Emmanuel Macron’s Changes to Primary Education in France

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CP, is the youngest class in the French primary school. Children in this year group are usually 6 or 7 and in my school, there is only one CP class. Something that I have recently noticed in my school is that some of the pupils from the CP class are in the CE2 class at certain times of the day. Initially, I found this confusing, as the next class up from CP is CE1, therefore I did not think this was a composite class. Why were 6/7 year olds sometimes in the same class as 8/9 year olds? I thought that my teacher, Madame Royer, would be the best person to ask as she speaks English well. When I began to ask her about this, she knew immediately what I was talking about, and I realised that this was probably quite a big issue in the school. She said that the CP class is the largest class in the school (this is also something I have noticed during my first couple of weeks), with 29 pupils. The other classes have around 20-25 pupils in them, and therefore the CP teacher can sometimes find that 29 pupils are too many to handle. This is also made worse by the fact that these children are the youngest, meaning they are harder to manage and usually do not concentrate as well. These two factors combined, means that the CP teacher has a lot of work to do, therefore the teachers in the school decided that it would be best if around 5 of the CP pupils went into the CE2 class (the smallest class in the school), whenever the CP teacher saw it as appropriate (for example, if she needed a rest from looking after 29 6 year olds!).

Madame Royer explained to me that this was really not popular with the parents of the children who spent time in 2 different classes, as they would rather their children remained in the same class all day, with children of the same age. She then told me that Emmanuel Macron (the French President) wanted there to be a maximum of 12 pupils in every CP class in poorer neighbourhoods of France, in order for the younger children to receive more teacher attention earlier on. Another change that has recently been implemented in some primary schools (particularly in Nice and Marseille) by The President, is that they are only having 4 day weeks (a whole day off on a Wednesday instead of a half day). This means that children are in school for four days, and out of school for three. In Scotland, the majority of schools are open Monday to Friday, with no half days. This is not seen as an unachievable number of days for children to be in school by Scottish teachers.

Emmanuel Macron also wants compulsory education to start at the age of three, from September 2019. This means that schools across France will require an additional 800 school staff in total. The current age for compulsory education in France is six, when children enter the CP class. The President feels that nursery in France should no longer merely be treated as ‘childcare’, but it should be educational too.

In my opinion, I think that three is too young for children to begin compulsory education. However, I do also agree that six is too old. I also feel that 12 as a maximum number of pupils for CP classes in disadvantaged areas seems like not enough. This would mean needing more teachers in every school and from my previous experience, 12 pupils seems more than manageable.

 

  • The Connexion, (2017), “Changes in Store as Children Head Back to School”
  • The Connexion, (2018) “School to Start from Age 3 in 2019”.

Week 3 of Placement – 26th – 30th of March

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Monday 26th

CE2 – I began by asking one of the pupils to write the date in English on the board. They usually know how to say the word properly but their spelling is often wrong so I have to help them with this using the French alphabet. I continued with the topic of feelings with the class, revising over the words they had learnt the week before such as happy, sad, excited, bored, angry etc. I asked them to repeat after me, and repeated this several times as the teacher said she wanted the children to learn the words orally before trying to write them down in their jotters. I felt that the children seemed quite tired, probably because it was a Monday morning. I feel that this is a flaw in my daily timetable as I see CE2 at this time every day, and often find that their energy is not as high as my other classes. This timetable was implemented by my teachers therefore I have to follow it and try my best to keep up the energy in my CE2 classes at such an early time. Next, introduced some new, more complex words to describe feelings to the class. These were confused, worried, thirsty, upset and surprised. I noticed that the children found thirsty particularly difficult to say, and this is because of the “th” sound. In French, they do not used this sound and I have realised that it is very difficult for the children to say, as well as “h”. Therefore, I had to repeat the word thirsty to the class several times. I had made a mistake in my printing out of the flashcards, meaning that some children did not get certain words. This was very confusing, and the class teacher had to go and photo copy more of certain words so that every child had 12 words on their flashcards. I had the children coming to me and talking very quickly in French which was confusing but I managed to work it out and help the children find the right flashcards.

CM2 – carrying on with the topic of wild animals, Monsieur Apruncule asked me to read out a short report about The Safari in Tanzania. Within this there were many difficult phrases and names of wild animals that he wanted me to pronounce to the class. They then took turns reading out the short paragraphs with me correcting them and explaining what the phrases mean. I then wrote the new vocabulary (zebra, antelope, baboon, lion, giraffe for example) on the board for the class to copy into their jotters. As I walked around the room to check everyone had their spelling correct, I noticed that a few children had put accents on the word elephant, as the French word for elephant is éléphant. I had to tell the class that in English we do not use accents, but I could see how the children could get mixed up as the word is spelt the same.

CP- I continued with the small groups working on learning the colours in English.  Firstly, I made sure that each child could tell me their name, age and gender for some revision and to keep up the phrases being learnt. I had new flashcards to use with the children, that had coloured objects on them (an apple, orange, banana etc).  I then asked them the question “what colour is this?”, and the children always started to reply with “an apple!” or “an orange!”. This confirmed to me that the children have not really understood what I am asking when I say, “what colour is this?”, they have just merely learnt that the correct response is to shout a colour! So, I made sure that the children knew what I was asking them before proceeding.

CM1 – We continued with the topic of food, asking “do you like?” and responding with “yes, I do” or “no, I don’t”. I began by standing at the front of the class and showing the class flashcards of food to ensure that they could remember the vocabulary we learnt from last week. We then had a quick class discussion about what foods we did like and did not like, with the children answering my questions about their favourite foods. I gave the children a worksheet to do which had a little maze that they had to follow in order to find out which characters liked which foods and then fill in the blanks accordingly. The children had an important question for me at this point, which was why do we always write a capital ‘I’ when talking about ourselves? For example, we would never write “i like bananas”, we would write “I like bananas”. However, Madame Royer explained to me that the children would never usually write a capital letter in the middle of a sentence by itself. I had never considered that the children would find this confusing and I found this very interesting. Once the class had finished this worksheet and stuck it into their English jotters, I thought it would be a fun way to end the lesson to read the children a funny book. It was called “Ketchup on your cornflakes?” The class found this very amusing, as the book asked questions such as “do you like custard on your head?” and other silly questions. The children then had to reply with “yes, I do” or “no, I don’t”, so this was an excellent way to practice the phrases we had learnt but in a new, fun way for the children. I felt that due to this they were well engaged and enjoying learningand speaking English.

CE1 – On Monday with CE1, the teacher wanted me to introduce some new vocabulary to the class, as they were finding ‘classroom instructions’ easy now that we had done it a few times in the class. I introduced the topic of ‘classroom objects’ or ‘objects de la classe’ in French. In order to do this, I began by asking “qu’est-ce que c’est?” (what is it?) whilst pointing at certain objects in the class like pens, pencils, the board, pencil cases, chairs, desks etc. I then told the class what these words are in English and wrote them on the board so that they could see the words. The class teacher wanted the children to write the vocabulary in English in their jotters, then write the word in French, and draw a small picture beside this. This took the children quite a while, but once they were all finished I suggested that we could play Simon says again, just to refresh the children’s’ memories and also to have a little bit of fun as they had just spent a while writing in their jotters. This was approved by the teacher and to my delight the children knew the classroom instructions very well. This gave me a huge sense of achievement, especially because in this class, the teacher does not speak any English therefore it is much harder for me to explain tasks and new vocabulary, as there is no translation.

