I woke up extra early this morning to finish getting everything ready for the children for our last day together. The Buckeyes were packed up, the letters I wrote the students were complete, but I was not ready to go! Over the last 7 weeks I have formed such a bond with these children. Over time they may forget my name, but for me they have had a HUGE impact on who I am as a teacher. Teaching out of the country is a completely different experience that I would recommend for anyone. Teaching in a different country most certainly gives you the perspective of what being a minority student would be like. You have so many experiences that you cannot relate to until you have experienced them yourself.
We started off our last day together going on a field trip to a mosque. This was suppose to be for their religion class and learning about other religions practices. Although, there were quite a few kids who's parents wouldn't let them go to the mosque. The field trip was entirely informational, making no since for the kids parents not allowing them to go on this trip. It was a short field trip though, we were back before lunch. All through out the day the students were giving me little hand made letters and gifts. After lunch I taught my final lesson on measuring the volume of cuboids. The kids enjoyed being able to build with the cubes and it was a good outlet for all of their energy. Having a field trip in the morning and then a party at the end of the day made it near impossible to keep the kids in their seats. For the last part of our final day we went outside with the kids and just played games. The whole time all the kids were asking for my signature and my home address to become writing partners. I felt like a little celebrity. Each class had made us a card and signed it themselves, it was too cute! Some of the girls started crying on the way out, it broke my heart! After school the head teacher (Principal) and staff thanked us for all of our work and partnership. It was really kind of them, and I couldn't have been any happier with my school placement! From school it was a mad dash back to campus and time to pack for the trip, not that I procrastinated or anything. It was SO hot in school and there is no air conditioning, what a treat! So I showered and was off to dinner. This was our last meal on campus and it was... Interesting. We had steak which would normally be wonderful, but since it was in England it was a little different. Since mad cow disease wasn't all that long ago they still have their meet come from other places. Meaning that any kind of cow meet just wasn't quite how it was suppose to be. After dinner I had about 20 minutes until my taxi would be there to go to the train stations and I just needed to pack my bag for a week, nothing too important. I was simply running around like a chicken with my head cut off. This was the last train of the night leaving Liverpool and going to the London airport, so it only determined if I was going to make my flight or not.. Once again, no big deal. After sprinting through the train station getting yelled at to stop running (catch me if you can) I made it onto the train just in time, phew! From here it was a 3 hour train ride to London where I would then take another hour train ride to the London airport and get a great nights sleep on the airport floor! It was quite comfy. I had gone this far with another group who was also flying out of London at the same time, but to a different destination.
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Today is Spanish day in the school! All the kids are out of uniform dressed in yellow and red from head to toe. They were bouncing out of their chairs with excitement. We started out the day singing Spanish songs and coloring Spain's flag. Next we went down and did some baking in the kitchen. The kids made from scratch a loaf of Spanish bread each! 28 kids with flour and baking, just picture the disaster the classroom was after a day full of baking. In the afternoon we managed to squeeze a literacy lesson on scripts out of them. Although, after their playtime they got to have all sorts of Spanish sweets just in time to send them home to their parents! I'm sure they appreciated that! The kids got to have a non-alcoholic sangria where my teacher did a mini lesson on what normally goes into a sangria, alcohol and all. All of the kids knew what he was referring to, it's such a different culture when it comes to alcohol. After school it was time for the final step with the Buckeyes, the chocolate! It took a lot of self discipline not to eat all of them myself. After dinner we did some laundry and packing (depressing). We decided to end our last school night in Liverpool at our favorite pup, so Rachel and I headed down to five ways! Today was my last day teaching a USA lesson for my unit. We discussed American sports. I started out by introducing all of the popular American sports with them, then I had them tell me about popular English sports ( cricket, rounders, polo, ext. ). Then we completed a Venn Diagram over the differences and similarities of the sports. From there we talked about American football and baseball more in depth, learning some of the rules and concepts of the game. For a fun end to the lesson, I took the kids outside for a game of baseball. The kids enjoyed it, although the hand eye coordination wasn't quite there; it made it rather humorous to watch! After school I went to their football practice. My teacher is the school's football coach. This was actually quite impressive. Their school team starts at 2nd grade to and goes up to 5th grade. The kids practice twice a week for their school team. Several of them play for a club team as well. The kids were impressively talented. Most certainly well above players of their age in the states. At recess they're constantly competing for who can juggle longer. I wish soccer was this big in America! For our class party on Thursday, my last day, I am making buckeyes for an Ohio treat! I spent a majority of my night making 