist. Little by little, the blood was dropping in the bathwater.

We don’t know if she died. The video ends with the girl’s parents trying to get into the bathroom shouting her name, with another scene flashing, where the amount of blood is growing and growing in the bathtub. After this, there was a question, which was also the title of the short movie: “Is love all we need?”

This short movie made us think about all the differences we are facing in the modern world. The fact is that we are all different, no matter the race, sexuality, looks etc. No matter how we look on it: although we are all the same, we are all different. All unique. And that is something we should appreciate. This is also something we should transmit and teach to our students. Our values reflect in our teaching, and this is what the students will learn as well. We should acknowledge which values we have.

Love might not be ALL we need, but it’s something essential. We need someone to tell us you are accepted just the way you are, and you have the right to be different from the others. If even one person is ready to fight against the common flow, it might make a difference. It might get people thinking. This leads us to the final question: What kind of values are you teaching the children - the future - and what kind of consequences might there be?

Seventh Category: Free Time

We have all surely had different and similar kinds of experiences when it comes to free time at school. The most common thing everybody was doing during the break times between the lessons was discussing things and playing games with friends. We all are familiar with playground games such as hopscotch, twist, swinging, jumping the rope, playing on the jumping gym, trading stickers etc. Then there are things that not all of us are familiar with, such as playing with marbles and pokemon cards or doing simple handycrafts (friendship bracelets etc). What was also different was the length of the break sessions. They varied from 5 to 30 minutes between our group members and between school levels.

When going to secondary school, there were no more playing games during the breaks. We were doing different things, such as going to the shop to buy something or going to see our other friends to a different, nearby school. Cell phones weren’t allowed for some of our group members – in this case, the students would use them during the breaks discreetly.

We consider free time being a vital part of school life since it gives us the opportunity to talk with peers and share our experiences at school, discussing what has happened during the day – what we had learned, what emotions we have experienced if we felt something had been unfair or particularly fun etc. As Pellegrini (1995) says, recess is a time when children have the chance to interact with minimal adult intervention, and it is a good opportunity for the teacher to observe spontaneous peer activities. This leads to the conclusion that recess is important for children’s social interaction. Children need to “blow off steam” during the school day. According to surplus energy theory, children accumulate surplus energy by sitting still for a long while, and they need to use physical activity to use up this energy. The physical activity is important for them to be able to concentrate on the school work again. (Pellegrini, 1995.)

Resources:

- Pellegrini, A. D. (Ed.) 1995. School Recess and Playground Behavior. Educational and Developmental Roles. State University of New York Press: New York

Summerhill School

What can we learn about the lesson “Summerhill School”?

The idea of the school “Summerhill School” is different and new. New and different ideas make us feel a little bit afraid and shake our own ideas of something.

It is important to criticize, also new ideas, but we can try to imagine just the idea behind the school. I think the basic idea of the school is that they try to have another view of how to learn things. They are starting from the interests of each student and not from the curriculum.

What I try to learn from these approaches is, to think about how children can learn subjects. Of course, it is not possible – imagine you as a teacher of 30 children – to let each student start to learn what he or she wants to learn. But we can try to think about our behavior as a teacher, about our ideas of how we will bring students to get interesting at a subject, about how we are teaching.

For example, we can try to start with interests of the students, like the history of the “Middle Ages”. With this subject, we can also include music or language – like “What were their idiomatic expressions?”.  

We can try to open us and the school system for such an idea of including subjects into the interests of the students and not teaching every subject just on its own.

Finally, it is about how we are learning, how the students going to learn and how we, as teachers, can try to catch the interests of the students and how we can fill them with enthusiasm for different subjects. 

Sixth category: Celebrations

During our primary education, we used to celebrate all kind of important events, such as: the books day, the Andalusian day, etc. But, we did not know the real meaning of doing that event. That’s why we should celebrate some events by explaining before the historical point of view. By this reason, every child will know the real significance of each event.

