Italian days  and eTwinning at Such Fun!

 

How to teach English to pupils from the age of 4?  That is what to teacher trainees from the University of Turin (Italy), called Gloria Tarozzo en Lorenzo Salmaso, wanted to find out when they came to the Netherlands for a placement at Such Fun!
They hoped to improve their English

img_5453

Such Fun! wanted to add another objective to their stay here and asked them to set up and run an eTwinning project with an Italian 2nd class of De Amicis primary school in Turin and a Dutch group 3/4 at the Krommen Hoek primary school in Rosmalen.
I love travelling by is the name of their project . They created portraits with the pupils from both classes where the Dutch children finished the other half of the half face the Italian children drew. Also they recorded the Dutch children as they described the different means of transport they designed.

The Italian pupils will use these for creating their favourite means of transport in Italy. In the central hall, there’s an eTwinning corner at Krommen Hoek. Also, the Such Fun! teachers helped creating an Italian pizza corner in the school, where all children have

been doing roleplays in English (and some Italian!)

img_5465

 

For the 8-12 year old pupils at most of the 12 Such Fun! schools, Gloria and Lorenzo held some Italian days with the Such Fun! teachers: The 8-10 old pupils went on a scavenger hunt to discover similarities and differences between animal names in English and Italian.
In groups 7 and 8 children also did a scavenger hunt, but now to gain geographic and cultural knowledge about Italy. Food, fashion and football… many topics were covered during this hunt for information!

schermafbeelding-2016-11-26-om-12-04-05

It has been a most interesting placement. With high impact, not only on both the Italian future teachers, but also on pupils throughout the project and their Dutch and English fellow students/teachers!
Lorenzo en Gloria both enjoyed the fabulous and hospitable homestays at a Rosmalian and Empelian family. And got to really experience Dutch family life, which they adored. Of course they were shocked by the fact the Dutch are having dinner at 6, but they truly enjoyed celebrating highlights like the arrival of Saint-Nick, birthdays and concerts with their family.  Parting is such sweet sorrow, however pancakes, chocolate letters and a real Saint-Nick poem in English made it bearable…  May many more eTwinning projects follow and invitations were exchanged in the hope we’ll see each other back during our holidays!

 

Pilgrim’s is a teacher training institute in Canterbury. Every Summer, as soon as all students go home for their holiday, the staff move their office, laptops and library to the Cornwallis building at the University of Kent. And teachers from all over Europe, ready to attend the Pilgrim courses, take over the campus from the current students. Some of their trainees are staying in the Parkwood self-catering accommodation; houses with up to six people. As the name implies, they lie in the middle of a wood and you can see rabbits, squirrels as well as an occasional fox. The rest of the attending trainees stay in the concrete jungle of Keynes, where people don’t share facilities but mingling starts over breakfast at the Dolce vita restaurant every morning.
image
The Pilgrim’s course takers can be either in primary, secondary or adult education and are mostly teachers of English or classroom teachers or subject teachers who teach their subject in (or should I say ‘through’?) English. They can pick a selection of courses like (Creative) methodology, Building positive group dynamics, Leadership skills for teachers, British Life and culture, Teaching difficult learners, or the two that I took this Summer: One week of CLIL (Content and language Integrated learning) and one of Multiple Intelligences. Although classes take place from 9 am until 3.30 pm, many teachers stay around for the afternoon sessions (inspiring workshops on drama, music, reading theatre, coaching or speaking activities) and come back for more at 8pm!
It definitely feels like you’re refuelling yourself for the academic year ahead, getting so many new ideas and insights, you can hardly wait to get back to school and implement them.

