Class - Day 13 ( Week III)

Today may have been the dreariest day since I arrived. It was raining and overcast and blah all day long. Especially in the morning on the walk to school the whole city looked like it had been covered in a thin layer of blue paint. It was fortunately not cold at all just dreary.

We spent the morning learning about student autonomy and how we can help our students with learning on their own in and out of class. We got a detailed lesson about learner strategy which is basically the different styles of learning that can define your students. I think I'm more a social learner, big surprise there and a little bit of the cognitive learner who likes to take classes for fun and learn for the enjoyment of it. But I am absolutely a social learner more than anything.

This afternoon I had my teacher practice 5. It went a little better than yesterdays and this time I managed to include all the necessary items which I suppose IS something even if, in the end, I felt my board work really lacked in pizzazz and my handwriting was not up to snuff. Also, I had chosen a ridiculously long sentence as an example of past perfect (When Pablo Picasso was born his parents had little hope that he would survive until the doctor had blow cigar smoke into his nose and he began to breathe.) If you can’t tell already, my topic was ARTISTS and the reading excerpt I used was about Pablo Picasso’s life. Although the sentences provided in the reading were complex there was at least one other alternative to the past perfect sentence I chose and if I had not been trying to impress the teacher I would have chosen better. My pride got the best of me and my grammar lesson suffered. Oh, well, live and learn.

Now at the end of all our lessons our teachers gives us feedback and although today Reece, a teacher we never had before, picked up on my board work issues he said my over all lesson was fantabulous (his exact word) so I know I should not feel too bad, but somehow I’m still not exactly dancing for joy.

What worked really well were my creative exercises. I placed on the board five pictures of famous paintings (da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, Picasso’s The Family Saltimbanque, George Surat’s Sunday in the Park with George and van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters) and asked the students to connect somewhat ambiguous past simple and past perfect sentences to the painting that it would corresponded best with. Example for past simple: She had smiled while he painted her picture. So of course that would be the Mona Lisa. They all got involved in the discussion and had a lot of fun. There was only confusion about the past perfect mashed potato sentence I came with because some students thought it was the Milkmaid picture because she was cooking and others knew the answer was The Potato Eaters simply because of the potato referece. Both could have been correct but I was looking for the latter. I think bright visuals always make the difference in an exercise and what better visuals than some of the worlds great art work.

And then for my final exercise I had them visualize a work of art that they would have created and write a description of it and then I told them they now have to sell it. They went around the room describing their work to their fellow students and tried to get them to agree to buy it. They really enjoyed this one and Su Ellen from Brazil came up with a great idea, which I incorporated on the spot. She suggested that as a student is describing their art work the other student (potential buyer) must draw what is being described. It went really well and her and her partner Jose, from Peru did two phenomenal drawings in a matter of a minute or so. I love when I can learn something from them but also make them feel good that their suggestion was now part of the class.


After our teacher practice was complete I met with my alternative methods group (me, Ruth and Niamh) to do our final preparation on our methods lesson that we are presenting tomorrow morning. I’ll have more details about that once we’ve completed it but why I mention it now is because as we worked in our classroom with the other groups we noticed people floating down the river which is outside our building. It was alarming at first since it’s a bit cold to be playing in the water and also the river runs quickly and it surly must be dangerous to be paddling about in it. Anyway, it turns out the Galway fire department was conducting emergency rescue practice. So there were lots of people pretending to be stuck in the river and being swept away by the current while two firemen, down river, tried to catch them. All I could think of was brrrrrrrrrrr! Well that and I hope they get rescued because none of us are too keen on jumping in to save them.
In the pictures I’ve included you’ll see the one red helmeted person floating down river and the two firemen in the distance near the bridge.

And a fun side note, before I head off to bed, I got a great email from my friend Elke who works at the German House near the UN. She is of course from Germany and she certainly can make me laugh especially today when I got the following emailed message from her after she had begun reading my blog.

’Omg, you actually write as much as you talk, LOL! I had to print this out so that I could read it at lunch time and in the bus on my way home, and it was like having you sit next to me and tell me about all your adventures in person. Love it! Btw, that German term you referred to on day 4 is dinglish, with a d (a mix of the words Deutsch and English). I hate that, too, but it seems to be pretty common nowadays. We just take a word from the English language and add a German touch to it, which leads to horrible expressions like "downgeloaded" (I downloaded something; the "ge" in the middle is the German touch). ‘

Tell me that isn’t just so adorable and Elke I really loved getting the message so thank you for making me smile. And thank you to all who are reading my ramblings. It’s fun to do and I know I’ll look back in a few years and laugh at all my craziness.

Sweet dreams.