Danish teachers' reports
Report about discussion with visiting DK student teachers and teacher
Before the visit
All contacts before the visit took place between T and the welcoming teacher in Prague. All parties were satisfied with that arrangement.
Both T and STs anticipated that there would be no problems with maths, but that teaching in a language, which is a foreign language both to the pupils and T and STs might cause certain problems. STs expected that relations between teacher and pupils and the planning and implementation of teaching might be less relaxed that they were used to.
During the visit
Both T and STs found it good that they had the opportunity to make observations before their own teaching sessions.
All of them commented several times on the fact that the Czech pupils were so much better at maths than Danish pupils of the same age group. They found it difficult to find an explanation for that, but agreed that the Czech methodology according to which there was much less use of calculators might be one of the reasons.
The relationship between pupils and teacher seemed just as friendly as they were used to from Denmark, yet with the Czech pupils seeming more respectful.
Both T and STs experienced difficulties with the pupils’ comprehension of the English language. It was not always possible to make all pupils understand the explanations of the maths tasks. In those cases the Czech teacher has to function as translator. However, they were all of them certain that if they had had more time together with the pupils, then it would have been possible to solve the linguistic problems.
After the visit – what they learned
The three of them stresses the fact that they had learned that it was much better that pupils to not rely so much on calculators and that it is very useful to learn tables by heart – something which Danish pupils are not used to.
Reports and Videoclips
Click here to see the report by Niels Henriksen, teacher.
Click here to see the report by Jeanne Christensen and Nadia Kjelsmark, student teachers.
The teacher explains triangles on the blackboard. Addition of fractions.