Week 8

Week 8: Professional

12/04/12

This week I started my two week placement in a local Primary School in Guangzhou.  Primary School in China is very different to Northern Ireland.  The classes are taught in periods in the same way as our Secondary School.  I have found this quite difficult to get used to as I love having my own class at home who you can get to know and build up a good relationship with.  Every day this week I have been in a new class so it has been very difficult to build any relationship with the classes.  I am teaching grade 1 and grade 2 classes.  This is equivalent to our primary 2 and 3.  There are 8 classes in each grade with 50 pupils in each class.  This has been a huge challenge controlling 50 pupils all at once.

My first lesson was with a grade 1 class and it was the worst lesson I have ever had in my whole teaching experience.  As soon as I entered the room the children were so excited and where screaming ‘laosi’ at me, which means ‘teacher’ in mandarin.  The teacher had to help me calm the children so that I could begin my lesson.  Unfortunately as soon as I started introducing myself I realised what limited English the children had.  This is understandable as they have only been learning English for one semester but it made teaching very difficult for me.  I immediately had to resort to singing songs and playing games with the children to try and interact with them in a different way.

Dani and I have been asked to team teach lectures about Northern Ireland for different grades.  So far we have done 3 lectures all of which I really enjoyed.  The children are older than my classes and understood most of what we were saying.  All of the children are eager to learn about different cultures and always have lots of questions to ask us.  After one of the lectures I had a ‘celebrity moment’ when Dani and I were literally mobbed by a whole class of children wanting us to sign our autographs on their books.  This was a very surreal experience.

Our lecture with grade 8 on Northern Ireland!

Dani and I being asked for autographs

 Dani and I have also been teaching morning exercises for the school.  Every morning at 8am the pupils assemble in the playground and they do a series of songs and dances to help them exercise before classes begin.  The teachers have all emphasized what an important part of the school day that this is.

Morning exercises

This week has been a huge learning curve for me.  I feel like I can completely empathise with EAL students.  At many times I have had absolutely no idea what the children are saying to me and I have learnt to adapt a new teaching style for this experience in Primary School.  I have been using body language and facial expressions more than I ever would in teaching.  This has proven useful as another way of communicating with the children.  When I am teaching orally, using an American accent enables the children to understand better because many of the CDs and tapes that they learn English from all have American accents.  I found that using prizes is just as effective in China as it is in school in Northern Ireland.  Even though there is a language barrier the children understand that they need to behave in a certain way to receive a prize.  So this has been increasingly helpful for me when managing the children’s behaviour.

This week at school has contributed greatly to the developed of my professional competences.  I have mostly learned the importance and positive effect that using a range of learning techniques can have on promoting positive behaviour.  I have a greater awareness of the importance of taking into consideration each child’s first language and culture and what the implications of these will be for learning.  Even after one week in Primary School here in China I feel like I have gathered a wealth of ideas and strategies for helping EAL learners in Northern Ireland.