Projects, Performances, and Parent Teacher Conferences

This week the students worked on creating haiku's and weaving for their art projects.  My cooperating teacher required the students to write their own haiku's based on an assigned season.  Each group of students were given Summer, Autumn, Spring, and Winter to write about.  Many of the students chose winter because the Christmas holiday is fast approaching.  I had the opportunity to assist the students in creating their haiku's by using school tablets and computers.  However, the process was very difficult due to the internet connection and the capacity of the google drive utilized by the school.  I displayed these projects on bulletin boards for the parent teacher conferences.  Below are pictures of the students projects.

 The parent teacher conferences at the school are conducted the same way as in America.  The students are released about twenty minutes early from school for two days in order to complete the parent teacher conferences.  The teachers stay until six each night for both days and discuss with the parents their student's scores as well as progress in class.  The only difference found in the parents teacher conferences are the languages spoken. The students learn the Irish language in school, but only five percent of the parents speak the Irish language.  Therefore, the teachers communicate in English to the parents.  These experiences and language barriers have been wonderful and will help me to empathize more with students as well as parents that have language barriers.

During this past week the students have also been practicing for their Christmas Concert.  I found it unusual that the students were pulled out of class at various times throughout the day to practice the music the music they would be singing and playing.  In America the music teacher would spend their related arts time practicing or schedule after school practices to avoid the loss of instructional time.  I was able to sit in on their practices and noticed that students were singing traditional Christmas songs in the Irish language as well as in the English language.  All the students are doing a wonderful job with playing different types of musical instruments and singing.  Below are some pictures of the students practicing traditional Christmas songs for their Christmas Concert in December.