Tuesday 27th

CE2 –  On Tuesday I continued with the feelings vocabulary with the CE2 class. However, to begin the lesson, the class teacher wanted me to write the date in full in English on the board, and also the days of the week. This was so that the children could copy it into their English jotters and have a copy of it to look at in the future. After this, there was a couple of extra words that I wanted the children to learn in terms of feelings. These were, proud, shy, and worried.  In order for the children to consolidate their newly learnt vocabulary from last week, the teacher and I agreed that a worksheet would be a suitable task. This worksheet had a number of facial expressions on it, with blank spaces underneath. The class’ job was to figure out what emotion each person was feeling, and write the feeling in English underneath each person. The first few feelings were easily done by the class as they were words like happy, sad and bored. However, when it came to feelings such as, nervous and excited, a lot of the class got the two mixed up. This was the same for confused and shy. I explained to the class that any of these words would be suitable as long as they matched the facial expressions of the people. I didn’t want the class to get too fixated on what the “correct” answers were, as long as they made sense.

CM2 – Carrying on from Monday, the class completed a worksheet about wild animals, where they had to look at a big picture and answer questions such as, “how many giraffes are there?” and “what animal is on the car?”.  I read out each question and went through the answers with the class, they found this task relatively easy to complete but their pronunciation usually needs adjusting. After this, the class teacher was keen to move on to a new topic. This was directions, for example, below, above, on top of, next to, near to, far from etc. We used objects that the children already know the names for like chair, lamp, bed, in order to practice these phrases. I used pictures of the objects and stuck these in certain positions on the board. For example, if the bed was below the lamp, the children would need to give the response “the bed is below the lamp”, and so on. I felt that the class found this easy and probably slightly boring, as they are very good at creating longer sentences.

CP – Before the class began on Tuesday, the class teacher came to see me to explain what she wanted me to teach the children. She said that she wanted me to combine the topics I had taught them by playing a game like ‘Guess Who?’. In this I would give each of the children in the small groups a flashcard, with a picture of a food on it. Then I would say, “it is yellow”, and if a pupil was holding a yellow food, they would lift it up. Next, I would say if the person holding my object of choice was a boy or girl, and this would eliminate more children. Then, the other children would have to guess who it was by saying “his name is….” Or “her name is….”. This seemed like a lot for the youngest children in the school to remember but the vocabulary was all things that they had learnt before. This is with the exception of the children needing to tell me their peers names by saying “his” or “her” name, instead of “my name is”. I considered that before starting the game I would need to go over this, as well as the colours in English and what a boy and a girl is.

As I began to start this lesson with the first group of CP children, I realised that this game was going to be very difficult for me to explain by myself, therefore I asked the class teacher to help me with this. Even after the children hearing what they had to do in French, I still felt that they found the task difficult and confusing, and I had to stop the game to explain vocabulary a lot with every group. This confusion then led to the children becoming disengaged in the activity, meaning that I had to tell the children to listen and sit still quite often. I find this more difficult to do with CP than the older classes, as the older classes understand my requests in English like “listen to me” and “stop”, but the CP children are not so tuned in to this. I consequently have to use a lot of actions, so when I say listen, I point to my ears, and if I ask for quiet I hold my finger up to my lips. But in order for this to be effective the children need to be looking at me, which sometimes isn’t the case with the CP children!

CE1-  the class teacher was keen for me to continue with the topic of classroom objects with the children. So, I made sure to go over the vocabulary we had learnt the day before, by pointing to objects like the board, rubbers, pencils, water bottles, and ensuring the class knew what they were called in English. I wrote the words on the board too, so that the children could see how these words are spelt. I then got the class to repeat the words after me several times, as the teacher was keen for the children to have good pronunciation of the words. Something else which all of the teachers are keen for the children to be able to do is put vocabulary into phrases and sentences. For example, if I ask, “is this a pen?” and point to a pen, instead of reply with “a pen”, the teacher wanted the children to reply with “yes, it is” or “no, it is not”. I said that this was quite difficult for the children to do at this stage, as I had been doing this kind of work with my CM1 class, who are two years older. But my teacher seemed adamant that she wanted to have the children speak in proper sentences, which I thought was fair. I then used the Simon says game that the children have gotten to know well, in order to consolidate the vocabulary for classroom objects. For example, I would say to the class “Simon says, show me your pens”, and the children would have to lift up their pens. They really enjoyed this, and I considered trying this game with other classes seeing as it has gone down so well with CE1.

Wednesday 28th

CE2- on Wednesday I wanted to start a new topic with the class, as I felt that they knew feelings very well and were ready to move on and learn new vocabulary. I spoke with the teacher about what topic she felt they would be ready to focus on, and she suggested weather. This suited me just fine as learning the weather in French when I was at school was something that I felt confident in. I proposed the question “What is the weather like today?” to the class. Obviously by asking a complex question like this in English, I am going to receive a confused response. Therefore, when I ask questions like this I make sure to use facial expressions and gestures. So, when asking these questions, I raised my arms and pointed outside. The children soon caught on, and I heard one pupil shout “Il pleut!”. They were right, it was raining, so using this, I taught the class the phrase “it is raining”. The phrase part of talking about the weather was relatively easy for the children, as you just say, “it is” and then add the weather. They grasped this concept quickly, and this made it easier to learn the rest of the vocabulary, such as sunny, snowing, windy, cold, hot, foggy and thunder and lightning. So that the children could refer to this vocabulary I asked them to write it into their jotters, first in French, then English and then draw a picture, like I had done on the board.

CM2 – The class continued learning their vocabulary for positions, which I feel they know very well and I was impressed with how well they can say the sentences, due to how complex they are. Knowing that the class find this easy, I moved on to something that I knew would engage them. This was the ‘Kevin and Kate’ scripts that the class teacher provides them with. They come up in pairs and have to act out the little scenes in English, which I can tell they really enjoy. The scrips have different names, for example, ‘It’s Halloween’ or ‘The School Photo’, and the children can choose which one they want to act out. I’ve noticed that a few of the children try to memorise the lines on the scripts, which I think is great because it means they are able to speak English without having to read it off of the paper, and I think this is advanced for 10 and 11-year-old children.

CP – I did not need to teach the pupils today, however the class teacher suggested that it might be interesting for me to sit in and watch how the class get on in a normal lesson, and I agreed. The class were doing maths, and I could tell that they had to think of numbers that you could add together to make 20. The teacher was using the smart projector, that they have in every classroom, to show the children visually what adds up to make 20. The class all seemed engaged in this exercise, but I noticed that she did not stay on the same subject for very long. She mentioned to me that this is because young children can get restless and bored and therefore they need a change of scene. In response to this, she told the class they were going to do French, which initially did not get a very enthusiastic reaction! She then explained that they were going to tell me about themselves in French (e.g. My name is, I am 6, I am boy), like what I had done with them for English, and they thought this was very exciting. Each of them took turns to stand up and introduce themselves. The class then moved on to do some more French grammar, which I actually found very helpful to listen to, as this was very basic and it refreshed my memory well. During the lesson, I noticed the teacher use a couple of behaviour management strategies, which I had not seen much of in other classes. I considered that this could be due to the high number of children in the CP class and their young age. In the first instance, she asked a boy who she felt had not been listening to her to come and take a red card from her desk, and keep it on his desk until she told him he could put it back. I considered that this was maybe the equivalent of a traffic light system. The next time, it was another boy who was not behaving and she asked him to sit at a desk at the back next to me. I did not feel that this was as affective as I could tell the boy still was not paying attention to the lesson, and had been moved from the front to the back of the room, so the teacher could not keep an eye on him as well.