Celebrations were activities where almost everybody enjoyed and had good moments. The Peace’s day was important because we went to the courtyard with white clothes and doves of peace made by paper and colored by us. We sang some songs in order to demand the peace in the world. We also celebrated Carnivals but not all of us because in the religious schools this celebration was more limited. The Andalusia’s day was special because we usually ate the traditional breakfast “mollete” with oil and drew flags and sang the anthem. However, we can also talk about particular celebrations as our birthdays. Especially in the first years, we were looking forward to that day. We brought some sweets to our classmates and they sang to us the “Happy birthday” song. 

As we said, people still do not know the true meaning of these days that are celebrated, teachers should explain before the day comes, the historical facts and meanings so that everybody get some cultural notions.

One of the objectives is to foment the education in values and the mediation. There are a lot of reasons to include the celebrations in the school. We want to emphasize some of them, children can learn if they know celebrations, however also it is so important to practice it for the relevant learning; These activities have a powerful attraction that increases the motivation in the student (Agúndez, 2014).

In the LOE there are some celebrations that schools have to carry out, for instance, the day of the peace, the book’s day, the day of the Constitution or the day of the autonomous community (Agúndez, 2014)

We emphasize that teacher has to take the advantage of the celebrations of the “world days” to impart certain transversal themes. No center should forget about this kind of celebrations because they can have a great influence in pupils and also will involve them in the current aspects of our society. (Bisquerra, 2012)

Resources:

- Agúndez, D. (2014). Las celebraciones pedagógicas. Revista Supervisión, 21(31).

http://www.usie.es/SUPERVISION21/2014_31/02_articulos/02_05_art_dag.pdf

- Bisquerra, R. (2012). Orientación, tutoría y educación emocional. Los días mundiales (pp. 139-141). Madrid: Editorial Sintesis. 

Fifth category: Students' feelings

Feelings are clearly part of a school day since they are a part of our daily lives. We think that we all have experienced every feeling there is to feel during our school day: disappointment, joy, sadness, angriness, anxiety.. to name a few. This all depends on what kind of experiences we have at the time, and they leave a mark on us. In our good memories are included for example playground games with friends during a recession, group work in class or talking in free time.

Then there are memories which are not so good, such as being bullied or being left out from some games. Each of us experienced something like this in class, such as being laughed at for asking a question from the teacher or having to go to the headmaster’s office for not understanding a task in maths.

This, for example, can leave a mark on oneself. Months and years later you might still be afraid to ask questions because you don’t want to be laughed at. As Mendler (2001) says, a teacher should be able to create an environment without threats, answering questions without the fear of embarrassment. This will help students be more engaged and motivated (Mendler, 2001). This is what we, as becoming teachers, want to aim at.

One of our group members was reminded of an incident, where some students put another student (a small one) to a bin. First, this student also laughed at the situation, but he couldn’t come out from the bin on his own. When the teacher came to class, he helped him out from there. This incident wasn’t really discussed in class. We think it’s necessary to talk with the students about these kinds of issues: children need to know that school is not just about learning bits of information but also learning about important values and good behavior.

When thinking of the changes in students' lives, the transition from primary to secondary school includes the increase of bullying behaviour:

“In a nationwide survey of 6th through 10th graders, 24.2% reported being bullied once or twice, 8.5% reported being bullied sometimes, and 8.4% reported being bullied at least on a weekly basis (Nansel et al. 2001).” In comparison with our experiences, most of us can agree with it.


If we seek of something good in our bad experiences, we certainly always learn from them. We learn no to make the same mistake again if that's what caused our bad experience, and we think that bad experiences may also lead to better teaching by creatin a deeper sense of empathy, of going through same feelings as a student might be going through. As Dewey (1938) noted: "What [a person] has learned in the way of knowledge and skill in one situation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively with the situations that follow. The process goes on as long as life and learning continue". (Quoted by Craig, 2013, in Emotion and School: Understanding How the Hidden Curriculum Influences Relationships, Leadership, Teaching, and Learning by Riley, P., Gallant, A., & Newberry, M. (Ed.))