60 peanut butter balls in preparation for Thursday. Here are some pictures from my walk to/from school. It's so pretty! Today is our last week of teaching. Where has time gone?! On our walk to school, with about a mile to go, it started down-pouring out of nowhere. Luckily, Rachel and I aren't made of sugar so we didn't melt, but we sure were soaking when we got to school. Great start to our Monday! The kids started out their morning with assembly. In the afternoon I taught my lesson for the day on angles in nature. Can you tell my parents are math and science teachers? I had the kids measuring angles of leaves, fish find, flowers, and so on. Kids constantly ask when am I ever going to use this? So I thought using items from nature would be a good application. The kids loved the activity and were upset when they had to go out for play time so I told them we would finish it tomorrow! Currently the older kids playground is being remodeled. This means they cannot go outside for all of their playtime's, every teachers worst nightmare. This has made for a lot of games. I think that I could easily get gold in the Olympics now for heads up and hangman. The kids had never heard of heads up before and now they want to play it every chance they get. Tuesday is my last USA lesson that I teach and it's going to be over American sports, Wednesday is Spanish day(we're suppose to wear all red and yellow so this will be interesting), and Thursday is our field trip to mosque as well as our last day in the schools! It's going to be quite a busy week, but on Friday I am meeting up with my two cousins in Madrid and I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE THEM! With 6 weeks under my belt and two to go the three things I miss the most are family, campfires, and the warm summer sunshine! Outside of that I would love to spend the rest of my summer traveling Europe, I'm definitely nowhere near ready to leave. Happy Father's Day! Today was a day for exploring! It was most certainly a last minute trip, but I was looking for a beach day and Wales is only an hour away by train. I caught a bus to the train station and was on my way! I had a hefty stack of grading and school work to do so I brought that along with me to do on the train. Not having wifi has its pros and cons, but it certainly eliminates any distractions. Once I got to Llanduno I started out by walking along the beach to Happy Valley Gardens. This was an adorable garden along the side of a mountain. When you turned around you could see the pier, beach, and the ocean. I slowly worked my way through the garden to the top of the mountain where I had a nice little picnic that I packed and did some school work. Let's just say that the seagulls are way too comfortable with people, especially when they have food! On the pier were retired old men playing jazz music. You could hear it on top of the mountain, echoing off. This was one of my favorite spots so far on the trip, it was so pretty and relaxing. After my little picnic I went back through the garden and played life size chess with an elderly couple on holiday (also known as vacation). They were so kind. They were with a group of elders who were all retired, traveling across Europe for a few weeks. We have ran into several groups like this since we have been in Europe. I know that my Muzzy would love to do something like this! Every time I stumble across a group of them, they're always cheery and enjoying the cities at their own pace while getting to know other couples on the trip. Now if only we could talk my Papaw into going with her! Llanduno was a quiet little town that had adorable little shops lining the beaches. It was also very dog friendly, even better in my eyes. There were dogs everywhere. I think this is what I imagine paradise to be like... countless dogs and the beach! Can it get any better?! I wandered my way down the pier and listened to the retired men play jazz music and enjoyed some ice cream along the way; it was everywhere, so I couldn't pass it up! The pier was filled with little ice cream shops, carnival rides, and people fishing of course. From the pier I got comfortable in the beach where I spent quite a few hours relaxing and doing school work. With a view like this, I was in no rush to get back to campus. I'm relieved to say that I'm nearly finished with my projects and have almost all of my lesson plans completed for my time here. I'm not that glad about only having a few lessons left, I'm not ready for my time here to be done! It was a perfect day to go to the beach. The sun was out, but it wasn't humid. There were lots of families out enjoying Father's Day and cooking out on the beach. I was heartbroken when it was time to head back. I caught the last train back to Liverpool for the day, procrastinating leaving as long as possible! Best part about this day trip? It was completely free! We have rail passes making the train ride free, and I packed my meals for the day. All except for the dollar Ice Cream I bought, but I thought I could splurge and treat myself after hiking the mountain. On the train ride I finished my school work and took a much needed nap. Something about these trains puts me to sleep every time! When I got back to campus I was relieved to see Rachel and catch up on our weekends travel! Finishing my day up with a long relaxing run. It was summer solstice, making it daylight even later than normal here. The sun didn't set until after 11, but that meant more time to go for a run. Just like that our last weekend of travel is over. How bitter sweet. It was time for another futbol stadium tour, so I was off to Anfield! They're currently expanding their stadium, but I finally got to see the stadium all my students constantly talk about. My students go to their games like its nothing, but I would give anything to be able to make it to one game! Unfortunately, by the time we got to Europe the futbol season was over. From the stadium I went down to the docks and had some fish & chips and sat along the water. I already know I'm going to