Internship Week Three

February 6-7

Week 3

It seems hard to believe that yet another week has come and gone! This week at Cameron School I had the privilege of working with class six. Class six consisted of ten students; eight girls and two boys. I have to say that I really enjoy working in smaller classes as it gives me a chance to really get to know the children, especially when you only get to work with them two days out of the week. My mentor teacher this week was Alisa. Alisa is also from the United States, specifically the Chicago area, so it was nice to learn from her. She was very insightful, as she was able to compare and contrast her experiences in teaching both in London and the United States. She has been teaching in London for six years now and she absolutely loves it. She told me that teaching at Cameron house can best be described as “unrealistic” as the students are incredibly bright and well behaved. Needless to say, I picked up on this the very first day. The first day in class six I helped out Alisa by checking, grading, and entering the students test scores from the previous week. Last week the students took standardized tests; they were very tough and tested many areas that we also test children on such as math and reading. However, they were also tested on areas such as logic, verbal reasoning, and non verbal reasoning, which dealt with shapes and the unscrambling of words and codes. It was very interesting and all the students did extremely well! Over half of the students tested 99+ and rank in the top percent of the students their age (10-11) in all of London. I was very nervous grading many of the test, as they are very important regarding the students’ futures! I did not want to be the one to screw it up, but I double checked my work and Alisa did too and all looked good, so I was relieved!

This week also happened to be the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee representing 60 years on the thrown! Alisa told me that the children are extremely interested in the royal family, especially since the royal wedding last spring. In order to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee, Alisa and I prepared a mini lesson with articles and video clips about the queen throughout her life! The children loved it and had so many questions! I loved helping Alisa with these tasks as they were very fun and they helped me to develop more confidence, especially dealing with something that I was not totally familiar with!

This week we also talked a lot about the summer Olympics! The children are so excited about them being held in London, they have a mini countdown chain. Coming up in the beginning of March the students have their spring fair. This is similar to a school carnival or open house back in the states, where parents and other family and friends are welcome to come and learn about what the children are learning! Of course there are games, food, and other festivities that will be going on as well! The children are looking forward to it very much as it is right around the corner. This year’s theme is the Olympics! We are working hard on decorating the whole school for this special event, so Tuesday we made giant Olympic medals and torches to hang. I helped Mary Ann and class 5 with this particular activity.  We handed out giant metallic cardboard metals along with other crafty supplies so that the children could decorate them however they pleased! Mary Ann and I looked up and posted Olympic icons and past symbols that many of the children chose to use. Once we hang up all the medals, I will be sure to take pictures to share with everyone. After we made medals we made giant torches with colorful paper for flames. The children had a blast cutting out the paper and designing their torches. I loved helping out with this task because I am very crafty myself and enjoy doing this type of activity. It was also nice for the students to get a break from their school work and show off their creative side, they really enjoyed it as well!

This week for sport I got to help out Hugh with cross country running! The courts were a little iced over from the snow we received so ironically enough we could not play hockey since the children simply wear their trainers to play in so Hugh decided we would run instead. I like to run so I was excited, but also a bit nervous because I had never been a cross country runner before. We divided the teachers among the children and took off! I ran in the middle with a couple of the girls, they were a lot of fun and they kept me entertained throughout the run with their cute comments and stories. We all pushed each other and made it through the course in one piece. All the children, except for a few really enjoyed it and surprising all the teachers did too! I was surprised to find that many of the children hardly run unless it is during sport. I told them that when I was their age we always had to time the mile run at school. They thought that did not seem like a lot of fun, but were also interested in the differences between London and the United States physical educations so I told them a bit about it! Many of the girls are dying to learn more about volleyball so in a couple weeks we might give it a go J

I had a great time this week at Cameron House and next week I will be off since the students and teachers will all be on Holiday, but the following week I will be back with Mary Ann and class 5 which is my favorite so far so I can’t wait!