Resources:

- Birkett, Michelle, Dorothy L. Espelage, and Brian Koenig. "LGB and questioning students in schools: The moderating effects of homophobic bullying and school climate on negative outcomes." Journal of youth and adolescence 38.7 (2009): 989-1000.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-008-9389-1

- Mendler, A. N. (2001). Connecting with Students. Alexandria, VA: Assoc. for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

- Riley, P., Gallant, A., & Newberry, M. (2013). Emotion and School: Understanding How the Hidden Curriculum Influences Relationships, Leadership, Teaching, and Learning. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Fourth category: Methodology

Regarding several aspects, we can find lots of items that related to the methodological process.
After we enrolled at school the normal workday began for us. Normally we sat in class in a U-form, in lines, in groups, in pairs or alone, while the teacher was standing in front of us.
In primary school the teacher came to our class, so we did not have to move for each subject to another room.

Usually, the teacher introduced us in a new topic with a short movie or a story. After it, we got papers with the task we had to work individually or in groups. I remember that we learned the letters of the alphabet by writing down each letter again and again on a paper in different sizes. If it did not look well, we had to do it again.

When there was coming Easter, the Mother's day or Christmas we had more creative lessons where we did handicrafts in art or we went outside to pick up natural things to add them to our project (for example leaves), so we did different activities from what we were used to, but as we have said, at specific events or moments. Why not do it as a routine? Why not be able to enjoy nature at every moment? 

According to the punishment, there have been different ways. Some teachers let us write down about five hundred times a sentence, for instance: “I can not talk while the teacher is explaining.” Others screamed to us or let us go out of the class. Most times they gave us more homework, extra work, we had to stay an hour longer at school or they eliminated our break time, something that some authors describe as “psychological violence” that represents the 60.3% of the punishments (Durán & Ceja, 2015).

Focusing on the evaluation methods, we used to have one exam at the end of every unit and a final one at the end of the three terms. Also, we were evaluated during the classes, according to our behavior, the participation during the class and the class marks. At the end of every term, they gave us our marks of every subject, and in the final term, we got the average score of the three terms. However, it is a truth that most of the teachers paid more attention to the quantitative than the qualitative mark. In addition, sometimes they do not pay attention in the process of learning of the student, simply they take the quantitative mark.

The certificate at the end of the first and second year contained detailed descriptions. However, the third and fourth years certificate contained notes in each subject.

The next question is: How did we learn? Of course, depending on the teacher, the school and the group, but we can say that more than once we have been taught in a traditional way. The teacher explained the lesson and the students had to do the homework, sometimes in class but most of the times at home. The consequence was that we felt tired and bored doing every day the same. Why do not change the methodology? Some teachers feel fear to change it, especially old teachers that suffer “technophobia” that is fear to use the new technologies. But we have to accept that the educative technologies have to adapt to the new technologies in order to facilitate citizens' access to education (Torres, 2010). However, not only the new technologies are involved in this issue because we have to change the organization, the dynamics and make the classes more enjoyable for the students because the learning process should be an open process where each teacher apply the knowledge in different ways. 

Resources:

- Durán, M., Ceja, O. (2015).  La violencia del docente en las escuelas primarias del ciudad de puebla. Chinuamua. Retrieved from:
http://www.comie.org.mx/congreso/memoriaelectronica/v13/doc/2058.pdf

- Torres, S. (2010). La enseñanza tradicional de las ciencias versus las nuevas tendencias educativas. Educare, 14, 131-142. Retrieved from:
http://revistas.una.ac.cr/index.php/EDUCARE/article/view/1515/1435

Third category: Relationships

Primary school is the first time when the child gets to interact with a large number of peers, and the social contacts created at that time determines who we become. Studies have shown that social problems in relationships have an impact on student’s well-being and success in school. One of the major things that affect in children’s well-being at school is peer relationships. (Cowie, 2009.) Because the group in school is quite a sustainable one, especially the experiences experienced at this time have an impact on a child’s later development. Sometimes a positive atmosphere isn’t a given, so the teacher has to encourage children towards positive experiences in the peer group. (Salmivalli, 2006.)