Thursday 29th

CE2– on Thursday I had flashcards to use with the class which had pictures of different types of weather on them so that I could get the children to practice their pronunciation. I did this by holding up a card and asking, “what is the weather like?”, the class would have to reply with the correct phrase we had practiced the day before. I had to help the children with their pronunciation of certain words, such as thunder and lightning as this was quite a mouthful for the children.  I was conscious that the class remain seated quite a lot, and thought of a way the class could learn the weather in English in a more interactive way. I stuck the flashcards onto the board one under another, and wrote sentences like ‘it is sunny’ and ‘it is windy’ next to them, but in a different order. I then asked the children to come up one by one and draw a line to match the flashcard to the corresponding sentence. This was good as it got the children to read the sentences, instead of just hearing me say them. I also felt that the class appreciated a more interactive task. After we had discussed the weather a bit more the teacher was keen for me to move on to the topic of clothing with the class. So, to introduce the vocabulary I began pointing to items of clothing I was wearing and asking what it was. Of course, they all began shouting the words at me in French, so I wrote those on the board, and using my French knowledge, translated them into English. I went over the pronunciation of certain words like shoes and trousers, as these contain confusing sounds for French children.

CP – On Thursday with CP I continued playing the game ‘who is it?’ with the small groups of children. I was apprehensive about doing this as the class had found it very difficult and confusing on Tuesday. This then led to the children not being very engaged and once this happens I find that it is difficult to regain their attention. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the children all understood the concept of the game a lot better this time, which is what the teacher predicted would happen, she said sometimes it just takes a bit of repetition and persistence with younger children. After I had played this game with all three of the groups I got the children to fill in another ‘Joe the Pirate’ worksheet which asked, ‘what colour is my boat?’. The pupils’ task was to colour in each of the boats the correct colour and then choose a colour to write in the space. They found this easy and enjoyable.

After this I had to return home as Nina, our host, requested that we have a mid-term meeting with her to check that we were all getting on fine at our schools.

Friday 30th

CE2 – I began my lesson by asking for the date in English (which the class are getting the hang of now) and what the weather is like. I thought this would be a good thing to do daily so that the class do not forget the weather vocabulary we learned. For the final day of the week with CE2, I progressed with the topic of clothing with the class. I added a couple more important words to the list of vocabulary for the children, and these were, pyjamas and boots. These were easy enough to quickly teach the children as the French for these words is ‘pyjamas’ and ‘bottes’.  I asked the children to write the French and English words for each item of clothing and draw a little picture beside it, just like they did for the weather. I definitely found that the children were responding to my requests much faster, even though they were in English, and I find that this is the case in most classes. I think this is because they are learning what my demands mean, and are then able to respond appropriately.

CM2 – On Friday myself and two other girls in the class were going to present to the class about what school is like in Scotland. We showed the rest of the class a picture of a Scottish primary school and told the class about what times we attend school, what we wear to school and how many children there were in my school. They were shocked and fascinated to hear that my school had around 500 pupils in it, as their school is so much smaller. They were also very intrigued by the idea of wearing a uniform and asked why we had to do this. I explained that it was for identification purposes and that we think it is smarter to wear a uniform to school. The class agreed but said they preferred to wear their own clothes! I told the children that our lunch times are only an hour long, instead of 2 hours. The teacher thought that this was much better, and that two hours is too long. He said that the children always come back to school too excited after a 2-hour long lunch break.

CP – The class teacher and I had discussed at the beginning of the day that we would go over the numbers in English with the class later on. I thought to myself that this would be relatively easy for the children as I have heard some of them counting to 10 in English already. Therefore, I thought about how I could fill my time of 15 minutes that I have with each group, in order to keep the children engaged. I began by going through the numbers from 1 to 10 with the flashcards that the teacher had given me, and as I thought, the pupils found this easy. I then got the children to count backwards from 10, which they seemed to find slightly harder but not very interesting. I thought it would be a good idea to play bingo, where I would say the number out loud and the children would have to use their English listening skills to figure out what number I was saying, and tick it off their card appropriately. This definitely got the children more engaged and they really found this exercise fun. This is something I will play again with the class in order to practice numbers up to 10.

 

 

2nd Week of Placement 19th – 23rd March 2018

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Week 2 – 19th to 23rd of March

My daily timetable:

  CP CE1 CE2 CM1 CM2
8:45-9:30     x    
9:30-10:00         x
                                                                            BREAK
10:30-11:30 x        
                                                                            LUNCH
13:30-14:45       X  
                                                                            BREAK
15:00-15:30   x      

 

Monday 19th

CE1 – I began the day in CE1, where the class teacher wanted me to recap the vocabulary we had gone over the week before such as “I have black hair” and “I have blue eyes”. Before this I went over the date and how to say this in English (Lundi, 19 Mars is Monday the 19th of March). I then used flashcards again to hold up to the children and they would repeat back to me what they could see on the card, for example if I held up a picture of a boy with black hair they would need to say, “I have black hair”. I find that flashcards are very useful to use as it means I do not need to speak in order to communicate with the children. By holding up a flashcard, they know what I am asking them and therefore we do not waste any time with potential language barrier issues.I did this with the class for around 10 minutes, but I quickly needed to change the activity as I could tell the class were beginning to get restless. I then got the children to write down the new vocabulary they had learned by labelling a picture of a face in English. I drew a picture of a face on the board and labelled it for the children so that they knew where to put the right words. We repeated the words a few times as a class, and then I rubbed out the words on the board to make the task more challenging that just having the children copy from the board. I have observed in each class that the children all have jotters for each subject, which they usually stick worksheets into, rather than writing in them directly. This is quite similar to schools in Scotland but we would probably write directly into the jotters rather than using worksheets all the time.

CM2 – I then quickly had to move on to help the CM2 class (the oldest class in the school), where I started with some general questions for the class such as “how are you?” and “what did you do at the weekend?”. The class gave me their best answers, but I noticed that once one of them had given an answer such as “I am fine thank you”, the others after this would tend to copy the sentence instead of thinking of a different one. Therefore I told the children that they had to think of different things to say, to keep them on their toes.  I then started to read out a story in English to the children called ‘Monkey Puzzle’. I thought that this had some difficult vocabulary in it for the class’ level of English, so I had to point at the pictures in the book a lot and speak much slower than I usually would, so that it was not too fast for the children to understand. A lot of them already knew the words monkey, butterfly, elephant and snake… but frog, bat and caterpillar were all new to them!

CP – After the break, I went into the CP class to carry on with the work I did with them the week before. It was the same set up, where I had 10 children at a time on the carpet with me, and this repeated 3 times. I had a worksheet for the children to complete and it said; “Hello! My name is Joe the Pirate. What is your name?”. We spoke a little bit about what a pirate was as some of the children were unsure of this. It was a challenge to get the children to pronounce pirate properly, as they were all saying “peerot”. They then wrote their names on the worksheet and we practiced asking each other the questions and giving responses a lot of times. I realised whilst doing this that children of this younger age really learn well with a lot of repetition being used. Worksheets are heavily used by all of the teachers, which they fill out and then stick into their jotters.

CE1 – I found my biggest challenge of the day was towards the end of the day when I went to go and work with the CE1 class. The teacher for this class did not speak any English, and I had found that in the other classes it was very helpful having the teacher speak English as they are able to translate if there is any confusion. Therefore, I knew that this would be more challenging and my communication would need to be very clear. The teacher requested that I teach the class some classroom instructions in English such as; “Stand up!” “Sit down!” and “Pay attention”. After repeating these instructions and using my knowledge of French to help translate to the children, they were able to follow my instructions pretty well. I therefore thought a good way to consolidate this newly learnt language would be to play ‘Simon says’ with the children. This was an excellent way to interact with them without using any French and also practicing their new vocabulary.

I felt that I had a very successful day and that I had got to know each of the classes even better having been in each one that day. I feel positive about the rest of the week as the teachers are very helpful with planning ahead and keeping me ready with lots of work to do with the children. I also feel that compared to last week my French has already improved and I am able to communicate easier with the staff and pupils.

