Bradford Adventures

Hey there! We are still alive (kinda of), back in Spain and working hard on our TFM, or at least trying. Good luck to everybody! Almost there!

The other day I came across this TED video and thought it will be good to share it here, as a backup of the entry about religion studies. She is Yassmin Abdel-Magied and her talk's title is "What does my headscarf mean to you?", if you are interested in the topic, give it a go!

Also, if you feel like reading here you have an interesting link as well from TED. Enjoy!

Headscarf

Probably have you noticed that appart from being a only-girls school, most of the students attending BVG wear a headscarf. However, it does not mean that BVG is a Muslim school, but the majority of its students are. There is an only-girls Islamic school in Bradford, Feversham College.

It only seems paradoxical that coming from Granada, the so-called last Muslim kingdom in Spain, some of us were so impressed by this enviroment and, in some cases, we realized how little we knew about Islam. The most we know and understand our students and their cultures, the better. Actually there is a module in Máster de Profesorado offered in the UGR called "Atención a la diversidad y a la multiculturalidad", which deals with this particular aspect inside education.

Some information that you will probably find useful is that there is more than one type of headscarf, the most widely used is hijab but there are others. Actually we had been told that apart from the tipologies, there are also different trendies and fashion, which students follow, even for weddings!

Since March 2007, it is into headmasters and managers at English schools to decide if headscarf is allowed or not. In France, for instance, the wearing of all conspicuous religious symbols in public schools was banned back in 2004. In Spain, there have been some attemps to forbid burqa in public spaces, but still each schools can have its own dress code and there is no major regulation on it.

Religious Studies

Religious Studies (RS) is compulsory in Years 7-8, then students will decide their subjects for Year 9 based on the GCSE they want to take on Year 11. The contents are very briefly summarized by one of the teachers of RS at BVG as follows:

Further reading of the use of hijab at schools

- Afshar, H. (2008). Can I see your hair? Choice, agency and attitudes: the dilemma of faith and feminism for Muslim women who cover. Ethnic and Racial Studies , 31 (2), 411- 427.
- Antón Valero, J. A. (2005). La discusión sobre el velo y la capacidad de la escuela para el debate cultural. Mugak (26), 17-26.
- Cañamares Arribas, S. (2006). El empleo de simbología religiosa en España. Boletín Mexicano de Derecho Comparado (116), 317-350.
- Franks, M. (2000). Crossing the borders of whiteness? White Muslim women who wear the hijab in Britain today. Ethnic and Racial Studies , 23 (5), 917-929.
- Marco Méndez, O. (2007). An Ethnographic Approach to the Hijabization Process: some "Mindful" bodies uncovered. Altafulla: FIMAM.
- San Román, T. (2006). El velo, el Rolex y la Antropología. Perifèria. Revista de investigación y formación en antropología (4), 1-4.

Karl Popper

Last week, I had the chance to work with a couple of Sixth Form groups. Thank to their Psychology teacher, Jill, I could take part into the course dynamics.

Due to my lack of psychological background, I was a bit scared I could not share anything new for the girls. Luckily, their A-level exam includes a essay-like question that usually lays out some philosophical issues.

Taking as an example a real test from last year, we tried to give a reasonable answer to the question "Is psychology a science?". You can click here to see the presentation I used to introduce the girls into the debate. I hope they enjoyed the session :).

Thursday, 7th May 2015, and our time in Bradford is getting to the end. We have just few days left to thank to the people who helped us here, pack our stuff and celebrate together we have survived to the Great Adventure.

Looking back, we can say it has been a prolific month. First of all, we have been privileged to live firsthand a different educational system, which is always an enriching experience. Working in a school just for girls which ara mainly Muslims, was a shoking aspect that early in this month called our attention, but that helps us to learn about they culture and way of behaving so we can be prepared if we face something similar back in Spain.

The way of teaching is also very different from what we do at home. It has been already mentioned that here most of the teachers have their own class, so are pupils who move from one room to another, that gives the teacher the posibility of manage her/his room in the better way to teach his/her subject (btw, pupils going from a class to another is not such a mess as we can suppose a priori). Having lots of resources (specially in Sciences which is the fild I have been involved in) and assistants in most of the classes, both for students with special needs and for the class in general, makes a huge difference with the average Spanish highschool.