Undoubtedly, teachers make a great impact in our lives – we spend many hours of our day at school, and the teacher is the adult who we have the contact with and who takes care of us. While remembering our schooling memories when it comes to teachers, we all felt lucky that we have had teachers who have been caring for our needs and who have listened to us. In primary school, we could tell our worries to our teachers and he/she would help to solve them. This wasn’t the case in secondary school anymore, though. Some of us didn’t have a specific class monitor, with whom we would spend the most time – the teacher would always change within subjects. 

When talking about the relationship between the students, we could say that most of us were in good relations with our classmates. Of course, there are always persons who we don’t like that much or get along very well, but it seems like in primary school basically, everybody was friends with everybody. One of our group members, though, was bullied during her journey to school – other students would pull her hair or laugh at her. What comes to the relationship between us and the other classes, most of us felt like we were “enemies” with the other classes – we would always compete with them – for example in football. 

Resources:

- Cowie, H. (2009). Peer Support Challenges School Bullying. In Carmel, C. & Cooper, P. (ed.) Promoting Emotional Education. Engaging Children and Young People with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. Support for Learning. Vol. 25 Issue 3. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, pp. 153-154

- Salmivalli, C. (2006). Vertaissuhteet ja lapsen sosioemotionaalinen kehitys. Julkaisussa Rajala, R. (toim.) Lapsen parhaaksi – tukea ja laatua aamu- ja iltapäivätoimintaan. Opetushallitus, pp. 40-42

Second category: Changes

There can be a lot of changes in a student's life because they have to deal with decisions. Starting by the choice where and at what kind of school you want to go, going on with choices about who will be your friend and which courses you will join (language- or science direction). 

The transition from primary school to secondary school is also an important experience in a student's life. Young people are moving from a small classroom to a large and more heterogeneous school (Hanewald 2013, p.64).  

Sometimes these changes can be stressful or also helpful. Data analysis revealed some aspects for a successful transition (Evangelou 2008, p.2). On the one hand, there are the relationships between the students. If students get help at the new school and find new friends, they get the chance to improve their self-esteem and they get used to their new routines inside and outside of school (Evangelou 2008, p.2).

Another aspect is their dealings with the organization at school: Are they interested in school work and get used to the school organization? 
Bad experiences like bullying at secondary school or problems with new teachers can make it more difficult to have a trouble-free transition (Evangelou 2008, p.2). 

Going more into the choices of which way you want to go, for example, a scientific way or a linguistic way. Most of us had the choice of these ways in the middle of secondary school. 

Once decided to go this kind of a way we had to join the courses for this subject and it was not possible to change our mind some weeks later. 

We had the impression that we got not enough information to make a decision like this. It would have been used to try out some courses in the different subjects to get an impression.

If the students are interested and improve in a subject, it can help them in their following studies and their decision of choosing a job. In another case, it can be also the opposite. If a student is interested in the subject but had a teacher that, for example, did not create the lesson interesting, then the student will not like it and maybe will not like the subject for the next years of his/her life. We think that the decisions and the changes who are coming with them, leave marks in each student's life. 

In our opinion the school system is trying to get the students as far as it is possible into a “way”, to have them faster in the world of work. But it is more important to try yourself out and to see whether you like this or that way more to know where to go in your life. 

 Resources: 
- Evangelou, Maria. (2008). What makes a successful transition from primary to secondary school?
- Hanewald, Ria. (2013). Transition between primary and secondary school: Why it is important and how it can be supported.

Rest my case - a reflection about education

We want to show you the following video. It is a wonderful reflection about education where the methodology is judged. It supports that every child should be treated and learned in a different way according to his abilities and capacities because each one of them is different. It is impossible to teach the same thing in the same way to children with different dreams, needs... The creativity and the individuality must be promoted. 