Tuesday 20th

On Tuesday Briony and I did not get our usual number 7 bus to Petite Merie, but instead took the tram A to Fleury Les Aubrais, to Condorcet Middle School. We had been asked by one of the English teachers there to come in and talk to her class about Scotland and how life is there. I was apprehensive about this as this what not the age group of school children that I was used to communicating with, and reflecting on my past experience of high school, I realised that it is not always easy with older children. We arrived at the school before the pupils and met Sophie, who told us what the plan was for that class. We would be helping the class with their work on William Shakespeare, where they had to create a timeline of his life. I considered that this seemed like a very difficult task for a group of fourteen year olds learning English. Reflecting on my own French education, I didn’t think I had ever had to do something as difficult as that. When the class arrived, Briony and I introduced ourselves and then Madame Charbonnier gave the class the instructions they needed to complete their task on William Shakespeare. I noticed that she spoke to the class in English the entire time, and they were expected to talk to each other in English throughout the class, not just the teacher. Again, I compared this to my own education and concluded that the way that English is taught in French schools is perhaps taken slightly more seriously than French in Scottish schools.

We helped the pupils with sentence structure and putting words in the correct order, as apparently this can be confusing for students learning English. Before we left, we showed the class picture of Dundee and the University, our home towns, things that are traditionally Scottish (haggis, kilts, dancing) and played the National Anthem for them. They seemed very intrigued by all of these things, and we explained that we find their schools and traditions interesting too!

Wednesday 21st

On Wednesday, I was told by the CE2 and CM2 teachers that I would not need to go to their classes in the morning like usual, as their classes both do sport on a Wednesday morning. Therefore, I spent the morning with my own class, CM1. Before break the class were correcting their French dictation and reading a couple of chapters of their class novel, meaning I did not do much work with the class at this time. This gave me a chance to write up some of my blog and reflect on the past few days, as I do not get much of a chance to sit still throughout the day. After break, two girls in the CM1 class had created a Power-point Presentation about the history of Edinburgh that they wanted to present to myself and the class. I found it quite hard to follow, as the girls had put a lot of information into the presentation and it was in French. I also learned some things that I didn’t know about the history of Edinburgh, which is slightly embarrassing considering this is where I live. After the girls had finished their presentation, Madame Royer asked me to come to the front of the class to answer any questions that the children had about Edinburgh. They asked about the food, weather, if there are any rivers, and they asked what the houses are like in Edinburgh. I then showed them pictures of my Primary school and High school, to show them what the uniform is like in Scotland (as they do not have uniforms in French schools). They found this fascinating and strange that we have to wear uniforms all the way through school. It felt good to be able to show them some of the Scottish culture and give them an idea of where I am from.

Thursday 22nd

CE2 – I began the day following my usual daily timetable, by starting at CE2 from 8:45 to 9:30am. Before the children entered the class, the teacher explained to me that she wants the children to be able to say the date in English every day, “apprendre par cœur”. This is the French equivalent of saying “off by heart”.  Taking this on, I said that at the start of every day we can talk about the date and this will help the children to practice saying the days of the week, months and numbers. We then continued with practicing our facial features vocabulary such as, ears, eyes, nose, mouth etc.  They consolidated their knowledge by filling out a worksheet, they managed to do this very quickly which confirmed to me that they know the vocabulary well. After doing this I thought it would be fun to play a game of ‘Guess Who?’ with the class, where they have to describe one of their peers and everyone else guesses who they are describing. This was a difficult concept to explain to the class in English therefore their teacher explained to them what the game involved. The class definitely enjoyed this game and going forward I think I will use a more interactive approach to learning, like playing games or singing songs, as this is more enjoyable for the pupils.

CM2 –  With CM2 on Thursday we continued with script reading and role playing in English. I read out two more ‘Kevin and Kate’ scripts for the class to hear how it should sound, and they then took it in turns to act out the scenes in English. This works well as I can interrupt them if they are not pronouncing certain words properly and help them with use of volume and expression, the more advanced aspects of speaking a language. We then went over some of the vocabulary they had heard on Monday when I read ‘Monkey Puzzle’ to them. This included animals like, a butterfly, monkey, caterpillar, elephant, bat and frog. I thought that these were quite complex words to be learning for their age, therefore I used the pictures to help me portray what word went with what animal.

I only spend 30 minutes with the oldest class in the school daily, therefore I find it difficult to fit all of the content that I wanted to teach the children into that space of time. However, as they are older and therefore have more English knowledge, they can pick up the vocabulary quicker and don’t need as much time for repetition as younger pupils do.

CP –  We moved on to a new topic, as I felt that the children in this age group had practiced saying their name, age and gender a lot. I would practice this at the start of every lesson but I could tell that the children were beginning to get bored because of how easy they were finding the ‘introducing myself’ topic. So, on Thursday, I introduced the colours to the class. Again, I had the children in 3 groups of 9 or 10 at the back of the classroom with me. There is another blackboard and carpet area at the back of the class which the teacher lets me use in the hour that I spend in her class. I often find that the younger children get restless whilst sitting on the carpet, therefore when I am teaching them my energy has to be high and I should be enthusiastic. With each group, I began by asking each of them their name and age, to check that they could remember how to say this. I then used flashcards with the colours on them to introduce the new vocabulary. Once we had gone over this a few times, I began to ask the children “what colour is this?” whilst pointing to a coloured object. The pupils would then have to raise their hand and tell me in English what colour it was. I noticed that the children found it hard to distinguish between green and grey, and felt more comfortable pronouncing colours like pink and black.

I really enjoy teaching the children in small groups like this, without the teacher’s assistance, as it gives me a chance to have small conversations with the children and get them used to me being in charge. However, I feel that this method would probably work best with younger children instead of the older classes as their vocabulary is more advanced, therefore it is more difficult for me with the language barrier as well.

CM1 – On Thursday I continued with the topic of food with the CM1 class. I used flashcards with pictures of food on them to hold up to the class and say “is it a …..?” and they reply with “yes,it is” or “no, it isn’t”.

They found this relatively easy as it was just revision from what we had done on Monday. I was also conscious that this did not really help the children to learn the food vocabulary, as I was saying the words and they had the aid of a photo as well to know what the food was. We moved on and I started to ask the children a new question which was “do you like…..?”. They had to respond with “Yes, I like it” or “no, I don’t like it”. They had already learned about saying their likes and dislikes but not within the topic of food so this was semi new for them. I began with the class sitting in their seats and answering my question of “do you like?”, but I felt I needed to get the class to interact a bit more and I wanted the children to practice pronouncing their newly learnt words. So, I asked for a volunteer to come up to the front and take a flashcard. They then had to ask a peer “do you like potatoes?” for example, and their friend had to reply, “yes I do” or “no I don’t”. The children definitely enjoyed this better and my teacher confirmed this by saying that the children clearly liked the exercise. In the future I will consider this method when deciding what activities to do with the children as I felt that when they were more active they were more enthusiastic about speaking English and perhaps less shy.

 I used this as a starter for the class by reading it out and letting them hear how the conversation should sound. The children then read the conversation out in their best English and I could correct them with their pronunciation if need be. 

 

 

 

 

Friday 23rd

CE2 – On Friday I began my class with a discussion about the date, reminding the children about Friday, March and the number 23. I asked one of the children to write this on the board for me and we came across a language problem as this was happening. I began to spell the word Friday for her in the English alphabet, which of course made no sense to her. Therefore, I had to switch to the French alphabet which I found quite confusing but we managed eventually. I introduced a new topic to class which was feelings. To my surprise when I began to go through the vocabulary, the children already knew quite a few of the words, in particular ‘happy’ and ‘sad’. I had printed out flashcards for each of the pupils to have to stick into their jotters, which on one side had a picture of a face with an expression, and on the other side had the word to describe how that person was feeling. We looked at words such as, happy, sad, excited, bored, angry, frightened, hungry and upset. The teacher thought that this was a good amount of words to start the children off with the topic of feelings. Once I had read out the words a few times and asked the children to repeat after me, I began to ask individual children the question “how are you?”. I received a few blank faces by asking this, so then I asked “ça va?” and there was a large noise of recognition made from the children. Now that they knew what I was asking, the class could respond with things like “I am happy” or “I am bored” etc.  For the next lesson, I think I will introduce a song in English to the class as I think they will enjoy this and it’s a better way for them to learn the vocabulary.