Some subjects are very different as well. Although some of them, such as Maths, are pretty much the same thing than in Spain, some other are taught so differently: In Music lessons students do play actual instruments (to the point that they have a band that sounds pretty well), rather than studying about history of music; Religious Studies is a subject in which they compare how different religions face different issues like anticonception methods, mariage, death.... far away from the Catholicism subject that we have in Spain under the name of "Religion"; About Sciences.... just go and look what Nacho said about science classes in the previous post.

Further than learning from the educational system, during our staying here we have had the chance of making good friends, some contacts, and we have opened new jobs opportunities. Being a teacher, or even an assistant teacher, in the UK has become an option for some of us.

These are some of the bunch of things that we are bringing back home to try to implement when we will be teachers and headmasters and headmistress. However, I have seen some other number of things that I, personally, do not like here, so this experience have been useful too for knowing what we need to prevent to apply in the Spanish educational system: spreading students in bright and no-so-bright levels, the fact that all the schools are private and a qualification is not needed anymore to be a teacher in some places, their unhealthy obsession for marks and external evaluations, such as GCSE or Ogsted, which lets no space for the personal development of the students... among others.

At the end of the day, this city may not be the most beatiful city ever, nevertheless, after one month of adventure here, we all have grown fond of Bradford.

¡¡¡HASTA LA VISTA!!!

Hi again, fans of twitter, instagram....today I will tell you something of the Science classes in Belle Vue Girl's Highschool, where we went as teacher assistant, and the experiencie was very rewarding!

First of all, I find necessary to talk about the Science subject, according to the National Curriculum of England. The first difference with the Spanish Curriculum is that Science includes the disciplines of Biology, Chemistry and Physics, namely, they are not taught in different subjects. As I said in my last post, each teacher has his/her own classroom, with all the material and resources that they need. When we asked a chemistry teacher why the students have to move to the different classes (remember that in Spain the teachers had to move to the class and the students remained in the same class during the whole course, although there were some exceptions), and this was her answer:

"This is my chemistry class, here I organise what I am going to teach, and here I have all the materials I need. Why should I move to other classes?"

Needless to say, science classrooms in Belle Vue are not like the typical classes. Science classrooms are taught in LABS. It is something logical, since if you want to "create" scientists, they have to do science. Talking about the labs, all of them had everything you need to do simple experiments, which can make a big difference in the motivation of a student: as Goggles (special glasses to protect your face from acids, fire, etc), test tubes, Bunsen burners, or Petri plates.

The first class we assisted was a Chemistry Class, where they were studying the chemical bonds. In the beginning the teacher started to explain what it was a chemical bond, and wrote some exercises (the typical class) but then...voilá! He asked the students for doing an experiment in class! They had to use a device to check if a salt (solid and liquid) conducted electricity. At the end of the lesson, everybody knew the answer, since they had seen that with their own eyes.

We were very impressed as well of the Microbiology classes. The teacher of biology was always friendly and kind to us, receiving us with a smile everyday. In her class, the students worked with real bacteria!! They grew then in a Petri plate, and when they had grown, and they had a visible culture, they took pictures of them. Students asked a lot of questions about their "little monsters", since not all the cultures were the same, some of them were contaminated or had different strains. I was very jealous, why couldn't I have the same classes in highschool??

Say hello to our little friends!

I could talk all day about all the experiments we saw during our practicals in Science classes, but it is not something that you can explain with just words. Instead of that, I will end this post showing you the charismatic pet of physics classroom!! Her name is Peggy, and is a blind Gecko (because of genetic causes). The physic's teacher has been feeding her everyday, and she is very lovely. I can't show you the picture of Peggy because of a problem with my mobile phone, but this is how she looked like.

This is everything I can offer you today! Keep following us and Dedito arriba si les gustó! :)

Some days ago we had the opportunity to watch a live cooking lesson at BVG, and seriously, students were ages better than us in the kitchen. Food Technology, as the course is called, is part of a wider subject named Design Technology, which includes Product Design, Art, Textile and Graphics modules.

Year 8 students cooking yummy Flapjacks

Design Technology is taught during the whole academic year in Key Stages 3 (11-14 years old) and Key Stages 4 (14-16 years old). Students have to follow different modules every 6 weeks, which means that they focus for six weeks on one skill, for instance, textile, and after those 6 weeks they move to a different module.