There are moments of deep insight, moments you feel something is shifting in your perception of the classroom reality or in your teaching practice. I had that when I took Mark Almond’s class on high status/low status in the classroom. He divided the group in two. Around ten teachers were standing and the rest of us had to observe them while they all got a card varying from 2 (low status) up to an ace (the highest status). They were told to pretend to be at a welcome back to school party for teachers and to mingle according to their status. They kept the cards to themselves and we had to figure out what the status of the different teachers would be and accordingly rank them from low to high status. Then the other group of teachers needed to stand up and had a card attached to their forehead (they stuck since ít was a sweaty day, or because they were sticky because they had been attached at teachers’ foreheads since a long time, as I understood from my colleague Louise Alix Taylor, who had done the very same activity with Mark 10 (!) years ago). I appeared to have very low status and where in real life I tend to be quite sociable and am quite good at mingling, I now felt what it was to be left out and isolated. That was a very unpleasant feeling of course. But an eye opener to experience what it really feels like to be left out nor be considered important enough to hang around with.

image

Other sessions I particularly liked where the singing workshop with Emily White, who got us to sing ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’ in wonderful harmony in a blink of the eye and encouraged us to write our own lyirics to its melody. The one in which Adrian Underhill explained us how to teach pronunciation and of course the three coaching models we applied in the coaching skills workshop of Mike Shreeves.
image
Discussing the content of all those sessions, contrasting and comparing the educational reality in the different countries, together with the (two) week courses you take with a group of these teachers make this experience so worthwhile. Finding out that all of the primary teachers you speak to teach their pupils 3-5 hours of English per week for example, while we teach English half an hour per week at the Such Fun! schools and come back for small group activities for another 30 minutes is a reality check I can’t wait to share.

I was lucky enough to spend my first week in Canterbury learning about CLIL from Kerry Powell. If you want to teach a subject in English, children need to understand the content of the subject and therefor you need to teach them the English vocabulary through scaffolding. We learned how to classify language in three parts: the academic language (CALP), that is divided in two: the content or topic specific language and the cross curricular language, that is applicable to other topics and subjects as well as the social or everyday language (BICS), which is the general classroom language. CALP takes longer to learn and is quite artificial, it is a challenge to think of ways how to teach it, whereas BICS is the communicational and interactional language that will be picked up easily, in the playground or on the street.
In the Such Fun! scheme we use a lot of picture books for our youngest learners and Julie Wallis showed us how to apply CLIL techniques when we are teaching our very young learners as well.
image
CLIL in combination with multiple intelligences was pointed out to us in an inspiring assignment: when we left the course the previous day, our teacher had asked us to really pay attention to how we went from our apartment to our classroom (intrapersonal, visual spatial). The next day, we had to recreate the walk from our apartment to our classroom in a story filled with onomatopeia to describe the sounds (musical), describing sensations (linguistic) for all five senses (bodily kinestetic) and using every material to actually represent the walk as well (visual spatial, logical mathematical). We worked together in small groups (interpersonal). While we were working, a piece of classical music was playing (musical). We presented our walks to one and other and this was a great example of how to combine CLIL and multiple intellgences in our teaching.
In the Such Fun! scheme we use a lot of picture books for our youngest learners and Julie Wallis showed us how to apply CLIL techniques when we are teaching our very young learners as well.
image
In my second week I could join Stefania Ballotto and a new group of teachers who had been working on multiple intelligences the week before. I stumbled upon the theory of multiple intelligences during the first Pilgrim’s course I ever took, Language and methodology by Wendy Arnold, some eight years ago. The theory by psychologist Howard Gardner was published over thirty years ago and states “human beings have evolved to have several different Intelligences and not one general intelligence”. He proves that these intelligences can be indicated in different parts of the brain and states that students should be “allowed to demonstrate their deep understanding of what is being taught not by written testst but by creating and carrying out ‘performances’ instead”. Given that this theory appealed to me from the start, I have always tried to teach taking in account the multiple intelligences in our learners, and the curriculum we’ve developped over the years reflects this theory quite a bit. No wonder I felt in my comfort zone during this course, enjoying so many creative assignments and activities to point out its theory. Also, the restructured assesment Mrs Ballotto asked us to accomplish: setting up a multiple intelligences museum on any topic we liked ( we chose animals) was just my cup of tea! In two days we went from an empty classroom to an interactive museum in which everyone could learn about the animal kingdom through one of the 8 intelligences. All teachers taking different pilgrim’s courses at the time were invited and their reactions were priceless.

I can recommend it to anyone to spend some of their Summer on a Pilgrim’s teacher training course, get inspired and find new colleagues and friends that will be delighted to work with you and your classes through eTwinning or in an Erasmus+ Key Action 2 partnership!

