First part
Subject: The beginning of this course and my interests.
Introduction
Belgium, the country that I come from, is really small. I was curious to
come to Mondragon because its bigger than my little town in Belgium. I
came to the Basque country to get to know the culture, the language &
the peoples better. My first month here was more like a holiday. But in the
meantime, I had to analyze some building, rivers, bridges in Donosita,
Gasteiz & Bilbo. That was interesting but the courses that we follow now,
are more interesting for me because its more related to the school
context. In my last internship in Belgium, I had a lot of people who were
bilingual or speak another language. I want to help these children with
their language and everything it entails. Thats why these lessons are
really instructive for me.
tell my pupils to use other kinds of communication too. For example, body
language, pictures, symbols
I have already learned about CLIL in my own country. It was a subject that
overwhelmed me, that really interest me, as I said already in my
introduction.
I can use these things to understand a text better but I can also introduce
them to my pupils in the classroom. They can also use it! For example, we
make a list of information we already know and another list of information
we dont know yet. I made also a glossary to understand all the words
better. Thats also something my pupils can use to understand the content
better.
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A school can choose to teach English, but only in songs, dramatics & poetry.
Formeel taallerenFrans
Facultatief
Formeel taallerenFrans
Verplichtleergebied
Mag sinds 2014, indien (sinds2004)
If a school teach French in the second classes, they can teach English at the age of 10.
goede beheersing van het
Nederlands Eindtermen
>DTFR
But French has always the priority.
Taalinitiatie
Altijd eerst Frans
Nieuwetaalinitiatie
(Engelsof Duits)
Facultatief (geen eindtermen) Facultatief
>DTMT
Talensensibilisering
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How many students have Basque as their mother tongue in the Basque
country?
In in Belgium there are 24 million peoples that speak Dutch. Plus, minus 17 million people
live in the Netherlands, 6,5 million people live in Belgium & 400 Thousand in Suriname.
Not many? 60 percent?
We have more diversity in Belgium than in the Basque country, thats for sure.
How many languages do you think are spoken in the Basque country?
Which are the most common ones? Between 20 & 40 languages.
How do you think schools cope with this new situation?
They do a lot of researching on situation, changing, but they dont have
the skills to do something about it in the classrooms. I think they are too
busy with researching.
I didnt know before that they speak so many languages in the Basque
country. Also, the migration is very remarkable. I think its weird that they
havent education that is adjusted to it. Because when people from Mexico
want to study here, they need an adjusted education. They speak Spanish
but they cant understand a word Basque. Some people think that they
can speak Spanish & understand Basque or speak Basque, but they dont
understand it at all. Basque is more complicated then Spanish.
The schools need help to handle with the multicultural situations. Belgium
is a little bit more developed about this subject. For example, they dont
have to follow all the same religion lessons. They can choose with religion
lessons they will follow. They have a lot of special teachers who are with
the children with special needs in the classroom. I dont mean that a child
with another culture is a child with a special need. But I mean that we
have more individual education, we see every child individual. Its very
difficult for a child to come here at the age of 10 & dont speak a word
Basque. They need more individual education. But if there is no individual
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Not only I can use these strategies now, my pupils in the classroom can
use these strategies also. For example, if they dont understand a word in
the text, they can search it in the dictionary. If they dont understand the
text because its too long, they can underline the most important things.
I found it difficult to read the article, but I used some help to understand
the article better. I made a glossary for the words I didnt understood, to
translate the words I used a dictionary. To remember the text a little bit
better, I marked the important words/sentences. If I read a whole page, I
surrounded the most important words. Ive learnt that most of the
immigrants attend to an A-model school. They will have social problems
because they cant speak Basque. Because of this there will be
segregation. We dont want segregation, we want integration! But the
problem the economic situation, the immigrants have not so much money,
so they cant go to the private schools. This is what I have red in the
article.
Conclusion
In the future, I want to work with children with special abilitys, buts also
children who need help with their language. Thats why Im really
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Bibliography
Jasme Cenoz (ed.) (2008). Teaching through Basque. Achievements and
challenges. Clevedon: Multiligual matters.
Sports Stats
http://www.learner.org/libraries/tfl/german/garcia/analyze.html# last date:
the 22th of April 2017
Second part
Subject: CLIL/teaching in another language than the mother tongue.
Introduction
Content and language are really important in primary school. We need to
understand the language to understand the content. I think thats one of
the most interesting subjects I ever did research on. Im going to do an
examination about CLIL, because Im curious about the possibilities to
teach content in another language than the mother tongue of the children.
My internship will take place in Bilbao, Im going to teach totally in English.
