My 'teaching' experiences in Denmark

Because I don’t speak enough Danish, we mostly observed during the two weeks of practice. However, because we (Stefanie and I) didn’t want to sit and listen all the time, we asked our mentor (Lisbeth Thompsen) if we could give a small presentation about our country and maybe play some games. Lisbeth was very excited about this offer and said ‘yes’ immediately.
On Tuesday, the 13th of april, we gave a presentation about our country to the pupils of the 6th grade. (We could only do this presentation in the 6th grade, because the younger children don’t understand enough English. )To see if they had paid attention, we did a little quiz afterwards. Most students got all the questions right. Lisbeth told us afterwards that the students really enjoyed it.


Today, at our last day of practice, we did some games with the pupils from the 3rd , 5th and 6th grade. With the 3rd and the 5th grade, we played ‘Schipper magi k overvaren?’ (Sailor can I cross the sea?)
We chose this particular game, because it’s a typical Belgian game and because the pupils could practice the English words they’d just learn. The game goes like this:

There are two sailors in the middle, the other pupils are standing in a line towards them. First the pupils have to sing a song (we’ve translated it to English). When the pupils are standing on the right part of the field, the sailors have to say a color. All the pupils who are wearing something who has this color, can’t cross the sea, so the sailors have to try to catch them. Those who aren’t wearing anything black, can just walk over. On the other side, it’s the same, accept that the pupils have to do something, a movement, again chosen by the sailors. Those who chose to don’t do the movement, can try to run, but they can be caught. Both Lisbeth as the pupils loved this game.


Because we had some more time, we also played ‘ 1, 2, 3, piano…’. (we also played this game with the pupils from the 6th grade) The pupils knew a similar game that’s called ‘ red, orange, green ‘.
There is one pianoman. He had to turn around and say “One, two, three, piano…”. While he is saying this, the other children can run and try to touch the wall, where the pianoman is standing. But after the pianoman has said his sentence, he turn around and all the other pupils have to stand still. Those who aren’t standing still have to go back and start all over again.
You can make some variations with this game, like we did. Instead of saying “one, two, three, piano…”, you can also say “one, two, three, animals” or “one, two, three, fotomodel” . And than the pupils have to stand like an animal or a fotomodel.

All three grades enjoyed those games and so did we. It was a great experience, both the ‘teaching’ as the observing. I’m just a bit disappointed that the practice was scheduled so late, because now we don’t have any time left to discuss this with the other Erasmus students or the teachers.