CP – I continued with the topic of colours again in smaller groups of 10. I felt that today the children were more restless, perhaps due to it being Friday and they were feeling tired. However, I found this quite difficult to manage. Usually I do not find behaviour management to be much of an issue but when I cannot speak their language I find it hard to portray what I want to say to the children. I can tell that the children find it difficult to sit still on the carpet for a long time and this means that they start to wander around instead. I need to keep up my energy and change the task frequently to keep the children on task and entertained. They seem to enjoy the game where I say, “what colour is this?” and they shout the colour of what I am pointing at. They have also become very good at saying their name and age in English, but I will continue to ask these questions so that they do not forget.

 

1st Week of Placement 13th – 16th of March

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Tuesday 13th of March 2018 – Day 1

On Tuesday, I had my first day of placement at my assigned Primary School, École Les Guernazelles in the South of Orléans in France. I was picked up from the halls of residence and driven to the school by Nina, our guide, alongside Briony, as our schools were both quite far away from where we stay and we needed some guidance on our first day. I would need to get the bus by myself after today.

(this is the CM1 classroom).

When I arrived at the school, Nina and I met the head-teacher, who is also the teacher for CE1 (this is the French equivalent of primary 2/3). She greeted us in French and explained that she could not speak English. This was daunting to me as I then wondered if any of the other teachers would be able to speak English, as my French was poor. The school is also in quite a remote area, and is therefore smaller than what I have experienced before. I also thought this might mean that the teachers English would not be good. I was preparing myself for a day of pointing at the dictionary and feeling very lost. Nina said goodbye to me and I began to feel apprehensive as my only known source of translation had just left me. The head teacher then took me to my classroom where I was met by Madame Royer, the CM1 teacher (Primary 4/5 in Scotland). She welcomed me into the classroom and let me have a seat at the back of the classroom and observe the class for a little while just to settle in. Luckily Madame Royer can speak English, so this made it easy for us to communicate initially. As I sat at the back of the class observing I found myself feeling quite lost as everything was being said in French, however I liked the challenge of trying to work out what was being said. The children were doing French dictation, which meant Madame Royer would read out a sentence in French and the children would write it down as they heard it. During maths, the children were looking at measuring. I noticed that the class were all given the same level of work as each other, there was no differentiation. This is quite different to primary schools in Scotland, where differentiation is frequently used in maths. They were working from a textbook, working on questions and then discussing the answers as a class. Some of the children would go up to the board and write down their peers’ answers. The children had a break at 10 o’clock, and during this, another teacher spoke to me about helping out with English in her class after break time. She also spoke English well. I went with her to introduce myself to her class (CE2, primary 3/4 in Scotland). The pupils had to try and ask me questions in English and understand my response. I found that this helped my understanding of French a little bit as they were talking in French to each other and to the teacher. Throughout the day I went around the other classes CP, CE2 and CM2 (there are only 5 classes in the school) and introduced myself. It was daunting having to stand up in front of 20 French pupils at a time and have them speak en Francais!

Before getting to the school I was expecting to find that there would be a language barrier between myself and the teachers and pupils of the school. This was true to a certain extent, but I felt I could communicate well enough with the teachers in order to plan my schedule for the next 6 weeks. I felt very lucky that most of the teachers could speak English well. I was also surprised at how calm I was throughout the day, despite there being an obvious language barrier. I thought that I might get frustrated by this but I felt I took it in my stride and tried to communicate as well as I could. Overall, I think that my first day at my placement school went well, and that I made a good first impression to the pupils and teachers. I felt that they were happy I was there and that I would be helpful for the children’s acquisition of English. Throughout the day I learned a few more important French phrases that can be used as greetings or in the classroom and this will help me to create bonds with the children and get integrated into the school better. I also noticed certain aspects of the school that I thought were different to how things are in Scotland. For example, the pupils do not wear uniform and the teachers’ dress code is also very casual. In addition to this, the children take off their shoes at the cloakroom area and put on slippers to wear around the classroom and the rest of the school. Throughout the day, the children have 3 breaks, unlike 2 in Scotland. They have their first break at 10am for around 15 minutes, then they have lunch at 11:30am for two hours which is a lot longer than the children in Scotland have for lunch. In addition to this, there is then another 15 minute break at 2:45pm, before the children finish school at 3:45pm (around half an hour later than Scottish primary schools). Comparing my placement last year to my first impressions of this placement, I also felt that the pupils were very well behaved and the teacher did not need to discipline them as much.

As I get further on in my placement, my aim is to get better at speaking French in order to make it easier to communicate with the teachers and pupils in my school. I also hope to improve the pupils’ understanding of English and Scotland’s culture, by showing them our traditions and sights to see.

Wednesday 14th of March 2018

I was not feeling as apprehensive about this day compared to Tuesday, as I now knew what my teachers and pupils were like and how to get to the school by transport, and felt I had had a good first day the day before. However, my first hurdle of the day occurred earlier than I thought it would. Our host Nina assured me that the only bus I needed to get was the number seven, the entire way to my placement. But on Wednesday morning my bus stopped 3 stops early and I had to converse with the bus driver in my best French about why the bus had stopped. After a lot of confusion and gesturing between myself and the bus driver, I found the right bus and was on my way to school. When I got to school I made sure to say “je suis perdu!” to my teacher so she knew why I was late.

In France Zone B, the children are only in school for half a day, which means that they would leave at 11:30am. Due to this, I did not have much time at the school on Wednesday, and so just observed the CE1 class doing their maths work. During this I noticed that the teachers often get their pupils to interact with the white board, either by drawing or writing on it. The children work mainly out of textbooks from what I observed, and have certain jotters for the different subjects they learn. In cycle 2 (CP, CE1, CE2), the children are expected to be taught 10 hours of French per week, 5 hours of Mathematics and 1.5 hours of English. I have also observed that these are the three main subjects that children learn daily in the class, and there is not as much teaching of creative subjects or sciences. Sciences are introduced into the curriculum in Cycle 3 (CM1, CM2) as well as social subjects.

Since the four of us all had half days at our schools, we took the rest of the day to explore the centre of Orléans some more.

Thursday 15th of March 2018

On Thursday morning, I was invited to go along with the school to observe the orchestra rehearsal for the production of My Fair Lady, which is showing later on in March in Orléans. As a school, we walked 30 minutes to a small building where there was a stage inside, and lots of seats laid out for us to sit and watch the rehearsal take place. During the walk, I felt pretty frustrated, as usually I would take this time to talk to the pupils and get to know them a bit more, but with my limited use of French I felt I could not have much conversation at all. However during the rehearsal, the conductor was making references to My Fair Lady in English, and this meant I could translate for my class which made me feel slightly more necessary.

Image result for my fair lady orleans

Due to the class being out of school in the morning, Madame Royer was keen for the children to work quietly on their French and maths work for the rest of the day, meaning that I would just observe the lessons. This gave me time to make some notes about French vocabulary and learn some new phrases that I heard being used in the classroom that I may need to use later on.