What if children who are at the Den Bosch Early English schools, and learn English from the age of 4, want to continue learning in English and in internationally inspired settings? We’re very proud to announce that Den Bosch now finally has its own bilingual programme in secondary education. After summer, Jeroen Bosch College will start bilingual education or tweetalig onderwijs (tto). Such Fun! and JBC decided to join knowledge and forces in a partnership to establish continuity for those students who wish to proceed down the inspiring path of bilingual education. Do you want to know more about this partnership and about the bilingual programme at Jeroen Bosch College?
Follow this blog from our colleagues at JBC: Blog Jeroen Bosch College

 

Whether you are studying to become a primary school teacher or you are studying music or drama, a placement at Such Fun! is an unforgettable experience.
Watch this video in which Georgie Simiou from Canterbury Christchurch University tells about the month she was teaching at the 12 primary schools of the Den Bosch Early English Programme and what it brought her. Would you be interested in joining the project? Please contact yvonne.scherphof@suchfun.nl!

 

Georgie Simiou about her placement at Such Fun!

IMG_4153At most of the Den Bosch Early English schools, there’s a great school library with a vaste collection of English books!

At KC Caleidoscoop we’ve recorded two lovely videos to encourage reading English books in order to improve your fluency and increase your vocabulary!

Also, there’s a video in which four group 7 pupils, accompanied by a former pupil from the school, Leon Scherphof, tell you about which English books to get at the library!

Click here to see the video!

image

Over the past two weeks I had the unique possibility of jobshadowing Ms Nora Studley, devoted 2nd grade teacher at the Arthur Healey elementary school in Somerville. Ms Studley, her principal Jill Geiser, and all teachers and specialists, allowed me not only to have a look in their classrooms, but also provided me with all the necessary background information about the Common Core, the (ELL) students, and all there is to know about Sheltered English Immersion. I have nothing but respect for Ms Studley, who does a great job teaching the students in her class. There are 16 students, 11 of which are ELL students.

image
Additionally, I had the chance to attend classes at two elementary schools in quite priviliged areas. I can say the teaching practice of the teachers there differed a lot from the reality of Ms Studley and her colleagues…

image

So what if it would be possible for me to copy any aspects of Sommerville’s public education and transfer that to the Netherlands? What aspects would I love to see back in Dutch education? First of all, the small class sizes. I feel the money available for education in Somerville is well spent: small classes, classroom assistants, specialists, nurses, counselors…

image
The average Dutch class size is around 30 students throughout elementary-, middle- and highschool and in most of the classes there’s no classroom assistant. At the Healey and the other schools I visited, a nurse and a counselor are available fulltime. In our country, a nurse only comes to school on a monthly basis only and so does the counselor.

Another aspect of the Somerville public education that Dutch teachers could only dream of, is the presence of specialists. They certainly bring music, art and PE to a whole new level! In the Netherlands, teachers need to teach all these subjects themselves, and depending how talented the teacher him or herself is she succeeds to a certain degree in teaching that subject or not. The music classes of Mark Hecox (at the Kennedyschool) and Cathy Ward (at the Brownschool) inspired me to dive into the John Feierabend Curriculum for singing and solfege as soon as I will be back.

image

I understood schoolbusses and the cafetorium use up a lot of the budget at Somerville schools. Yet, our students come to school by bike, on foot or their parents take them. At our schools, we neither serve breakfast nor lunches. If children eat at school, they bring a packed lunch ( a couple of sandwiches mainly). however there are schools in which a limited number of students would come to school without breakfast. The teacher would provide some by bringing in some extra bread if she would notice… For snacktime, Dutch schools recommend parents to let their children take fruit with them. Unhealthy snacks like we saw some of the children eat while we were here, like chips or chocolate covered cookies are not allowed. But I understand that things are different in MA. I love how Somerville provides decent meals to all its students, so hunger or a bad diet could never be the cause of any problems at school.

image

There is more I would love to copy from the Somerville teachers if I could. Ms Studley and her colleagues manage to create a respectful and friendly social emotional school climate, in which she call her students ‘friends’. When she refers to the choices a student is entitled to make for himself, it mostly is enough to let them sit up straight again, or to stop interfering with the teacher or any of their classmates.

