Week 10: Montessori and nature in the city

On Monday Gokcen told us some things about Dutch culture (Old Dutch Masters, tolerance and windmills). In the afternoon we had to evaluate our Montessori school visits and the assignment we had to do for the Montessori teacher, Mrs. Lander. You can find the presentation of Ana, Silvia, Derya and me in this portfolio.

After this I just went to my Dutch lessons. It was a pity it were the last lessons as I really enjoyed them. I could work in my Dutch, got some nice ideas to use in lessons and I discovered that I could still write very well. You can also find my assignments for this in the portfolio.

On Tuesday I visited Wolfert van Borselen again. No tour today but I followed a lesson of the ISK pupils. These pupils only arrived in the Netherlands this school year. Their Dutch was already very good and when they really didn’t understand they used their dictionaries or asked the teacher to explain (which he did in Dutch and English). The pupils had to do some exercises on their own, which they did in silence and very independently.
After this lesson I followed the class I observed last week (the loud ones). They didn’t really calm down during last week so once again it was quite an exhausting hour for the teachers and me.
The last 30 minutes of this lesson the pupils could go to the mediatheek/openleercentrum to work on the digital learning environment of the school.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay the entire day as I had to go to the CVD to join the other international students and Mrs. Stofberg.

The CVD is a voluntary work organisation. It links people who need volunteers to people who want to volunteer. They always make sure that the people have the same interests or something, to make sure that the volunteers like volunteering and keep volunteering.
We talked about voluntary work in our countries and what we did so far. Especially helping pupils and older people seemed to be done the most.
Unfortunately, the lady of CVD had to leave after 45 minutes so we didn’t really learn that mucht.
Voluntary work is very important to society. A lot of things just wouldn’t work or even exit if there weren’t volunteers. I’m thinking about youth movements, sports manifestations, etc. As a consequence of this it is necessary that volunteers feel appreciated and like doing what they do.

On Wednesday the weather was extremely fantastic that I decided to go to school on my bicycle. This day it was finally up to me to present my country. You can find this presentation in this portfolio. I also treated to chocolate but I didn’t include that to this portfolio.

Thursday promised to be a day full of good weather and exploring the ‘natural surroundings of the city’. In the morning Janneke Verloop gave us a presentation on field-work. This was interesting but for somebody who teaches Dutch, English and religion to secondary pupils, this was nice but not really useful.
We learned that although Rotterdam didn’t really looked like it, it was full of nature. We went outside and investigated the school pond.
Afterwards we had a presentation about the ARK. The ARK is an organisation that takes care of the natural surroundings of the city and they also organize things so that pupils of primary education get to know the nature all over again (or for the first time).
We went to visit the Isle of Brienenoord in the afternoon, one of the pieces of nature of the ARK. The ARK makes sure not to interfere with nature, so they don’t get rid of dead trees or they don’t have any paths throughout the forest.
It was a very nice trip, not only because of the weather but also because we got to learn some things about nature in Rotterdam and about the nature itself.
I think it is very important for primary and secondary pupils to explore the natural surroundings of the school. They should know what’s going on with the world surrounding them. They should also know that milk doesn’t come from the shops but from cows. Organisations as the ARK should be popping out of the ground like fungi.

On Friday we had another lesson of Google Earth.