In week 9, 10 and 11 Sebastian and I had our teaching practice here in Iceland.
We were at a school called Langholtsskóli, which is a school with 561 pupils spread on kindergarten to 10th grade.
We had 12 lessons a week in 4 different classes – one 8th grade, two 9th grades and one 10th grade.
Because we have chosen to do a Danish class instead of an English class on the university we had to teach Danish, which was a new experience.
In Iceland it is mainly listening to a lecture by the teacher and the pupils doesn’t talk so much, so our main focus was to make the pupils speak the language with use of cooperative learning. We also wanted to do kinesthetic teaching, which is physical learning and focuses on the pupils using their bodies while learning. This was to make their learning more fun.
It was very difficult because we weren’t there for more than 3 weeks. We had to get to know the pupils and their different levels of Danish. The first 2 weeks all the pupils had difficulties with letting loose and commit to the tasks we gave them. It was first on the last couple of days they felt relaxed and trusted us enough to do it, and had fun.
The biggest difference between the Danish and the Icelandic pupils is from our experience that the pupils here isn’t involved and engaged in the teaching. A reason for this could be that the pupils aren't used to this learning style so it could have been very useful to be there a week or two more to see if this was the reason. A more positive difference is that the Icelandic pupils are more polite and doesn’t interrupt the lessons as much as the Danish pupils.
Camilla A. Pedersen