I want to compare my impressions in Bilbao with my conclusions about
teaching in English in Belgium.
Meaningful moments
Monday the 20th of March
We began the lessons with looking back at the video. As you know, Im really
interested in children who are learning a new/second language. Thats why
the video Sports Stats inspired me. For my internship in Bilbao I want to
teach in English. This is not the childrens mother tongue, so this will be a
challenge. Because of this video I got a lot of good ideas. For example, I
can use body language, symbols & pictures if the pupils dont understand
me. The teacher stickled cards on the furniture in the classrooms and in
the whole school. I think this is a really good idea to remember all the
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After reflecting on the video, we talked about the article weve read using
the minority language as the language of instruction. Ive learned a lot
about minority language. It can have a million of speakers, but still be the
minority language in your class. Its just the language that is less spoken
in your classroom. I think English will be the minority language in Bilbao
but also in my hometown in Belgium. I didnt know that parents choose
most the D-model, because speaking Basque is part of the Basque identity.
I was surprised that parents would pay attention to speak Basque all the
time.
After this we had to make connections between the two articles weve read
& the video:
Using the minority language as the language of instruction
Basque, Spanish, and Immigrant Minority languages in Basque
schools
Sport Stats
This was a really good group work; we were talking about the subjects &
found the similarities and the differences together.
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One group had to finish their presentation. The last presentation was a
really good one, it was well summarized. I think our presentation was too
long. Next presentation, we have to think about how we can make it
shorter.
We got a little presentation about CLIL. Ive learned these things before in
Belgium. But its good to hear it in English, Ill remember more and Ill
improve my English. What I remembered most was; the fact that we are
neither focusing on the content or on the language in CLIL, but you are
learning both. The pupils are learning a content, for example they are
learning about animals. But in the meanwhile, they are learning the
language of that content for example, a rabbit & an elephant.
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Conclusion
Every day Ive learnt more about the language and the content and how to
teach this. Im looking forward to my internship in Bilbao to examine my
experiences. I want to teach a content in English, I want to see how the
children react. I want to know if its possible to explain everything in
English and use body language to support the understanding of English.
In the future, I would like to teach in English and investigate the results of
teaching in English to children whose mother tongue isnt English.
Bibliography
Ramos, F. (2003). Teaching English to immigrant students in the United
States: A brief summary of programs and methods. Revista Electronica de
Ivestigacion Educativa, 5 (2).
Retrieved month day, year from:
http://redie.uabc.mx/vol5no2/contents-ramos.html
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Third part
Subject: My internship in Bilbao, our group work & instructional strategies
Introduction
I did my internship in Colegio Angeles Custodios Ikastetxea in Bilbao.
Amaia, my tutor, showed me the school the first day of my internship. Its
an enormous school, so big! Ive never seen a school like this. There are
babys, early childhood, primary, secondary and adult education! I
observed in total 11 different class groups. I had a really great time and I
learnt so much from the pupils and from the teachers there! I want to
compare my experiences from my internship with the 4 th Unit of work,
instructional strategies. But I compared also with other units of work.
Meaningful moments
Monday the 8th of May
Amaia showed me around in the school. She is going to show me the way
every day again because otherwise I will get lost. After the guided tour,
Ive met Javi, also an English teacher in the school. I observed his classes
in the 3th grade of primary. They were learning about animals. They had to
do a word search and put the number of the animals in the right hovel.
This is a really nice exercise for the pupils but not for an hour The
teacher gives the papers and his work is done. Being a teacher cant be
like that! I hope I can teach in another way. I think Im kind of lucky,
because I cant speak in Spanish or Basque so I have to speak English all
the time. Javi speaks a lot in Spanish with the children. I watched a video
Mapping Planet Earth. The teacher in this video uses a lot of materials to
manipulate and she let the pupils move. I really like this way of teaching
because the teacher has to motivate the pupils to learn English, not
demotivate them by giving them so much tasks
After this I went with Javi to the 6 th grade of primary. They were learning
about clothes. The students received a paper with a drawing, they had to
match the number with the right sort of clothes. It was actually the same
exercise than in the 3th grade but instead of animals, the teacher uses
clothes. I think the lessons are too theoretical. The teacher has to teach
the real English. The pupils have to move, they have to speak to each
other in English, they have to feel that this is a real language!
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After a long break, I went to Amaia, to the English class of 3 years old
students. I was surprised about what they can understand in English. Most
of them understand more than third or sixth grade.