We have to change the methodology, the subjects should have the same time (for example, 3 hours of maths and other 3 of art), the homework must disappear and the distribution of the classroom have to be modified. 

As a consequence, we can see the evidence that the school has not changed in 150 years, the classrooms are similar! Although it seems incredible, it's true. So the author question if in this situation students are trained for the future. 

"The teachers are heroes because they can reach the heart of a child" as it is said in the video. But they are hard punished and criticised. Please, watch the video and reflect on it! 

Lecture about children with disabilities

Last Wednesday, we had an interesting lecture about how to work with children with disabilities. It was focused on the diversity and integration in the classrooms. We learned a lot of things about different disabilities like dyslexia, Down syndrome, high capacities, hypoacusis... 

Firstly, the lecturer divided the class into groups formed by six students according to the Philip 66 theory (six people can look for information in six minutes). So each group searched information about one of them. 

Then, we explained to the rest of the class the disability that we choose in order to know about all of them. It was a good method to learn because we didn't feel bored due to the participative and dynamic atmosphere. We also learned how to work with these children and the lecturer gave us some "rules". For example, it is advisable that we sit down these children in the first line or that we explain the tasks with more details. 

As future teachers, we have to think that a child with a disability is not a problem, it is a new opportunity to face to face new challenges that other people believe that have no solution. But, everything is possible! Try it!

Although the lecture was about cognitive disabilities, we also want to show you a video which refers to physical disabilities because they can appear with the same probability in our classes. Remember to say: Yes, I can! 

Toothpick lesson

On the lesson on 20.3. the teacher started talking about toothpicks. At that point we were quite confused since we were supposed to be learning about didactics; how was that supposed to help us learn about didactics? The teacher started to tell us how a magnificent invention a toothpick is. After that it started to get clear what we were supposed to do: first, we were told to form groups of 5-6 persons and our task was to build figures out of toothpicks that we had to get from the teacher’s table. We were told that we had 10 minutes to finish the task. Six persons were chosen to be observant of collaboration, creativity, and quality of our works.

One of our group members happened to have a smooth surface we could stick the toothpicks into, so we had a different kind of a surface than the others, and the implementation was also different. Our group started with an idea of a house, which transformed into a school, with two students playing in the yard. On top of the school, we formed the letters A, B, and C and also formed a sun shining.
It turned out quite a few groups had the idea of the house. We think that it’s because that’s the first form that comes to our minds when told to form a figure; it’s quite easy to make as well. All of the final products were also different, obviously, and we thought they were really great.

We also had a final discussion on the task, where we learned the didactic part of the lesson. We were discussing on how we need to count the time and really plan the lesson carefully to be able to hold a good lesson for the students. We were also discussing if the task or the final results would have changed if we had a different kind of an introduction and/or instructions. For example, when the teacher was excited about the invention of the toothpick, it somehow made us excited about the task also. What comes to instructions in this task, we were only told to build figures out of toothpicks, and all of our questions were answered the same way: “Build figures.” It gave us free hands to use extra materials also, which all of us except for one group used. We think that this was a way to build our creativity also. Usually, at school, we are used to having really precise instructions on how a work should be done (this goes at least in Finland and Germany). 

We think that children’s growth of creativity could be helped by giving out more tasks like this. When children are little, they need more examples of how a work can be done, but when they get older, this model should not be used anymore.

What do you think? Is there aby object that can help us to learn more than one subject? Do we all have the basic resources to learn?