Friday 16th of March

The first class I was teaching in on Friday was CE2, where I was teaching the children how to say their hair and eye colour. This was definitely challenging, but I stood at the front of the class and used what little French I had to try to communicate with the children. I realised the importance of using hand gestures, actions and repetition when teaching because we cannot use much of the same language. I also taught the children how to say the days of the week in English, with the use of flashcards and again, a lot of repetition.

After the short morning break I then went into the CP class, where I had the children in groups of 10 at a time, and their teacher wanted me to help them with saying their name, age and if they are a girl or a boy in English. This was definitely the most challenging teaching I had done that week, as the class teacher was not there to translate to the children if I needed her to. Therefore, I had practiced some small French phrases that I thought I might need to say to the children. For example, “Vous les dites?” (you say it?), “et toi?” (and you?). During my teaching I used a lot of hand gestures and pointing, I also wrote the sentences that the children were learning on the board so that they could read it.  I spent around 20 minutes with each group, and to my surprise, by the end of the 20 minutes, the children had got to grips with their new English phrases. This definitely gave me a sense of achievement and I felt proud that I had managed to communicate with the younger children so well.

Towards the end of the day I was asked by the CM2 teacher to read out some English comic strips that the children had been practicing, so that they could hear how to correctly pronounce each individual word the characters were saying. They then acted out the scenes in English as best as they could, and I helped them to say the words properly. I could tell that the children found this helpful, which finally gave me a feeling of being useful, as at the beginning of the week I was worried that my lack of French speaking would make me a bit of a hindrance for the teachers.

Over the past few days I realised that in order to get your message across to the children, the most important things to have are a loud, clear voice and perseverance. I feel that it’s not really about the words that you use when it comes to teaching a language, as I managed to teach the different ages of children some basic English using barely any French at all. At the end of the week I felt a real sense of achievement, as I never thought I would be able to help the children learn so much in such a short space of time. I am looking forward to teaching the different ages of children more English as the weeks go on, but I am also concerned that I will therefore need to learn more French, and this would take practice!

 

 

Arrival in Orléans

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Briony, Erin, Lauren, Natalie, Brooke and I, set off from Edinburgh airport early in the morning on Sunday the 11th of March. Aside from our luggage being too heavy, having to pay a significant fine and rushing through the airport to make our flight, we arrived in Paris at the Charles de Gaulle airport successfully.  We met our mini-bus driver Francois, who was holding up a sign for us, and he drove us to Orléans which took around one hour. We were all relatively quiet in the bus, probably due to tiredness and nerves of what was ahead of us. The language barrier was already becoming clear, even after 1 hour, as we had to converse with Francois about directions to Orléans. Despite this we all made it to the train station where we were met by our host Nina. Brooke and Natalie set off to Blois, which is where they are doing their teaching placements, and Nina drove us the rest of us to our accommodation at ESPE Loire Valley. She showed us to our rooms in the halls, where other French and international students stay too. We met a couple of Irish girls in the kitchen which was a relief as I knew we would be able to talk to them with no language issues. We were then left to settle in and get our bearings of the city we would be staying in for the next 6 weeks.

Image result for orleans france   Image result for orleans france

On Monday, we were shown around the town centre by Nina, who showed us the important parts of Orléans and helped us to get our bus passes sorted out for getting to our placement schools the next day. None of us speak French very well, so walking around and talking to people was a good way of easing us into speaking the language. We then went to the other teacher training centre in Orléans, where we met a woman called Claudié, who spoke to us in French which, again, was a shock to us all but I felt this helped us to recall some of the French vocabulary we would need to be using in our schools. She introduced us to the French Education system and certain aspects that were important to know about before placement. There were some important differences in the education systems of France and Scotland which I will highlight:

The main features of the French education system are:

  • The schools are mostly public
  • They are free for all
  • It is compulsory for all from ages 6 to 16.
  • They are “laïque” (secular).
  • Nursery in France is called “Maternelle” and is in ‘Cycle 1’
  • Early years is called ‘Cycle 2’, which consists of CP (age 6), CE1 (age 7) and CE2 (age 8).
  • The middle and upper stages are part of ‘Cycle 3’, which is CM1 (age 9) and CM2 (age 10/11).
  • ‘Cycle 4’ in the French system is collège which children attend from the ages of 12 to 15.
  • From 15 to 18, children attend Le Lycée.

Laïcité

This is a concept that we were introduced to by Claudie which she said was particularly important in French schools.

“Laïcité” cannot be directly translated in English. Due to this, there are difficulties for French people when trying to explain to people from other European countries, and particularly from Britain, what “Laïcite” actually means.

A law was voted in over 100 years ago in 1905, where there was the separation of the state and the church. However, the secularization of French State schools had started long before the 1905 law. In 1881 primary education in France was already free and compulsory for those aged 6 to 13 and already “laïque”, with no religious education being taught. And today, any show, by clothing, badges, speech or in writing, of religious beliefs or political opinions is strictly forbidden. This is agreed in order to avoid any religious opinion being expressed, but mainly to show that everyone is equal and we can live together and respect each other, whatever our differences are.

Today, the basic principles of “laïcite” and of the separation of Church and State are well established and understood in France. The different faiths recognise that by having this law in place, they have the freedom to practise their religion, which in France is considered a strictly private thing. It took centuries and a lot of terrible struggles to get to this point in French society.
Few countries in the world have adopted the principle of a secular state, but there are some examples: for example, Mexico, a country almost exclusively Roman Catholic, and to a certain extent, Turkey, a Muslim country. Yet some Christian groups in the United States disagree with this type of state and it is seen as controversial.

S, Writer. 2018 La France : un état laïque, French Entrée. Available at: https://www.frenchentree.com/living-in-france/culture/la-france-un-etat-laique/

 

Magic Beans

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Yesterday our maths workshop involved looking into the maths behind supply chain and global food. We talked about food miles and how some of the food we buy in supermarkets travels thousands of miles from countries on the other side of the world like New Zealand. Food that has had to ravel a long way to reach our supermarkets are said to have a large carbon footprint.

The Game

Richard had us play a business simulation game which required us to work in pairs and act as demand suppliers. Each pair was given €5000 to start with, and a list of items (SKUs) that we could spend this money on. We were allowed to order a maximum of 5 SKUs per sales period (which was quarterly, starting in April). It was important that when choosing our stock, we considered what time of year it was, as there were items available such as turkeys and selection boxes, which would probably be silly to buy in April, May and June, but very sensible in October, November and December! So for this first quarter, the items that caught my eye were ice cream wafers (summery), bananas (also summery), bread and milk. We didn’t spend all of our €5000 budget on this and made sure we had €1500 left over in case some of our stock wasn’t fully sold. Richard read out the sales figures by giving us the percentage that was sold. We had left over items across the board, but unfortunately with our bananas, milk and bread, we could not carry these over into the next quarter as these items go off quickly.  Which meant we ended up wasting quite a bit of money. Regardless, we now had €8820 to take into the next quarter.

Moving into the second quarter (July, August, September), we kept our ice cream stock from the first quarter, stuck with our bread and milk (decreasing the quantity of units due to wastage in first quarter) and introduced soft drinks and beans into our stock list. Our thinking behind the soft drinks was that the weather is pretty hot at this time of year, people are going to be buying more soft drinks!  We considered adding beer to our stock list for the same reason,  but it was adding the beans that turned our fortunes around. What I noticed about the beans was the striking difference between the purchase price (€0.25) and the seasonal selling price (€2.00). This was 8 times the purchase price!! I wondered if anyone else had noticed this…. and it definitely encouraged me to look closer at the differences between the purchase and selling prices for the next two quarters. I had overheard some people talking about the champagne, and how it had such a high selling price, which I had originally fallen into the trap of thinking. However looking at the purchase price for champagne, it was €10, half of the selling price, which compared to the beans was nothing special. Funnily enough, for that quarter, the beans ended up giving me back the most amount of money (€9600), having only invested €2000.