Year 8 students are designing and making packed lunch items and dishes based on rice, pasta, pizza and home-made biscuits. But appart from learning how to prepare their own packed lunch, the main goal of this subject at this level is to develop designing and making skills alongside understanding food hygiene and safety, healthy eating, market reasearch, tasting and testing. In fact, students have a kind of a booklet in which they plan their recipes, analize food labels and learn how to measure food.

Students rolling up their sleeves

Laura and the teacher assistant helping students

Four students cooked a delicious Golden Syrup Flapjack that we found particularly easy to make, healthy, tasty and the best of all, you can add whatever ingredient you feel like! So, why not? Let's use our creativity!! The Flapjack is made of very basic ingredients that we all have at home, open your cupboard and fridge and let's get down to work.

Ingredients

150g butter

75g Tate & Lyle Fairtrade Light or Brown soft sugar

3 rounded tbsp Lyle's Golden Syrup 

250g rolled oats (porridge oats)

Method

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes

Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan) gas 4.
Grease and line a shallow 20cm square tin with parchment or greaseproof paper.
Put the butter, Tate & Lyle sugar and Lyle's Golden Syrup into a medium pan and gently heat until melted. Stir in the oats. Turn into the tin, level and press the mixture evenly and firmly with the back of a spoon.
Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden around the edges.
Remove from the oven and cool for10 minutes then mark into 12 or 16 pieces whilst still warm. Cool completely before turning out onto a board and cutting again with a sharp knife.

Golden Syrup Flapjack

Well done! We did it! See you in our next entry! Thank you very much for reading!

It is about time we told you about the city we are living in, Bradford. During our stay in Bradford, whenever we meet someone and we tell them we are doing a placement here, we always get the same answer: Why Bradford?, as in, why did you want to come here?

There is an explanation. Bradford used to be an important and rich city because of the wool industry, although it has declined in recent years. As the time has gone by, we have become used to this city and decided to stay positive and find things to do and see here.

Staying positive brings positive changes!! (From the left to the right: Miguel, Adela, Antonio and Elisabetta, our Italian friend).

Bradford is the first UNESCO City of Film. This city has served as the setting for many films, click here to see which ones, you will be surprised! The city is also a world heritage site declared by UNESCO and hosts a National Museum. There is so much more to Bradford than first meets the eye, keep reading to find out what you can do in this city.

This map below shows most of Bradford city centre:

WHAT TO SEE:

Bradford City Park is in the heart of the city. Here you can find the City Hall and the Centenary Square, where there is a fountain that becomes a swimming pool in the sunny days.

National Media Museum: It has 7 floors of galleries dedicated to photography, TV, animation, videograming, Internet, light and colour. The admission is free!

Go to the Museum to experience how films are made!!
(Picture taken fom the NMM website)

The Alhambra theatre: Some of us went to see a play to this place (you can read about this experience in another post here).

Wool Exchange: This building was used as a wool-trading centre in the 19th century. Now it is a book shop, called Waterstones, and a coffee shop.

Inside the Wool Exchange building.

Little Germany It is a Victorian commercial district which takes its name from 19th century German Jewish immigrants. In this area it is situated the cathedral, the oldest building in Bradford.

WHERE TO SHOP:

Kirkgate shopping centre: It is the main shopping retail facility in Bradford city centre. It has 65 shops which includes Primark, W H Smith, Boots and Poundland among others.

Besides other shopping centres, we usually shop at ASDA, Tesco, Salisbury or Lidl.

PARKS:

Within the city district there are 37 parks and gardens. I will tell you about the two parks we have been to that you do not want to miss!

Lister Park: It is one of the city's largest parks and it was voted Britain's Best Park (2006). Bradford's main art gallery is housed in Cartwright Hall building in this park and the admission is free!

Contemplating life (photo taken by Julia)

Horton Park: The park provides bowling greens, a children's play area, as well as floral decorations, as you can see in this picture:

I have consulted the following webs to write this post, click in each name for more info:
Visit Bradford, National Media Museum and Wikipedia.

More pictures coming soon!!

