living. learning. teaching. traveling.: First "Official" Day of Seminar

Today was a pretty relaxing day, as we had our first "official" day of seminar. Our Ball State professor invited Colin Wong, a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education here at Hope, to discuss the English primary school curriculum with us.

My group with Hope's Senior Lecturer, Colin Wong.

We discussed everything from their national curriculum, to the core and foundation subjects that are taught, to the key stages of education here in England. Colin showed us all sorts of neat manipulatives and activities that teachers use in their classrooms here...and since we discussed letter writing during seminar, Colin had us all write a personal letter to Prince Harry that he's going to mail for us! How neat!

After Colin finished his lecture, we finally were able to sign up for our classrooms! I received a Year 5 classroom, which is equivalent to 4th grade in the United States. We head to Much Woolton tomorrow for a full day of observations...I am extremely excited to begin working with all of the students!

When we were finished signing up for our classrooms, Dr. P, our Ball State professor, lectured about literacy in the classroom. It was very insightful and I definitely learned a lot! I'm pretty sure I may learn more from Dr. P in these few months than I have from some semester courses back at Ball State!

While I love traveling here and there, I absolutely hate booking flights and rooms! My group and I booked everything for our trip to Spain next weekend, and my gosh, it was the most stressful thing I have done in quite some time. I can't imagine having to do that weekly. Fortunately, it all worked out well, and it's sure to be a nice trip.

Below, you will find some images of campus that I took today...more to come soon. Enjoy!