We continued to use this method, of mainly investing our budget into buying more of the tins of beans. In the third quarter we invested in Christmas selection boxes, Turkeys and Hampers (due to the time of year), which proved a good decision because 100% of all of those units were sold. We also increased our bean quantity from 8000 to 10,000 units, giving us €18,000, and €57,965 in total at the end of the third quarter. In the final quarter we went back to our milk and bread, figuring that at this time of year people are short on cash and are therefore buying the basics, and upped the quantity of beans to 40,000. This was because now, instead of the beans being sold for 8 times their purchase price, they were being sold for 10 times. This ended up giving us back €100,000, due to 100% of the beans being sold that quarter.

At the end of the task, we ended up managing to turn our initial budget of €5000, into €184,440, mainly thanks to beans! This task definitely taught me not to jump into looking at the face value of things. Yes, the Champagne had a very high selling price in the first two quarters, but just looking at that factor would be silly.

Many basic mathematical topics and ideas were used in this task, such as multiplying, dividing, adding and subtracting, percentages and decimals. We were also encouraged to think about wider society, what the public may be buying at certain times of the year and basing our decisions around that and importantly, the purchase and selling prices. This task involved a lot of trial and error, but I think that was a very important part of the game. it made me realise that with maths you might not get it perfectly right straight away but by adjusting things and thinking back to basic ideas it can be made clearer. I feel it is crucial to portray this message to the children we teach, especially those who may feel they have some anxiety towards maths.

The Maths Behind Netball

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In our maths in sport input we had the opportunity to either take a sport that already exists and improve it somehow, or make up our own sport with its own rules. My group decided we would try to improve on a sport that already exists, and therefore I suggested netball, which is my favourite sport. I started to consider the rules of netball, and it was here I realised how many mathematical concepts were involved.

Dimensions of the Court:

Image result for dimensions of a netball court

A netball court is split into thirds, which are each 10.14 metres long, making the whole court 30.5 metres (100ft) long. This is just a bit longer than a basketball court.The centre circle in the middle of the court is 3 feet in diameter which is also the exact distance a player needs to be from their opponent when marking them when they have the ball. The semi – circles (shooting circles) at either end of the court are 32ft in diameter and have a radius of 16ft.

When a player’s opponent has the ball and is ready to make a pass, that player can mark with her hands up in order to try and defend the pass. However, the defending player must be at least 3 feet away from the player with the ball, otherwise the umpire will pull her up for obstruction.

Taking this to a teaching level, I feel that this would be an ideal way of introducing topics like area, perimeter, circumference, diameter and radius of a circle. By linking the topics to things that the pupils enjoy (favourite sports), it will encourage them to make their own links and connections between maths and wider society.

Ball Size:

Image result for netball ball size dimensions

A netball is around 8.9 inches in diameter and 27 – 28 inches in circumference and compared to a football this is ever so slightly bigger. A netball weighs between 14 and 16 oz (397-454 grams) which is around the same as a football but far lighter than a basketball.

An average females hand length is 6.77 inches, which is almost a quarter of the circumference of a netball. This could mean that it takes great hand-eye coordination and skill to be able to catch a netball with one hand which players quite often have to do.

Timings:

A netball match is 60 minutes long and is split into quarters, which are each 15 minutes long. Their is a 3 minute break between the first and second and third and fourth quarters but a 5 minute break at half time, for a team talk and a rest for players. This means that there are 900 seconds in a quarter of a netball match (15×60) and therefore 3,600 seconds in a full game of netball ((15×60)x4) (not including breaks).

Once a player has caught the ball, they have 3 seconds to pass it on again or score a goal. If they fail to pass to another player on their team within this time, a penalty is given to the other team.

Height of Players:

Netballers are preferably tall in height, as sports with a hanging net in the air usually require tall players. For a sport like netball, a coach should really find players with great height and strong build in order to intercept and defend passes. However, shorter players often have better quickness and agility, which is key for some attacking positions in netball. The average height of netball players is usually between 1.7 metres and 1.9 metres, which is well above the average height of a Scottish female (5ft3 – 1.6 metres).The height of a netball post is 10ft, therefore a shooter who is tall will have a much better chance of getting the ball in the net than a player that is shorter, hence the preference for tall players.

Conclusion:

Again, this module has allowed me to look at the mathematical side of something that I would never have linked to maths before. Taking one of my passions (netball) and analysing it from a mathematical perspective has allowed me to dip into all sorts of maths topics (area, perimeter, height, length, breadth, time, speed and the measurements of a circle). This highlights Liping Ma’s principles of connectedness (making simple connections with topics and wider parts of society) and basic ideas (taking simple concepts like length, breadth, height, width and using it in a more complex yet still relatable concept like sport). In terms of developing my understanding of mathematics, it could help to look at the mathematics in sports that I don’t play regularly, which could be more of a challenge and allow me to give netball something to be compared to.

Being Born Lucky

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Our maths input today was on data and statistics. It was mainly based on health care and hospital statistics, but our lecturer (Dr Ellie Hothersall, from the university’s medical school), also brought up the topic of University attainment in terms of students from the least deprived areas of Scotland, typically being the ones to attend University. She gave her view from a medical school angle, telling us that historically student doctors were only white males, and that over the late 20th century females were being accepted to medical school more and more. However what the University of Dundee are now trying to do, and have been for several years, is accept students that aren’t necessarily from wealthy middle class families, which is what most people are guilty of picturing when we think of a stereotypical doctor. To me, this makes a lot of sense. People of all ethnic backgrounds and cultures go to see doctors, and I personally feel more at ease when I see a doctor that I feel I can relate to and vice versa. Therefore everyone should have the opportunity to be able to relate to the medical profession, and not see doctors as a completely alien and elitist group of people.

I wanted to think about this further and consider that Universities across Scotland are taking this approach when admitting Students. The Scottish Government have recently published that ‘A Record Number of Students from Deprived Areas Get in to University’. The article states that the number of acceptances for students from the 20% most deprived areas is up by 13% in 2017. According to John Swinney (the deputy first minister) “our goal is that everyone with the natural talent and ability has the chance to go to university”. So even if you are from a very deprived area of Scotland, if you get the grades and have that natural ability, you should get to go to University. Which I think is fair. However according to a BBC News article from May 2016, Young Scots are four times less likely to go to University if they are from a disadvantaged area, than those from wealthy backgrounds.

Why is this?

Is it just pot luck or chance that depending on the family you are born into and the area you are brought up in, that determines the quality of your future education?

From my perspective, every member of my family has attended university. Grandparents, mum and dad, aunts and uncles…. therefore university for me was inevitable. Ellie said the same about her family, and that she expects her two young children to attend university and hadn’t really considered any other options. Perhaps this is the initial step that young people take when considering university for their future. Maybe those who have grown up with family members not having gone to university don’t consider university as readily. So is it just down to chance? If you are ‘lucky’ enough to be born in a wealthy area, into a well-off family, you are already leaps and bounds ahead of those who weren’t given that same opportunity?

An article by Steve Hargreaves called ‘Making it into the Middle Class’ looks at some statistics. Of people born into lower income households, few will ever make it into the middle class, according to a recent study from Pew Charitable Trust. A small percentage makes it into the high earners bracket, which is shown clearly in the diagram below. It shows that 70% of the people from lower income households remain that way, and still only 26% rose to middle class.

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The report the goes on to say that even those that moved on to become slightly higher income households shared various traits in common such as, being college graduates, coming from two income families, being white and not experiencing not unemployment.

