Malmø Exams

I recently went through my exam in Malmø at the teacher training college. The exam was on the subject “Language, culture and Identity II”. In the exam we had a small week to answer questions on “the relationship between a specific subculture and the dominant culture in which it manifests itself”, “difference between plot and story in the movie Pulp Fiction, using causality and mis-en-scene” unfortunately the only day I missed school (due to a bus strike in DK) was the day that one of our teachers went through this subject. We also had to describe the question of the terminology “Race only being used to imply non-white people, and why whites are seen as the human norm” this was quite an interesting question that goes along well with internationalization and our own perception of who we are and how the world sees us.

Another question is about the difference in the narrative between a movie or text and a specific computer game. Finally we had to choose different pictures and make a analysis of the selected images and the subjected they covered.

I thought that some of the exam questions were quite interesting, but it was also visible that we had been thought by two teachers who kind of had their own approach to the course and know they had to divide the exam questions between them, even though some questions, I believe had more relevance to the course then others.

I have not had any feedback on my final exam at the course, so I am still waiting anxiously.

In the snow: The Intercultural museum

Hi Mie

Sound like an interesting museum, I like the way that you have to behave or dress according to the particular conducts in the religion that you are looking at. It could be fun to see a small scale version be made by the next International Teacher class for the school next door, if we do believe in mixing English lessons and RSCC together. It could also be fun to watch it tried out in a school classroom as part of the bigger classes showing it for younger classes.

Have you meet with your practice placement class?

Take care on the slopes and enjoy

Kind regards

Nicolas

PC games are good ......

We have finally finished our practice placement at Humpfry Skolan in Malmø. It’s been a mixed experience working at the school. We have had a good contact with the class teacher Erica, who has lived in Denmark a few years. We had a plan to teach the 6’th grade in fantasy genre and the 8’th grade in film.

The biggest challenge we had was getting classroom management to work. There was properly a feeling of us being interns and that our lessons were a chance to have fun and not pay attention.

I  have talked to the classroom teacher about this and she thinks we are doing what we can, she thought it was good that I got out and around in the room when I was talking to the students, and that it helped keeping their attention.

At the Malmø teacher training college I am taking a course in Language, Culture and Identity part 2, it is really interesting and the only problem is that we have too few hours in this course. Every time a good discussion is about to commence, the teacher has to lead us back on the schedule and start up something new. 

One of the concepts is how to learn to teach from understanding how good video and pc games work. It is quite a good theory on many points. Theories are that pc games let the user get an easy introduction into a new world, it teaches the background and how to use simple tools to operate this new world or knowledge.

 It then lets the user choose what and how he/she wants to solve a problem and after solving the problem you get to use your new knowledge to acquire more knowledge, use it time and time over and let you operate on your specific skill level.

It also talks about how text is introduced and made interesting for the user to use.  The question is how do we successfully implement the way that good pc games motivates and trains the user, into a classroom. 

Something about working with students at different levels that match their strengths and motivates them, to use text that gives background knowledge and knowledge to use in the course.  Learning new tools and keep training them in different ways and situations. Giving students different ways to solve a task and let them choose their own way and method.

There are many more good theories to be learned from this book: James Paul Gee, what video games have to teach us about learning and literacy.

Although I don’t think the book it self is particularly well written or easy to use as a textbook, there is to much “stuffing” in it and there should have been more emphasis on the points he wants to make and how to implement them into a classroom. Therefore it is the theory of the book and the thought behind it I like.

Teaching at Humfryskolan in Malmø

Wendsday we thought our first lesson at the Humfryskolan in inner Malmø. It is a school that boosts of its creative teaching environment, where music and film are some of the new ways for students to express their fallings and used as an outlet when the students need to let out steam.

The school is a public school with only 90 students or so and there are only classes from sixth grade to ninth grade (on line).

From seventh grade all students are provided with a Mac laptop (which made Ulrik a happy man)

 that they are responsible for until they leave school. They use the computer in many lessons and also at home doing homework.

At the school there are several music rooms where students at any time can play on the instruments. In some of the classrooms there are electric drum sets (enables use of earphones) and keyboards. It is also allowed to use the walls to paint on and for the students to express their feelings in art and craft.

The first day teaching, was a interesting experience, I was going to teach about film genre and themes to the eighth graders and started to divide the students into groups. But all through the lessen their was noise, people looking at their computer or mobil phone, one girl taking a call in class and students going in and out of the room as they pleased. No one really wanted to speak English or answer the questions and when I asked them to do group work, they just ran off in different directions and most of them came back with no results or interest in the lesson. In the middle of the lesson two girls were verbally fighting across the class room. There was only a small group of students that wanted to work and come up with a product. It ended up with in the last lesson that I had to get more back to basic with them and reform the groups back into the horse shoe table that they started out with.  Since most of them were unable to perform any kind of group work.

The following three hours that Benita thought in the sixth grade class, were equally exiting and demanding.

So now it is back to the thinking box and find ideas on how we can get a class with not much discipline to behave for a three hour English lesson.

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