Javi showed me the 5th grade of primary. He was teaching grammar in the
students book. It was about dragons, all the information about the
dragons was not real. In this way, the students think English is only used
for stories, rhymes and songs. I can compare this way of teaching with
teaching French in my country. It was also very theoretical and we couldnt
start a conversation in French. For example, if you give the students a
letter from students in France they will be very motivated, because they
want to write an answer back in French. In this case, they can understand
the meaning of learning another language or speaking another language.
"the ultimate goal of the learning process should be to engender in
language education students" the willingness to communicate (MacIntyre,
Clment, Drnyei & Noels: 1998). If they really want to communicate in
that language, they can!
I loved this day! It was very tiring but really instructive.
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all. I have read this in: What do teachers should consider in L2/L3
classrooms? After this they were playing bingo with names of animals. I
liked these games very much! Unfortunately, it was the only day I saw
games in Javis classes. I made two different memories for in Amaias
class. The pupils were really glad that they could play a game with me. I
explained the game. It was really difficult in the beginning for them to
understand me. After a while they could play it very well and they told me:
I won or Teacher, Im sad I lost. In the future, I think I will use the
memory with food and animals. They had to think more about the words
and the meaning of the words, so thats why I think this was a better one.
But maybe only with the animals, its better to use one subject.
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knows that she is happy. As, I said before its really important to create a
safe environment in the classroom. Its really good that the teacher knows
if her students are mad, sad, happy or hungry. Mathew answered by
touching his tummy so now the teacher knows that Mathew is hungry.
After this the pupils were sitting in the circle and the teacher showed a
poster with farm animals on it. The kids had to show were the horse is on
the poster and how many horses they see. The teacher asked some pupils
to come and touch the animal, then they heard the noise of the animal.
The pupils liked this very much and they were laughing all the time. In this
exercise, they learned by connecting the sound to the name of the animal
in English. In this case, they are connecting content and language. They
hear the word: pig and they have to show the teacher how a pig looks like.
After this they also had to make the sound of a pig. I saw also an example
in the video Mapping Planet Eart, the children had to show the teacher
the sun in French and so on.
Monday the 15th of May
We began the classes with praying. Each day the teacher takes another
student in front of the class, he/she speaks first and the class repeat. After
this the teacher asked which day, month and year we are. He writes this
always on the board. They all had to make different exercises in the 6 th
grade. This is because there are a lot of children with special needs. So,
they were all making a task but I still think its better to do games all
together. Its better for their social contact and for their English as well. Or
he could use Scaffolding.
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for these children. They are learning the same thing as the other students,
but with support!
Amaia said I could explain the task for today. I liked it very much and the
children all understood me. In the last class of Javi they had the same
tasks as last day. They are finished with one paper; they have to do
another one. The paper is full of exercises. I think its demotivating for
them, they are exhausted of making exercises like this. The teacher said
that one pupil has finished all the papers. Everyone can finish all the
papers, if you are quiet. This is not true; all the students work on their
own tempo. The boy will get more self-confidence because of the
compliment. But the others will be sad because they cant finish all these
tasks. In unit two we saw a video about the SIOP model, one of the four
features is appropriate pacing. Everyone has his own tempo, not everyone
can do all the exercises.
I prepared a little game for the 5th grade. They had to stand up, behind
their chair. I said some action verbs: sleeping, playing football, running,
walking They had to represent this to each other. After this little
exercise, I separated the class group in two groups. They could choose a
name for their own group. I wrote these names on the board. I asked a
pupil to come, I whispered a verb in her ear. She had to present this verb
in front of the class. The pupil who raced his hand first, could give me an
answer. This group got one point and so on The pupils liked the game. I
was really enjoying the moment! Because all the pupils were very
enthusiastic, the pupils who doesnt like English as well. After my game,
they had to make a lot of work for the teacher. They got two pages of
exercises to fill in. There was a girl really demotivated. I asked her if she
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hates English. She said that she likes the games but not the paperwork. I
can understand her because it was too much work. Even I was bored of the
amount of the exercises. I said this already before but you have to
motivate these pupils as a teacher!
I was alone as a teacher in the class with the five years old students,
because Amaia had to go to another class. We danced and played some
games with the pupils.
I had an interview with a singer in the school for another project. The
problem with English, she said, is that you have to pay a lot to follow
courses. She is saving money to follow next year English courses. She also
told me that its really difficult to get a job in Bilbao if you cant speak
English.
Conclusion
This learning diary was more about my internship but I used so much
information from the 2.8 course. I used all the things I learnt from U1, 2, 3
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Bibliography
Mapping Planet Earth
http://www.learner.org/libraries/tfl/french/appel/index.html, last date: the
7th of May.
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