I then went on to the Pew Research Centre website and found an online calculator that was able to tell me if I was middle class in Western Europe or not.It asked me for my nationality, my annual household income and the number of family members I have living in that house. Even doing this very simple online calculation can determine what class you supposedly fall into and therefore, according to society, decide how successful your future looks.

Looking at statistics in this way has made me want to use more statistics in my learning and understanding of topics in the future. I feel that using graphs and charts that contain data is a very effective and visual way of summing up larger pieces of information and making them easier to understand. Having Ellie come to speak to us about the data and statistics they collect in the medical school setting gave us a different perspective than if we were to hear from one of our own lecturers from education. This emphasises Liping Ma’s fundamental principle of mathematics – multiple perspectives. She effectively showed us how statistics are used and related it to something which we, as a class, could all relate to – exams! I feel that that is what teaching mathematical concepts is all about, making sure you can relate ideas and topics from everyday life and link it to somewhat ‘scary’ things like statistics and data analysis.

References

  • BBC News (2016) Scots Students Face ‘Shocking’ University Access Gap. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-36392857
  • Hargreaves, S. (2013) Making it into the Middle Class. Available at: http://economy.money.cnn.com/2013/11/13/making-it-into-the-middle-class/
  • Pew Research Centre (2017) Are You Middle Class in Western Europe? Available at: http://www.pewglobal.org/interactives/european-middle-class-calculator/
  • Scottish Government (2017) Record Number of Students from Deprived Areas Get in to University. Available at: https://news.gov.scot/news/record-number-of-students-from-deprived-areas-get-in-to-university

 

History of Time Keeping

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Before clocks were invented, time was kept using different instruments to observe the sun passing through the meridian at noon (the meridian is an imaginary line running from the North to the South Pole). The earliest instruments used for timekeeping that we know of are sundials and water clocks.

Sundials– (3500BC) A sundial is able to tell what time of day it is depending on the position of the sun. Ancient Egypt was the era which held the oldest known sundial. Sundials have their origin in shadow clocks, which were the first devices used for measuring the parts of a day. Shadow clocks divided daytime into 12 equal parts and these parts were divided into even smaller parts. This shows that Egyptians must have understood the concept of division. They also must have understood that the earth was spinning or the stars were moving, at a constant speed, and that that is the key to telling when time is passing. Although shadow clocks were perfectly accurate during the day, they relied on the movement of the sun and therefore when the sun went down or it wasn’t a very sunny day, they became useless. Due to this, the Egyptians developed different timekeeping instruments, including water clocks, and a system for tracking star movements.

Water Clocks- (1092) One kind of water clock was a small bowl with holes in the bottom of it, which was floated on water and filled up at a constant rate. The markings that were made  on the side of the bowl indicated how much time had gone by, as the surface of the water reached them. Water clocks were commonly used in Ancient Greece.

Candle Clocks- (1400BC, introduced in medieval Europe in 885) again, this uses equally spaced markings, that when burned, indicate the passage of periods of time. This solved the problem of when there was no sun present in the sky, as candle clocks did not require the use of the sun. Which meant these were used mainly on cloudy days or at nighttime. Clock candles were used in Japan in the early 10th century. You Jiangu’s device consisted of six 12 inch long candles  all of the same thickness and were divided into 12 sections (one inch thick). Each candle burned away completely in four hours, making each marking 20 minutes. Again, this shows the mathematical concept of division being used.

Wristwatches- From the early stages wrist watches were mostly only worn by women, while men used pocket-watches up until the early 20th century. Wristwatches were worn initially by military men around the end of the 19th century, when it was crucial that the men synchronised their watches in order to time manoeuvres during war without potentially revealing the plan to the enemy through any signalling actions were discovered. Pocket watches were seen as impractical and not secure enough, therefore they strapped them to their wrists in the heat of war.

There is a lot of debate of whether children in schools need to be taught how to read an analog clock, or whether they can rely on using digital time. According to Jennie Ito, who is a child development expert, “analog clocks help children understand the passage of time because they have hands that are consistently moving”, whereas a digital clock only shows numbers changing as time goes by. Analog clocks also represents time in multiples of five, again, creating links between mathematical concepts is really important here. I feel that without using analog clock in classrooms and revealing these links between maths topics, children will not have as broad a knowledge of mathematics. Telling the time on an analog clock is essential for wider society and I believe that without having that skill, children would be at a disadvantage. By giving children a history of time keeping, it will allow them to have a better understanding of the concept of time and why we need to keep track of it.

 

The Pentatonic Scale is Everywhere

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As I discovered on Thursday, maths and music have many links, far more than I had previously considered. Seeing myself as reasonably musical, I had not given much thought to linking music with maths and if I’m honest I didn’t know there was such a thing. As a group we were asked to reflect on some of these links, and the first thing that came to me was reading music. Each note has a value depending on how it looks, and we have to assess what each symbol means just like we do with maths (+, x, -, £ etc ). We must also consider the speed and temp of music, tuning, pitch, scales and arpeggios. All of which hold some mathematical substance. In music theory scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental or pitch. Typically scales are listed from low to high pitch.

Scales

We discussed the different types of scales there are in music, again something I had never thought about before this workshop. There is a monotonic scale, consisting of one note, ditonic, tritonic and tetratomic (2, 3, and 4 notes) which is mainly limited to prehistoric music. The pentatonic scale ( also known as the “black note scale”) is 5 notes per octave, which is lacking semi-tones and common in folk music, and I will go into more detail about this later. The Hexatonic scale is 6 notes per octave (you get the idea now…) and is common in Western folk music. The Heptatonic scale is the most common modern western scale and the Octatonic scale is used in jazz and modern classical music.

“The number of the notes that make up a scale as well as the quality of the intervals between successive notes of the scale help to give the music of a culture area its peculiar sound quality.” Nzewi, Meki, and Odyke Nzewi (2007). This quote emphasises the point that different types of scales can create different sounds and vibes, creating genres such as folk, western and classical.

The Pentatonic Scale

Pentatonic scales are found all over the world and are a key part of many, many musical genres, some of which I hadn’t heard of until researching. This is what grabbed my attention the most about the Pentatonic Scale is that it really is everywhere. What really blew my mind was the youtube video we were shown, which involved Bobby McFerrin (Singer of Don’t Worry Be Happy) demonstrating just how powerful and predictable the Pentatonic Scale truly is. In the video he is stood in front of a crowd of people, and he pretty much uses them as his musical instrument. He demonstrates one note to the crowd which they imitate, he then moves up and down the stage, which requires the crowd to sing higher and lower, moving up and down notes. Eventually the crowd are so good at predicting the notes that he manages to get them to sing a tune, all in the space of around 2 minutes.

What I found fascinating about the pentatonic scale is that it is applied within tonnes of popular songs, it is everywhere in music culture no matter what genre. Below is another video that I have found which really emphasises this. It features someone trying to see how many songs they can play using the C major pentatonic scale (notes C, D, E, G, A).  The guy manages to play all sorts of music, songs by  Jimi Hendrix, Drake, Bill Withers, Britney Spears and even nursery rhymes (Mary had a little lamb).

I think the key point I took from this workshop was that maths can be applied in many musical ways. It also made me consider how different mathematical ideas and concepts intertwine in music. Liping Ma’s fundamental principle of mathematics,  interconnectedness, is really highlighted in this topic as it is so crucial as a teacher to reveal connections among mathematical concepts. And this doesn’t just mean within maths itself, hence the musical link. Liping Ma discusses having a profound understanding of fundamental mathematics as “taking something to the most basic principle you can”, which I agree with but I also feel it is about taking maths and stretching it to make links with other subjects like art, music , computing, and in and around everyday life.

References

  • Nzewi, Meki, and Odyke Nzewi (2007), A Contemporary Study of Musical Arts. Pretoria: Centre for Indigenous Instrumental African Music and Dance.