Monday + Carnival presentations

On Monday I started to have a lesson with the 9th graders. They are working with the topic "School shootings". The copier wasn't working quite well so Carsten wasn't able to copy the worksheets. So instead of working with text about school shootings we started with some songs. The song 'I don't like Mondays' is a very famous song especially for the shootingincident in Clevenland. Brenda Spencer shot 8 children and her only reason for the act was: I don't like Mondays.
The teacher explained a  bit about it and discussed the song with the pupils. After class I told him the story of Kim de Gelder and he asked me if I could tell the story in class on Wednesday. So task n°1 :)

The third hour I normally had classes with Karin in the 5th grade. She wasn't in so there was a substitute, but they asked me if I could participate a bit more this lesson because the English skills of the substitute weren't that great. So we taught the class together.
The pupils had to read a text about Robin Hood. They always do it in pairs or more and go and sit in different rooms. After 10 minutes or so they come back. Then it was up to me. I agreed with the substitute that I would check if they knew what was in the text and the difficult words. So I asked the pupils : " Who can tell me what the text is about, in your own words and in English? " They looked surprised at me because they sometimes have the habit to answer in Danish. But I told them they had to try. So the pupils tried. I asked some extra questions and they all answered in English.
Next to the text, there's always a glossary from English to Danish. There weren't any difficult words according to the pupils.
If I think about it afterwards I could have done some pronunciation exercise with them. So that I say the English word and they repeat after me, but I didn't really think about it at that time. After that, the substitute took over. the pupils had to translate the English text into Danish. I can't really help them with that so I just listened to them and made sure they were doing what they had to do. The last 10 minutes, they had to read the text out loud in English and 2 boys acted it out. That was quite funny to see.
The next hour I had the 8th grade but the teacher wasn't feeling so well and he just wanted to tell the pupils some important information about the renting of books and so on. So there was no English lesson.

Then there was the most exciting moment of the day. I told you in my previous blogenteries that the pupils were working on their carnival activity. On Friday I wasn't convinced that they would be ready on time but they would get 15-20' on Monday and then it had to be ready. When I entered the classroom they were already finishing it, but they still needed their 20 minutes.
Then it was presentation time. They had to present what they had made. I must say that I was quite impressed by the results. You have to imagine that these pupils don't really know carnival , or a float and so on.
Here you can see some pictures of the results. The first picture is from Team 1. They had to think of a route for a carnival parade through Haderslev. Team 2 ( picture 2 +3) had to come up with a costume for the people on the float and decorations for the street.
Team 3 had to design a float.  All the groups made something in the spirit of Denmark. Team 1 calls their event Fastelavn ( = Danish for carnival) and plays Danish music. Team 2 has decorations in the colours of Denmark ( red + white) and they would give the people lego. Also their costume is a giant piece of lego. Team 3 : their float is made of lego and is a house with a garden.  I think they all love their country and why not?! It is a great country !!

After their presentations I let them hear some Dutch carnival songs and they were laughing all the time and singing along at a certain moment. =)

I also told them I was in a carnival group and I told them I had contact with them while I was here. I really did actually because I wanted to give these pupils something from Belgian carnival. So a few weeks ago I got a package with small rubber ducks in it ( yes, I know, ducks again ;) ) because that's what our carnival group throws out at the parades this year. They were really surprised and really happy with it.

After the lesson, Carsten came to me and said that it all went very well. I was really happy because it is a different way of teaching here in Denmark but I really enjoyed it and it was nice to hear that it was really good.

I will tell you my adventures of the rest of the week in another message because otherwise this one will be too long !