First category: Type of school

According to the different categories that we established previously, we chose the “type of school”. Firstly, when talking about public and private schools, we want to point out that public-private partnerships can be shared into four categories: 1. publicly-funded resources that are publicly managed, 2. privately funded resources that are privately managed, 3. publicly funded resources that are privately managed, and 4. privately funded resources that are publicly managed. The first group basically means the most common form of public school, while the second group means the most common private schools. In Spain, a low percentage of schools are publicly funded and operated, whereas for example in Finland and Germany (where two of our group members come from), most of the schools are like this. (Wößmann, Public-Private Partnerships, and Student Achievement: A Cross-Country Analysis, in Peterson & Chakrabarti, 2009). Most of our group members went to a school which was publicly managed and funded. One of our group members went to a school which was privately managed but publicly funded, whereas one went to a school which was privately funded and managed. Due to this, we get to see some differences and similarities between the public and private sector. We are going to take a closer look at the aspects of the different schools, by explaining the differences between a private and a public school.

What comes to the differences between public and private schools, one significant difference is the obligation of wearing a uniform. In public schools, you have the option of wearing the school uniform or your own clothes. However, at the private schools, it’s an obligation to wear it. One of our group members who went to a private school remembers that if you didn’t wear the uniform, you were punished. What comes to Finland, there is no such thing as a school uniform.

Secondly, in the public school, there was an option to choose between religion or an alternative subject, in which the students were taught values and behaviors. The private school, though, and the one which was supported by the state, had religion as a compulsory subject in the elementary school. In the private school funded by public money, you had to pray more or less once a week and you had the First Communion. Again, in Finland, the issue is different. Religion was a mandatory part of the primary, secondary and high school. Only if you were a part of some other religion, you didn’t have to participate, but you would be learning something else instead. This leads us to a conclusion: private schools have autonomy in choosing optative subjects, adapting pedagogical methods and organizing extracurricular activities. 

An interesting aspect is that the socio-economic status “[...] has been found to have an association with less positive transitions for children.” (Evangelou 2008, p.2). One member of our group had a friend at secondary school who got more and more problems to continue with the new routines. Not just because of the school system that leaves us just twelve years to finish the school (before it was thirteen years), the greater problem was that the parents didn’t have much money. The student needed help but their parents could not pay for more private tuition. Their solution was that the student went to another school where he/she would finish his/her studies after the 10th class.

Finally, we can say, that the decision of the chosen school will leave its mark on the children. There are a lot of differences between private and public schools and also just between the public schools of each city. 

We came to the resolution that we have to take notice of the different aspects of the decision that the children and their parents are making. 

Looking in the future and seeing us as teachers, we could have private conversations with each student and their parents at the end of the primary school o to help them with their type of school decision.

Resources:

- Chakrabarti, R., & Peterson, P. E. (2009). School Choice International. (1st ed.) The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts: London, England

- Evangelou, Maria. (2008). What makes a successful transition from primary to secondary school?

- Gayarre, A. L. (2000). Enseñanza privada-enseñanza no pública: formas y estatutos en los Estados Miembros de Ia Unión Europea. Revista Española de Educación Comparada, (6), 415-417.

29th March – performance of our school experiences

One week ago the teacher gave us the task to create a performance of our school experiences. For this task, our group joined together with two other groups.

First, we did a brainstorming in a big circle. Fast we got the idea to present our school experiences in different scenes within the daily life of the primary school.

We got more and more ideas which scenes we could play in our performance. We thought about our good memories and also our bad ones we had at primary school. That is how we decided what we wanted to show and what we wanted to express with it.

Each group created one or two scenes, like the scene where Sofia had her birthday or where we showed the punishment in the physical education class. Furthermore, each group thought up a dialog for each scene.

After the normal class, we met and created a big school bus and made a cow and a pig for the different scenes. We paid attention to the details, like having a hat for the ending scene or a crown for the birthday student. Each of us got a role in the scenes and we learned our text.

On Tuesday we met again to practice our theater and to look if something was missing or not proceed as we imagined it.

For Wednesday we were well studied. Before and while the performance we had a lot of fun!

First, when I heard the task, that we have to do a performance of our school experiences, I though it is a not really necessary or it would just take too much time to practice.
But after all, I am glad to make this experience. 