miss fish and chips when I go back. I'm not a big fan of it back in the states, but it's completely different here. After eating, I went to an African festival that was going on at Sefton Park. This was a HUGE festival that I completely under estimated. There was live music, tons of booths selling anything you can imagine. There were so many people there it was standing room only. I had heard about this from locals, everyone who asked what my weekends plans were insisted that I needed to go. I'm so glad that I went. It was a great time and very relaxing. People watching was really entertaining. I spent the afternoon here and it was a lot of fun! After dinner we went to city center for the night and had a really good time. I had no idea that Liverpool had a night life. It was quite different! It's Friday, Friday 🎶🎶 After waking up WITHOUT an alarm clock for the first time on this trip, I got ready to head to city center before the shops all closed for once! We headed downtown to Central Perk to get some breakfast. Yes, Central Perk, as in the TV show Friends. Sadly, the power was out on that block, though, so we had to wait until later to come back. We still got our big Orange couch pictures though, no worries! From there we went to Liverpool One. This is the big main pedestrian drag through the city. It's filled with every store you could imagine and a Starbucks about every 500 feet. Sounds like heaven, right? I did enough window shopping to make up for everyone who reads this. Everywhere we have been in Europe there has been this store called Primark that everyone goes crazy over, so today was the day I jumped on the band wagon. Wow, it was a mad house in there! Four floors of clothing, but it was all really cheap. It wasn't bad clothing, either. There were some cute things, especially since they had a whole section dedicated to minions. I now understand why they are everywhere and everyone goes crazy for it. If you can think of it, they have it, and in every color too. We headed down the the docks to do some looking around and went to the Beatles museum! There was a cafe attached that had everything you could ever want in Beatles and some delicious food! We went to the Liverpool museum, which was the highlight of my day! I had been wanting to go to this museum since we got there, but it's only open 10- 5, so we can never make it there during the week after school. This museum was all about the history of Liverpool and how it got to where it is today. I thought this was so interesting to develop an understanding of where I've been living. I learned Liverpool had a lot to do in the beginnings of sugar. I had no idea, but it all started to make since. There are a lot of historical places with "Tate" and it is all in reference to the sugar industry in Liverpool. After leaving the museum, I went back to Central Perk. I got a Joey-sized coffee and watched myself an episode of Friends on the big orange couch! I don't think it could have been any more perfect, even if I wanted it to! It was a great day and I'm extremely glad that I finally got to explore Liverpool. It was much overdue. Thursday was a busy day at school! I taught two lessons to the kids, one over play scripts in the morning and in the afternoon I continued our lesson on Pearl Harbor in their book art! The morning lesson went really well. We opened with discussing all the different times and ways you would generally use a script. Also identifying key features in a script. This was partly review for the students, but they hadn't read from a script, so it was their first time applying what they learned. Unfortunately, the Internet was down (nothing unusual) so I couldn't play my YouTube clip examples that were quite humorous! The students all got a script about the British views on American Colonization. Although this wasn't one of my U.S. lessons, I still wanted to incorporate the U.S. somehow, and I felt a British view on American Colonization could not have been more appropriate! The students loved that it was a British view of an American event. Pretty much anything involving the United States gets the kids get really wound up! The kids needed a little bit more background knowledge on what colonists were at the start, but after explaining it, they grasped the concept really well. I had the kids read through the script once to become familiar with it before they read it in front of the class. To differentiate between high, medium, and low ability groups, I had the high performance kids read the script to themselves and underline the features of the script. For the Medium level students I had them read through the script with the other students at their table. Then for the low ability level, I read to the students and had them follow along and raise their hand every time we came across an unfamiliar word. Now that I am becoming more familiar with the students and their ability levels, it's quite challenging to adapt the work so that it is challenging each student at an appropriate level. There is just such a HUGE difference from the high to the low ability group. After working through some new words in the script and becoming familiar with the text, I chose 2 kids from each ability level to be a person in the script, giving the rolls with less lines to the students in the lower ability levels and the more challenging roles to the higher ability students. The students enjoyed reading the scripts to their peers and acting it out. Some of the students are certainly dramatic enough to take up a career in acting! My teacher said the lesson went really well and loved how into the acting the kids got. We both got quite a laugh out of it! I can tell its little moments like these that I'm going to miss the most about England. Sitting in the back of the classroom, watching them read their scripts, and laughing until I start crying. Working with these kids has had such an impact on my teaching career. Before this trip, I wasn't a big fan of dividing students by ability groups, but now that I have seen it in constant