Analysis of the questionnaire

This is my first post after a long time. This autumn brake turned out to be so different from what I had expected. The first week I spend searching for an au-pair that would like to come to Switzerland to stay with us and I made about a thousand phone calls to figure out how this all works here. My best friend got her baby, the twins enjoyed her mom being home and so one. And then by the end of the holiday I got this terrible frontal sinus infection that put be in bed without being able to even look into a computer... I'm still ill but better. Now I have a cough and a weird stomach but I'll survive...

I will be able to make up the three misses English lessons - so there will be a lot to write about shortly...

But now I want to write my reflection about the Rainbow Serpent Reading Project.

First I would like to share the answers to my questionnaire:

The one that didn't like is one of the best in class and in the open questions he wrote, that he got kind of bored, reading the same story over and over again.

 

For the second question I didn't make a diagram since all students said, that they have never practised reading out loud like this before.

What was surprising here was, that one of the kids that thought it was too little time had a grade 6 (A) and the other one a 4 (C). And one who was not very satisfied with the outcome thought it was too much time.

This probably was not the smartest question I asked... I actually just had one boy in mind that might say that he didn't take it serious... I could have done without this question.

Well, the two boys saying that they didn't really use the time in class were in the same group and always volunteered to go to the separate room... They must have goofed off a lot in there... Well but actually, they did great when they read their texts, so it must have been too easy for them as well.

Here, the one boy that didn't practise at home was one of the best readers. AND the one that said he didn't really like this project because it became boring. The two who practises a lot are the two the other teachers were surprised the most about their performance.

One of the three who said, that he wasn't satisfied with he outcome is the boy who had a 5.5 (A-B) even though he's freed of learning targets in most the subjects, so he's probably just very critical with himself. He could be more than satisfied with his reading. He did fantastic. The two others were two who said they could have practised more.

So these were my questions but I get so much more out of the open questions I asked at the bottom of the page:

What did you like most about this reading project?

• The MP3-listening in class (9)
• That they have gotten a CD (2)
• That it was something different (1)
• Understanding all the words and knowing how to pronounce them (1)
• Not having to study vocabulary (1)

What did you like the least about this reading project?

• Rather boring stories (5)
• Reading in front of the class (4)
• Nothing (4)
• Always reading the same text (1)
• The audio book was read too slowly (1)
• Uncomfortable earphones (1)

What do you like the most about our English lessons?

• The MP3-listening (5)
• The songs (3)
• That it's different form just going through the Young World (2)
• Reading along the audio (1)
• Working in groups (1)
• The new method (1)
• Learning a foreign language - I want to speak it perfectly one day (1)
• I like all of it (1)

What do you like the least about our English lessons?

• Nothing (9)
• Listening to "shopping for a school camp" so often (2)
• It's sometimes hard to understand everything you say (2)
• The good morning conversation (1)
• Translate each and every word (1) 

Well the last four questions give me so much more insight in what the students liked or didn't like. That's worth so much more than just knowing how many of them "liked" the project. And I'm pretty sure that many answers are true for many of them... I shouldn't have asked for the best and the worst but for the five things they liked the most and the five things they liked the least... So this was my little reflection to the questionnaire... My reflection to the whole project will be in a separate post. 

2nd of October - CD Cover and questionnaire

To today was the last day of this quarter and the whole day was a bit weird. I got a text message in the night, that my teaching partner was feeling sick and staying home, so the day did not exactly go the way I planned it, but this is what I got done:

First, I held my good morning conversation with the whole class. Then I asked them all to say it in the "I" form instead of the "we" form. (I knew that there were some kids that were really scared of having this conversation so I wanted to give them the chance to get some more practise). Then I read the names of the 6 people that had to have this conversation with me today and asked them to stand up. Then I asked the others to walk around in class and acting like "Mrs. Kündig" by greeting them with "Good morning, ..." so they could reply. I still had the blackboard all the way down and told the 6 to face the back, while the others could read my part. So I gave them another 5 minutes to practise. I was funny to see how many of them had actually initialised the whole speech. Even the part, they never said before. So when I had the conversation with those 6, they all did very well. I recorded it again and now I'll listen to all the recordings and make the grades.

Then I handed out this piece of paper, that was going to be the CD cover. Soon they realised, that it had their grade on it and most of them were really happy. Here are the graded they got: 5x 6, 5x 5.75,  5x 5.5, 1x 5.25 and 1x 4. The one with the 4 (who could have done so much better) wasn't happy at all, but I wanted to talk to him after school so I didn't bother. I showed them how to fold and glue the paper so they'd get a CD cover and handed out the CD's with their readings on. I told them, not to get confused, but that this grade was going to influence their speaking grade and not their reading grade.

So next thing I did was handing out a questionnaire about the "Rainbow Serpent - Project" and went through the questions with them. I realised I should have added one more category such as "it was ok" for questions 1 & 3 so some of the "I liked it." were probably just a "it was ok"...

So here's the questionnaire I used and I will evaluate it and write about the results in my reflection: Questionnaire

Then we went on with singing our songs. I meant to play the "viva la vida" on my guitar, but I'm not good enough to watch them do the movements and play at the same time so I turned on the radio again. It's fun :-)

And then I did the craziest thing... There is this song "Old Man Emu" by John Williamson... A rather old fashioned absolutely "nuts" song from Australia... I decoded the text for my husband and stepson before so I had it ready on my computer and printed it out before the lesson started... You have to listen to the song to know what I'm talking about: Old Man Emu. And read the lyrics: Lyrics of Old Man Emu
You can imagine how they looked at me. I told them, that we don't have to sing it if they really didn't want to, but I wanted to know how many of them would actually give it a try and surprisingly all of them raised their hand. Ok... So here comes the next song I'll practise on the guitar ;-)))

Oh yes, about the songs they gave me... I googled some of them and was shocked about the texts!!! There are so many songs that sound great but if you listening to the lyrics gave me a shiver down my spine... I mean come on!!! Good thing I asked them to give me three songs each so hopefully I find one song from each child I can sing with a primary class...

So, at the end of the lesson I asked the one guy that had a 4 to stay behind and asked him if he was happy with his grade. He told me NO. And I told him, that I knew that he could have done soooo much better if he had taken the time to practise, like all the others did. I told him, that if he was willing to practise over the holiday, I'd give him a second chance after the break and that I'd let him read to me again and take the average so if he'd make a 6, he could get a 5. He was sure that he wanted to take this opportunity and try to improve his grade and I'm curious how he will do after the break.

1st of October 2015 - 2nd TPR music lesson

Well today the class had a Maths test and it took them two whole lessons to get through it.
So we just had a quick music session... We sang though our songs and finished the movements to "viva la vida". It's so much fun and I really think the kids are enjoying it a lot! And it's cool to see how well they know those words and how well they act them out.

We sang it along the CD player with -10% speed and it's quite fast but they could handle it. Then we sang it again in the regular speed and this was kind of hectic (for me too I have to admit ;-))

Especially the "pillars of sand" are fantastic. For pillars they came up with making the pillars out of their lower arms in front of them, so elbows around breast height and fists at eye level and for the sand they kind of move their fingers like they were typing on a keyboard. and going down - like you would show someone that it rains or snows. And it's funny how this started changing the sound of the song too. Now they sing pillars really powerful and the sand real soft. It's amazing. I hope I can get some parents to agree filming them and putting it on the Internet...