Compare/Contrast

We all survived the first week in the school! We've started to figure out some of the differences between the schools we are familiar with and the ones we will be teaching in. One of my favorite differences, but a difficult one to adjust to, is how my Grade 1 students learn letters, or rather, don't learn them. Instead of learning the names of all the letters, they learn them by sounds. If presented with a d, most will say "duh" instead of "dee." Of course, a few will say "buh," but that's no different from American Kindergarteners! It's very phonics based, obviously, and it works well for a lot of the kids. There's one group (10 kids in grades 1-4) that it doesn't work with, which isn't good, but for those who it does work with, it works really well. A five year old read me a book about teeth, and successfully sounded out "incisor!"

They have compulsory religious education (RE. Like PE, but not.). According to the government, 51% of morning assemblies should be corporate worship, even though the school I'm in isn't religiously affiliated. The other half of the girls in the program are at a Catholic school (but it's a state-funded school- different, huh?) so they obviously have mass and RE, but all the students are Catholic. Our school is so diverse (also unexpected), so there are Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Hindus (?), and many non-religious. We met with the Head Teacher (sort of like principal), and he explained that he doesn't think the kids should be forced to practice the state-sanctioned Protestant religion, so he does the very minimum. They stress the citizenship aspects- being a good person, etc. and the vicar comes once a fortnight.

Look for posts about a funny story from PE on Thursday and my trip to London in the next few days. It's bedtime now!