Teaching practice time!

   Finally,we could go to a very nice school for teaching practice,it was a bit late but doesnt matter actually i can totaly understand,it is diffucult to arrange teaching practice for all students.In teaching practice, we could have a chance to observe three different classes,one of them is fourth, and the others are fifth and seveth grade although we could attend the class only two days.We have some difficulties about our video project,so we tried to find a solution,and  talked to three different teachers and some students about democracy and citizenship.It was better to ask questions may be,so that we could learn some information about Danish schools.

The most interesting thing  for us i think are the posters we saw on the walls in the classroom when we first came in. They were all popular singers,actors,actresses. It is impossible to see these kinds of things in our classrooms actually, but it was so nice, the class environment is like home.Especially for very young learners like fouth grade, it is very important to walk around,go outside or come in when they want, they are all know what to do, i mean they have responsibility to do their works.It was so impressive.Another thing that surprises me was fifth grade students' successes in English course.I know Danish people learn english from very young age,and they learn it by practicing not only in theory,but these students were really good at translating English into Danish in the classroom.I dont think translation all the time is a good method to teach a language but it is interesting and impressive that they can do it when i compared our schools.In fifth grade i couldnt think myself while translating what my teacher said in English into Turkish,but in Danish schools teachers make the students to speak in English,practice it all the time thats why they are very good at speaking in English, and also students have a chance to tell about their opinions, feelings about the lesson,method or other things,sure it a part of democracy. I dont think that they feel stressed or under pressure even when they are wrong,so the students are very lucky to attend a class in these schools, also i'm lucky to have a chance to observe their system. :) I liked the school and the students, the teachers helped us a lot, everything was okay and good experience for us.

i would like to buy a hamburger (:

    When i saw this video, i just remembered one of my memories.About four months ago,i saw two girls trying to explain themselves in the post office,but the man working in here couldn't understand because he didn't know English.Then i wanted to help them and asked about the problem.Girls told me they are from Austria and came our country as an exchange student and they were waiting a card from their own country and they wanted to learn if it arrived or not.It sounds so easy but we spent so much time to understand each other. They told me that they are not so good at speaking English and their pronounciation weren't good so i had really hard time to understand exactly what they were trying to say to me.They know the words and use them in a sentence but you always understand different things because of pronounciation mistakes.I think especially in English it is important to pronounce the words correctly because some words sound so similar or may be the same.Fortunately,in Denmark again,we dont have any difficulties about it because people speak English both fluently and correctly.Sometimes, when we talk an old person,there may be a misunderstanding but it is totally normal, one way or another they always catch what we mean. We are lucky again to be in here. :)

Just for FuN!

I found this video while i was looking for an example for the silent way method in our English class,and i think it is really fun,in silent way you know the teacher doesn't speak so much,but in this video both the teacher and the students are silent. :) I liked it!!!

First impressions about the lessons

The fisrt class we had in Denmark was 21st century Education and global citizenship.Unfortunately,we missed much part of it because of some problems about our visas,but anyway we could participate a little and i can say i saw some different perspectives.The truth is i didn't know much about how democracy and citizenship take place in Danish schools, and also i didn't know so much about global citizenship and these kind of things so the lesson was interesting for me.

In Denmark,schools look like apply democracy in their classes but may me they don't have theoretic information about what the democracy and global citizenship mean.In our country,i don't think we apply the democracy or teach it in our classes, but i dont think we have enough theoretic information as well. Actually we all have some problems about the democracy and the citizenship all around the world so some kind of solutions should be generated,so may be some people from different cultures and countries can come together and work on it.And another thing that surprises me about Danish schools is the relationship between families and the schools.I think it is all about democracy too.The teachers,students and their families come together and talk about the students' development, how the things are going on in the class.That is really very good application,in Turkey we have  some kind of parent-teacher meeting too,but it is so rare,may be one or two times in a semester, and the students don't involve in,and what the teachers do is to talk general issues actually, they don't talk to parents for each student in this meeting,parents can ask about their children's development individually.This application doesn't have  any useful aim,it is just like an obligation,so there has to be some changes about it.Because education doesn't take place only at schools,students start learn something from their parents actually in the first place,they have some different backgrounds,so the students need to be thought and evaluated as an individual person.There are certainly different perspectives in education, so i guess Danish schools look much more learner-centered,and this is what we need to do.After this interesting and entertaining experience about democracy and citizenship,now we are dealing with English and teaching and learning classes.In English class,Danish students and we are working together,and it is very enjoyable.We are just trying to learn some words from each others,and also about our cultures, and the theories that we study aren't new for us actually,we have already done most of them in our country too.So it is good to know that we study some same books and theories.But again there are some differences about how the teachers teach.In here,we don't only look at theories, our teacher is also applying them to show us how they work,again more learner-centred when we compare it with our country.Also in our country of course we make some presentations,practices about these theories too but may be limited a bit,and sometimes you can feel nervous when you present or teach something in the classroom.And our other lesson that i want to mention is teaching and learning.We have had some informations also about them,but the things can be different in here.For instance,we discussed about planning and pupil plans sound very different to most of us,because we don't have this kind of plan in our country for each pupil.Honestly,i really want to be a good teacher and develop myself all the time,but preparing plan is may be the most difficult part of being a teacher and i saw it in the class as well.:) To prepare pupil plan,at the pre-planning stage it is mentioned about discussion with pupils.It must be very difficult for the teacher to know about students' knowledge about something,then what they want to learn and how they want to learn it.And the teacher should combine them with the curriculum as well.It is tuff,but we will be a teacher and teach so many new things to our students who can say that it would be easy.We just should try to figure out how we can manage and apply it succesfully in our classes.As time goes by, i think i have some other thoughts about the classes,so i just will wait and see what we are going to do!