practice, I have notice how effective it can be. The students in the higher ability have poorer behavior when they're not placed with other high ability students and challenged. This is just one of the few things that seeing first hand has changed my opinion on using it in my own classroom. I'm still not sure how their schools are so much more advanced than ours, if it is just the little things here and there that are a little different in how the classes are taught and the schools are ran, but they clearly are doing something right. After this lesson, the other girl I have been co-teaching with did a math lesson. The teacher and I went out into the hall to do some work, which turned more into talking and enjoying some coffee and chocolate. This was the first time we really talked about things outside of school and it was nice! We had quite the laugh and he gave some good pointers for what to do in Liverpool this weekend. We spent all of lunch doing some grading and naming to Taylor Swift. I can turn just about anyone into a Taylor Swift fan and I'm starting to consider it a talent. After lunch I taught a lesson on Pearl Harbor. In England they spell a lot of words differently and Pearl Harbour is another example. I'm awful at spelling as it is, but remembering all of the words they spell differently has me questioning every word I put on the board. The students don't hesitate to point it out when I spell it the American way. I don't think I've ever spell checked my power points so many times in my life! The students weren't completely grasping how Pearl Harbor happened, so I played some video clips for them. They were in complete shock and had so many questions afterwards. I could tell the videos really helped make the connection. I was nervous to play such graphic things, but my teacher encouraged me to because he said it was all factual and all these things actually occurred. He said the students all needed to understand the devastation and significance of this event. The lesson was to write like you were someone who was effected by Pearl Harbor. This could be a person in the Navy, a civilian, or someone back home who heard the news breaking and could have had a family member there. Their writing went into their book art. I was impressed with the creativity the students had. Their vocabulary is quite impressive, so their descriptions seemed very surreal. I was nervous to teach this lesson with my other teacher because he is rather stuck in his ways. When he told me my lesson was outstanding, I could not have been more thrilled and relieved. This was a lesson that he had to officially observe for my coursework, so it was rather important. It was a great start to my weekend. After school, we worked out what lessons would be taught for our last week. It's so hard to believe that our trip is coming to an end. I'm definitely not ready for it to be over. I miss my family, don't get me wrong, but I am loving every minute of traveling and cannot get enough! Thursday night we went into city center. The Cavern was our first stop! This is where the Beatles played over 280 times, The Who, Rolling Stones, Oasis, and countless others who have changed the history of music. Inside, everyone leaves their mark by writing their name on the wall. No worries, I came prepared with a Sharpie! They had really good music in this quaint little venue. They ended the night with a Beatles cover band and it was standing room only at this point. There were people of all ages here and everyone was enjoying it! There was even a 70th birthday girl who was dancing on the table tops, and we got up onto the stage to dance. Historical little places like this are always enjoyable places to go to. We met up with some friends there and had a great night together! After school on Wednesday we were feeling a little adventurous. We looked up all of the Beatles attractions and went off for some exploring! Naturally exploring comes with a few wrong turns and asking for directions more than once. Luckily though not far from campus was Penny Lane and Strawberry Field. Both of these were big songs for the Beatles and so naturally we had to listen to them while doing our sight seeing. We ended our walk with some Oreo ice cream and it hit the spot!
It was a nice break from working on lesson plans constantly. I'm so glad to have met new people on this trip! Rachel and I luckily have rooms at the end of the hall next to each other. Going from strangers to being the only night owls on the trip we have had quite a few memorable nights! Plus we share an interest in Ice Cream which also helps. Our late night munchies and 2am nights nights are one of my favorite parts of this trip, although we always regret it the next morning when our alarms go off at 6:30 for teaching. To start off the day, the students had hem practice. The school normally starts off the week with an assembly on Monday morning, with announcements and a little motivation to kick off their week. On Tuesdays they start off their day with hem practice. In the afternoon I taught another one of my USA lessons. This one was over popular states for geography in the USA. It was off to a rough start with the technology, but I was amazed how into the activity the students got! I started off the lesson by introducing popular states that are frequently visited, like Florida, California, and New York. I discussed where they are on a map and what the major cities are. You would be amazed how many of the kids have visited the U.S. and have been to several states.
From here, I broke them off into partners by ability groups and assigned them each a state. The students were supposed to find the state's capitol, if anything was invented in the state or any unique facts, the state's population, state flag, where the state is located on a map, and a few additional key items. The lesson went very well and the students loved learning about the various attractions in the states. I was excited with how the lesson went and was eager to start planning another USA lesson for the week! |