While we were thinking of the big group about what we wanted to express our ideas and while we created altogether the materials for every scene, it brought us all closer together.

I am glad to be in this class because my classmates are very helpful, thoughtful and funny.

After this performance, I felt more included into the whole class. This feeling and experience you could only have while working together as a group. You work as a team, learn how to share exercises and have fun together.

Can a tree express feelings?

The second day of class, a normal day as other in the faculty, we sat in our places and waited for the teachers. But, how was it develop?

The first thing that they request us was to leave all that we were doing, we must stop for a moment, and we only have to take a piece of paper, a pen, and an overcoat, in case that we were cold. And everyone asked: Where we are going? Are we going out of class?, Do we have class? The first thing that they request us was to leave all that we were doing, we must stop and everyone asked: Where we are going? Are we going out of class?, Do we have class?

We went to the playground of the faculty, and we sit around of a big tree that was in the middle. They told us to represent what that tree transmits us, by drawing, writing, how we wanted. The main idea was to express what it made feel us. In addition, they allowed that we get close, feel, touch the tree…

Once the ten minutes finished, we returned to the class and we distributed the chairs in a circle form because it was a good way to see all classmates and allow us to discuss better together. We began by expressing ourselves and we also started to know the different perspectives that the same tree could provide to each person. Some points of views were similar, however, the majority were different. Due to this, the ideas, feelings, and opinions connected with the tree gave a subjective perspective, so different to what we see in this tree with “objective perspective”.

 And, regarding the question that we did at the beginning: “Do we have class?”. Yes, of course, we did an amazing and relaxing class, where we got mutually listen, knowing other ideas, learning to respect these ideas and to be more tolerant, developing new concepts, etc.

The father's day

The 19th of March is the father's day, and for this reason, practically in all school, teachers prepare something in order to children did and they can gift to their fathers, but really we have to ask what would be the better option to tackle this situation. We have to keep in mind that there are different families, so there are children without the father for different circumstances or with two fathers. Then teachers have to assure yourselves to prepare this activity in the better way.

We want to share one link where you can see different perspectives to carry out the father's day and also, two videos.

In these videos we can see what is the emotional importance that has the father of their children, also, we can extract some values and different point of view of the father's day.

Link: http://www.bekiapadres.com/articulos/celebrar-dia-padre-sin-papa

                                    

                                    

School Experiences - Presentation

One day, the teacher told us to write down about our school experience (teachers, personal reflections, feelings...) and then, we put all of them in common, by noting down all the similarities and differences in order to extract several themes and organize them into categories.

We did a huge list because our experiences were really different, due to two main facts: our type of school (public, private and publicly supported by the state) and the differences between our two Erasmus students, Lena and Heidi (from Germany and Finland) and the other Spanish experiences. There were some similarities too!

Therefore, after doing a selection of all the contents, we established seven categories (some of them with subcategories) and we represented them in a cardboard to present it to the rest of the class.

We draw the head of a girl with our age, who is thinking and remembering her school experience, that’s why from her brain leaves some bubbles with the categories. We also added a circle divided into four parts according to our four stages at school: preschool, primary, secondary and bachelorette. Each stage had a different colour and we assigned this colour to the element that was most relevant at this stage. For instance: if in preschool (purple), the celebration of the Carnival was more relevant and we put the colour purple next to it.

The first category was Type of school, as we have said, we found the three kinds of our experiences: public, private and publicly supported by the state. This category will influence the rest of them because each school won’t manage in the same way.

The next one is Free time, it is very important because along with all our school experience we spent a lot of free time. At least, we had thirty minutes each day. And, what did we do at this time? Several activities! Sport, playground games, walk, gossips…

The third category is the biggest one. It is the Methodology and it embarks many things that determine the way of transmitting the knowledge. The first subcategory is the punishment because all of us remember when a student had a bad behaviour and the teacher punished him. The next one is the evaluation that could be quantitative and qualitative. The third one is the different ways to teach and learn and here we can find lots of things: exams, learning by heart, traditional methods, teamwork, theoretical/practical activities, etc. The last one is the class management: the decoration was important in preschool, for example at Christmas time;  also the distribution of the tables in a U shape in order to work in a more communicative way, etc.