Also the importance of literature in both your literacy and writing classes is inspirational. In the Netherlands we teach children reading comprehension by a selection of fictional and non fictional texts that not only do not always seem to appeal to students, but also would treat just a small part of a book. Not only students go to a specialist library teacher twice a week, also at some of the classes students learn to have a look at different characters and how they are described, and they learn how to implement this into their own writing.

imageIs it all praise I am singing? Or are there any things I would love to be able to hand over to the friends I made amongst the Somerville teachers. Well, yes, in fact, there are! We would love to take away the pressure the standardized testing and common core benchmarks the state of Massachusetts imposes on the teachers. It is clear how much it affects their teaching and therefore their students. Of course, teaching is to be taken seriously, but if the standardized testing prohibites us to learn through play, have fun while we learn and have the time to process what we learn, it can’t be the right way to proceed. The instructions I saw meet the requirements, but they leave their students too little space to think critically, because the instructions are long and complicated and there’s always the pressure of time. Furthermore I think in most of the instructions the verbal input is way to high. Which might cause that the students hear so many words they might not be able to pick up the academic vocabulary needed for maths or English. I also wish i could bring some more visual support to the classrooms by the use of a smartboard, pictures, mindmaps, so the will mainly appeal to the auditory strong learners (which ELL students in most cases aren’t (yet)).
image
According to me, the solution lies in project based learning. If only the teachers would have the time (and support of the whole team/principal?) to meet all the aims and goals required by the curriculum by integrating them in a meaningful and motivational kind of education you would wish for any child…. I think it would lead to bigger student participation, cooperative learning and therefore more time and space for the teachers to differentiate and while children explore, process and learn by doing things themselves, teachers could give small group instructions to the students who require more help and those who need to be challenged more.

image
Actually I saw a great example of Project based learning about sustainability in Healey’s 7th grade. As well as aspects of it in the poems, stories and artwork on fossiles in Ms Studley’s class. However I hoped to see more of it than I did in Pre K (where I met such a great and enthusiastic teacher who did an amazing fingerrhyme I will definitely teach my students as soon as I ‘ll get back). Or in Kindergarten and throughout the different grades.

imageIn the Netherlands, most Kindergarten teachers do a great job in setting up appealing projects for their 4-6 year old pupils, that would be very meaningful to pre K and Kindergarten as well. I saw kindegarten working on Community workers, but in the Dutch classrooms everything would evolve around that topic, all the x block work, free play in corners, math and language assignments, picturebooks and songs we would use…. But Dutch teachers in 2nd grade and up complain they have not enough time and fear not to have the complete overview when they enable project based learning and all children do different work. There are some schools in the Den Bosch district where I teach that promote project based learning throughout the curriculum. I would love to invite Ms Studley and the other teachers back to the Netherlands and see what they would like to take home with them. I can’t thank Nora Studley, Jill Geiser and all the teachers at the Healey, the Kennedy and the Brown, Paul Brockelman, Vince Mc Kay, their families and colleagues and my host, Brandon Wilson enough for making this opportunity a once in a lifetime life long learning experience!

image

Good news: the Den Bosch Early English Programme is one of the candidates for the Samen sta je sterk-project (‘Together we’re strong), from Rabobank Rosmalen.

Vote for us now and use the postal code for your school or your own in Rosmalen or Empel. Such Fun! is project number 17. Let’s keep our Dutch teachers in the project until the end of the academic year! Two votes at once per mailadress!

https://www.lokalebank.nl/stemmen-maak-je-sterk-voor-elkaar-rosmalen/

 

 

 

is

Schermafbeelding 2015-09-04 om 23.50.52

From left to right, top to bottom:

Iris de Grauw, Cian Hurley, Yvonne Scherphof, Angelique van Son, Ana Dolan, Elien Kremers,

Nicole Popelier, Marlous Mobach, Monique Telings, Louise Bevan, Judith Kleinsman

Georgina Clayton, Austin Smith, Yvonne Geradts

Personal designer Jippe Joosten designed this logo for Such Fun!
Jippe is also responsible for the website, that is now available in both Dutch and English!

Are you studying a university involved in the Erasmus+ scheme?
And would you like to gain some valuable teaching experience in ESL-teaching to 4-12 year old pupils?
Contact yvonne.scherphof@suchfun.nl

Come and teach in the Den Bosch Early English Programme!