Student Teaching in London-Fall 2007
 Week 6:  November 26-December 2

Dr. McDonald and a group of CMU student teachers are currently in the Enfield, England area.  Dr. McDonald is sharing his diary and pictures of the students as they experience student teaching in England.

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November 26 - Today I observed Connie and Naomi at Woodside High School in Wood Green.

Connie taught a lesson to her Year 8 math class on recognizing and collecting like terms.  For a starter, students were given a bag with different types of cereal and asked to sort the items in the bag into groups according to shape, color, and type.  The class then debriefed the starter and related the activity to like terms.  The class was then provided with the rules for recognizing like terms on the interactive white board.  The class period ended with the class learning about the steps for simplifying expressions.  They then practiced the techniques on a few worksheets.

Later in the morning, Naomi taught a lesson to her Year 9 math class on completing long division when given decimal values and calculating and working with factors and multiples.  The starter included displaying a word problem on the SmartBoard that contained names, investment amounts, and percent interest.  Students calculated how much each person earned in interest for one pay period and rank the investors from highest to lowest earnings.

The second half of the lesson was spent introducing factors and multiples.  A series of PowerPoint slides were presented that showed how to find factors and multiples along with practice problems for the class.  The highest common factor was then figured as well as lowest common multiple.

November 27- Tara and Jenna taught today at Enfield County School.

Tara presented a lesson for her Year 9 English class on onomatopoeias, continuing a unit on poetry analysis.  Students then cleared off their tables and the class “made rain” by starting in silence, snapping fingers, tapping on their legs, and thumping on the desks.  The process was then reversed by getting quieter and taking some of the elements of the sound out.

A poem named “Noise” was then introduced to the class and the students named all of the onomatopoeias in the poem.  The class then thought of more words that would fit this classification.  Using the words, the students were then given time to write and then to share their own poems using onomatopoeias.

Jenna then taught her Year 9 geography class about the impact of crime on society.  Students started off the period by naming types of crime.  Then the class was asked to categorize which crimes are more serious or less serious.  Since was an introductory lesson on crime, some definitions were provided and what types of people are affected by incidents of crime.  A case study was presented that talked about the victim’s and offender’s sides of crime of assault.  Analysis was performed on how these two people, as well as others, were affected by this particular incident.  The students then got into groups and did a crime role play where they presented the major components of a crime and who was affected.

For seminar we met at the Enfield City Learning Center which is a resource for students and teachers in Enfield who wish to work on technology related projects for schools. Students can create/edit video, create movies, create t-shirts, do claymation, and add music to video. Teachers can bring their entire class and meet standards for the national curriculum. Teachers can also take professional development opportunities.

Tara teaching a group of Year 9 English students at
Enfield County School.

Tara taught a lesson on using noise words in poems for the power of description.

Students can also use a laser system to burn images on fabric.
 

Students worked in small groups to brainstorm noise words that they could use in their own poems.

Our seminar this week was held at the Enfield City
Learning Centre.

Students and teachers from Enfield do a variety of technology projects using the CLC facilities.

Students at seminar listening to the technology ideas for use in their own classrooms.

November 28 - Shannon, Andrea A., and Kate taught today at Raglan School.

Shannon taught a portion of her service learning lesson on recycling to her Year 2 class.  Students brainstormed about the types of materials that they recycled at home.  Students then thought about sayings that would get other people in their community to recycle and keep Enfield neat.  The lesson concluded with students having the opportunity to decorate paper grocery bags with drawings and sayings about recycling.

Andrea also did a portion of her service learning project with her Year 4 class.  Students in Kayla’s school (Turnford) wrote some stories and it was the job of the Year 4 class to make them into books and illustrate the books.  Andrea showed examples of different illustrated picture books and then had the students get into groups and decide where the page breaks would come and what part of the story should be depicted with drawings.

Kate did another portion of her service learning project by having her Year 1 students produce some more Christmas or holiday cards for a children’s hospital in London.  Students made angels as part of an art project, while the rest of the class worked on the cards.  Parent help was available and the class was able to get a lot done.

Andrea A. showing her students some examples of illustrations.

Andrea A. discussing what goes into a good illustration.

The students are ready to sort out their story and illustrate it.

Kate introducing her art project, where the students made angels.

Kate helping her year 2 students make their angels.

November 29 - Amber and Cynthia shared a part of their service learning project with their reception students at Galliard Primary School.

Amber read a story about a grandpa and grandma to her class and then asked her class what made these people special.  Students shared examples of how their own grandparents have had an impact on them.  Amber then told the class about a local retirement home where some of the people do not have family that is close and visit them.  She asked the students if they wanted to make something nice for the residents.  Students then constructed a class letter to go with their gifts of coasters for the seniors to use.  During choice time students signed their names on the letter and made the coasters.

Cynthia used pictures to show grandmas and grandpas to the class and had them share about their own grandparents.  Cynthia then told about the local retirement home and that there were people there that would enjoy something for the holidays.  Cynthia’s class made holiday cards for the residents and then came up with a class letter to introduce themselves.  The cards were made during their choice time.

November 30 - Kayla taught her Year 8 students at Turnford about character development and description.  Students are reading the novel Stone Cold in class.  Today’s session dealt with reading a portion of the story that described how the homeless were exploited by one of the characters.  Two of the characters were picked out and the class had to see how the one character exploited the homeless using examples from the book.  The other character was a homeless person and the class had to find examples of how she had been taken advantage of.

Trevor taught his Year 12 students at Mount Grace School in Potters Bar about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.  This was near the end of the unit so students were reviewing the major events in the 1950s and 1960s, the central figures, and why the events happened.  In order to prepare for their major December assessment, the students were provided into groups to conduct research about events that had not been studied in class and to prepare presentations using PowerPoint.  Key questions that had to be a part of the presentation were reviewed.

Some members of the group flew to Dublin tonight or Saturday morning.

Kayla helping her Turnford students work on their character analysis from the novel Stone Cold.

Students report on their character analysis.
 

Kayla wraps up her lesson where students have
compared two characters.

Trevor working with Year 12 students in a history
 class at Mount Grace.

Students were beginning a project on where they would create PowerPoint presentations based on the American Civil Rights Movement.

Students worked on more of the how and why to get deeper into the event that they were assigned for their topic.
 

December 1 - Dublin is a busy city with a lot of business, several large universities, and plenty of history.  Today I went on a tour of the Wicklow Mountains, the monastery ruins at Grendalough, and the weavers community at Avoca.  The group then went on a literary pub crawl in the Temple Bar region of Dublin.

A view of Dublin Bay, north of Dublin.
 

A view of the valley where Grendalough, a monastic community beginning in the sixth century, is located south of Dublin.

The Round Tower, the center point of the former
monastic community.

The inside of the former cathedral, dating from the 11th century.

The Wicklow Mountains, seen from the Wicklow Gap,
southwest of Dublin.

December 2 - Today was a day for me to see a portion of the country north of Dublin.  I took a tour of Malehide Castle and Dublin Bay.  Malehide Castle was in the Talbot family for 800 years and was influential in the history of Ireland.

The group flew home tonight to prepare for another week of teaching.
 

Malehide Castle, north of Dublin, has been a residence
for the last 900 years.