Habemus magistrum!

In this last entry, I want like to reflect on what I would like to achieve in the future while looking back on my past experience. At some point, I have problems with implementing speaking into the lesson. I control everything around me, each sentence from my students is under strict supervision. This is why I've decided to conduct action research which gave me some answers on what I do wrong and how I should improve it. I already use this knowledge to teach my students speaking better and more freely. But there is always some space for improvement, so I will keep working hard to help my students become conscious users of the language. Another thing that I am looking forward to is developing literacy. Till now my knowledge was quite limited, however now I am in the process of writing my thesis and this topic is so interesting! I would love to know how to introduce literacy into the foreign language classroom in a way that will be beneficial for my students.  For now, I've b...

It's almost the end of the year! It feels so weird. We're already half-way to graduation. Time passes so quickly. In this entry, I would like to write something about my attitude towards practicum experience. Practicum is a part of my student life from the very beginning. On my bachelor, I was obliged to do kindergarten, primary school, and English teaching practice, so I have quite an experience already. The school I went to was also not new for me, as last time on English teaching practicum I was assigned there. Nevertheless, the whole year was quite a struggle. As in the meantime, I am working it was not new for me to go into the classroom and teach. It was a challenge to teach at my new pupils' level. The school has 5 hours of English per week plus 2 hours of bilingual classes, so they have a lot of the language. It took me a while to realize how children differ, memorize names, adjust my instruction to their level, become familiar with their books and system of cl...

For a long time, I've been wondering what do I want to do in the future. As a child I was interested in science, so I thought maybe a psychiatrist would be a great job for me. Then I thought that medicine is too hard to follow, so maybe a psychologist? That would be so interesting. At the end of high school, I was sure that I want to become a criminological technician. And from this whole variety, I ended up on pedagogical studies....why? I don't even like children! Suggestions on becoming a teacher were always present in my life, as I'm quite patient, helpful and I used to have some musical background which is quite desirable especially for kindergarten teachers. But I applied for the university, I began my studies and now I can honestly say that I love it. I don't like children but working with them is fascinating. I am doing almost everything what I've planned before (psychiatrist as diagnosing some issues and special needs of students, psychologist as working...

Hello! Little late but here I am. Today I would like to write something about the tasks used in my CLIL unit. Except for some typical language activities such as drilling, playing games that support memorization we also did some stuff that would be more meaningful and picture things that I wanted to introduce better. The thing I'm the proudest of is an experiment! As my unit was connected with nature education and science I let myself use 2 experiments to introduce the topic. The first experiment was based on some physics. With a glass, plate, candle, and water we tried to prove that in our classroom there is an oxygen...and how much oxygen there is in one glass! It was super fun, especially with the usage of colors! Children shared them predictions, observed and later described the course of the experiment. Lots of language and lots of fun! How do I know it was fun? Whenever I posed the question "What do you remember from our previous classes?" I've heard at least...

Hello there, Last week was full of struggles :( CLIL appeared to be something difficult to conduct, especially when the topic is science, and CLIL teacher (me) know only basic things about it. But somehow we managed to go through 3 lessons so far. On Wednesday and Thursday, I will be finishing my unit. It was really stressful, as I was not sure how to approach it. I have no experience in teaching CLIL, so it was quite a challenge. On my first lesson, I've realized that kids know much more than I've expected. It was nothing new for them to talk about planets in the Solar System. They pretty much knew all the names so there was no need to focus on it. First, we collected our ideas about the circle, what could it be? After some suggestions and more amazing drawing from me, students got it and said: "it's a planet!".  Then we talked about what do they know about our planet. Then we've been working on a model of the solar system, and students described the Ear...

Hello! For some time now I've been planning my CLIL unit. The topic is "life of the planet depends on people". The topic itself gave me many ideas of what can be done in it, but the deeper I dug the more did I realize how difficult it will be to create it and conduct it in first grade. In the beginning, I wanted to give lots of science and nature, climate zones, plants, animals, some astronomy...but then I thought oh, that will be too difficult, those are only first graders! So I went to the process of planning again and again. Now I have it all on paper, ready to use, but still, I have some doubts about it. Without the deep knowledge of students, it's hard to say what will work and what will not, so I had this thought that our practicum is not really well planned. if we could spend some stable time at school, for example, one whole semester it would be much easier. But then, who would accept us to spend so much time in the classroom... Nevermind. We will do it som...