The next category is the Relationships and we distinguish between three types. Relationships between teachers and parents, which will affect the child; between teachers and students (there will be teachers that were important in our lives and others that we forget easily); and between students. In this one we can see the competitiveness, the “enemies” in other classes (for instance, the fights between the class A and the class B) and also many friends and friends from other countries.

The fifth category is the Celebrations, because in our region we have lots of them, such as Carnivals, Andalusia’s day, Peace’s Day, Holy Week…Our experiences were full of activities according to each event. For example, it is traditional that in the Andalusia’s day, all the schools eat the typical “mollete” with oil and did dances and performances.  We have also included in this category the trips we did to several places: museums, cinema, other cities, which were important to learn in a different way.

The next one is the Changes because they are important in our experiences. When we pass from Primary to Secondary, usually we have to leave our school and went to another building (High School) with an organization, classrooms, teachers, etc. completely different. Therefore, the student has to adapt himself to this new school and with this change, the child could suffer so it is important to control it. Another important change is the election between languages or sciences when we were at secondary education because it will determine the future studies.
As a consequence of this changes, we can find the last category, which is the Student’s feelings (stress, boring/funny moments, nervous…). All of them could influence the student’s school experience.

We hope you like this organization!

Welcome!

Hi, everyone! Welcome to our blog!🙋

We are a group of students from the University of Malaga, concretely at the Primary Education degree. We have created this blog to share with you all the activities and ideas, showing at every moment the passion that we feel for this profession.💗

 We hope you like everything we share. Do not worry, because there will be a variety of content! All of them focused or with a perspective on education. 📚

Soon you will know the name of the group. Firstly, we will give you some clues, it is related to Disney production and it is set there by the time of the Vikings...do you know who it is?😏      

Do not hesitate to leave your comments in the box below! We would like to know what our readers think, share with us your ideas or experiences! 😉

Why do we call us "Brave"?

The name chosen to call our group is Brave. It is the name of a film produced by Walts Disney and was performed in 2012. Now, you will wonder why we have chosen this denomination. We find two reasons.

 On the one hand, we have paid attention to the main character of this film. It is a Princess named Merida who breaks with a sacred tradition: marry a Prince who is chosen by her father carefully. This Princess wants to make her own life. This plot supposes a change of the woman´s role that the child films usually transmit. If we pay attention, these films appear plenty of stereotypes. Women have been characters dedicated to domestic chores, characters who are waiting that appear that handsome Prince who make them happy and the one that they must love, etc. In other words, women do not live for themselves, but for a man. However, in this film, we begin to see a woman who has war skills, who wants to fight in order to achieve her goals, who wants to be independent and makes her own decisions. With the name Brave bound to the film, we want to express our wish of reaching an equal society in which the woman´s role does not bound to the man. As future teachers, we would like to develop teaching methods which reinforce these values in each new generation, and, as a consequence, this story stops to be strange and will be seen natural and common by children.

 On the other hand, we have based on the suitable meaning of the word. We use this world to refer to that person who presents huge bravery in the life; independently of the situation he is facing: difficult, simple, serious… as regards this person that overtakes his fears to continue. From our point of view, doubtlessly, the teacher should be brave.The life is a stranger and unknown way where, first of all, we have to be valiant and confront issues from the different perspectives, in order to get our objectives. In fact, all the ones who start with the adventure of the difficult task of teaching, is really brave, considering that there are thousand of situations where they come face to face: conflicts between students, controversies with parents, obstacles imposed by the management of the school, etc. However anyone has to surrender because the constancy and effort will allow surpass obstacles and reach the proposed target, the objectives will search in students to be critical and self-sufficient. We have to be brave to renovate education and schools. 

(Brave, Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, 2012)