Today has been a special day, quite literally indeed. We have been Teacher Assitants for one day in Mrs Filby´s Geography class - Jane Filby is the one in charge of us in BVG - in which there were 10 students who had severe learning difficulties due to some health problems. This group is formally called “low-ability class” or “SEN”, the short form of Special Education Needs, a way to refer to students with disabilities.

Each of us was in charge of one girl. Jane started the class by explaining the learning objective of today. They were going to learn about the earthquake in Nepal. The first part of the class consisted of the presentation of some photographs showing the effects of this natural disaster. The teacher employed mimics, realia, and movements to simulate what would happen in an earthquake. She kept asking questions to the girls and they tried to describe what their reactions would be if they were affected by it.

We sat next to the girls and helped them with their work. The first task was writing sentences with some vocabulary related to earthquakes. The teacher provided the vocabulary for them in order to facilitate the creation of these ideas. This was one example of how teachers need to adapt their classes and elaborate individual lesson plans which are appropriate for their needs. In addition, she always tried to talk clearly and slowly, showing a friendly smile at all times.

The main part of the class was to create a Power Point presentation in which each of them had a specific role and concrete topics to talk about. It was so nice to practice with them their speeches. They felt a bit nervous because they had to talk in front of an audience and the teacher had a great idea by putting on classical music in the meantime. When they all finished, a teacher assistant grouped all the mini-presentations and she formed a big one. They were ready to start their marvelous presentation with useful information about the earthquake in Nepal.

As I said at the beginning, they are officially labeled as “low-ability classes”. To be honest, this label is completely misleading. This was the most interesting, enriching and rewarding class we all have had in the high school. We really enjoyed this experience because they are sending truthfulness and love through every gesture, every smile, through the light of their eyes. I was amazed at how they clapped their hands when each girl appeared in front of them, praising her work with the tenderness that only good friends can share. They found delight and wonder in the simplest things and offered you the best of smiles when you were around. Those simple gestures were a good reason to go on with our professional journey!

As sport lover, I couldn't lose the possibility of playing basketball during the formative experience in Bradford.

A couple of week before taking the plane to Bradford, I searched a basketball team here and I found the Bradford Dragons club, so I wrote a request explaining my situation before to arrive and suggesting if I could have the possibility of training with them just for having fun.

After a couple of weeks, I had the chance to play a friendly game, playing for the Bradford College against the Bradford University.

It was a really good game, pretty similar as the typical sport derby of the city in any sport competition.

The court was nearly crowed, and all my formative experience's colleagues were supporting me and cheering all of my baskets, which were dedicated for them encouraging their energetic voices (spanish voices).

After a huge struggled game, my team the Bradford College beat the Bradford University by the result of 84-69, and I was very proud of myself because I did a really good performance, thank of my fans club!

There are here some pictures of the match.

The Belle Vue sport facilities

The centre has a huge amount of facilities. It is really awesome walking for the school’s corridors, taking a look of the ICT preparation of each class, electronic blackboards, one I-Mac for each student, the artistic and musical stages, with expensive and sophisticated tools to develop the performances.

Sport facilities

In particular from my point of view, the sport facilities are quite awesome, but not as important as the quantity is their quality. In Spain it is really complicated to find any school with such level in infrastructures, having in account that we are talking about a public school.

For instance, Manu and me, we have been delivering some football lessons using for the first time the new football pitch made of artificial grass.

Classroom with views to the indoor court

Nevertheless the football pitch, is not as impressive as the “Zara” ground, where the school have an indoor court, a big class to develop the sport lessons. And also they have got a very modern fitness room full of gymnastic machines. Not enough with these facilities, the school also has another indoor court because of the climatic inclements.

View of the indoor court from the classroom in the upper leve

One of the most impressive things as sport teachers, is the stock sport material that the school is taking advantage of. They have a tremendous variety of sport equipments and, which is more important, in a really good preservation and quite news, even with full equipment of minority sports.

Good preservation and new material for PE

Do you know where the Tour de France Grand Depart took place a year ago? Well, neither we did until a couple of days ago. However during our trips the last couple of weeks, we started to spot this:

Yellow bikes all around us!

After a brief discussion, we ruled out some conspiracy theories and started, as good researchers, to investigate the issue. So, we google it.

What we found out it is that in 2014 the Tour de France started in Yorkshire and happened to be a big success in the county. As a result of that, Yorkshire people decided to organize their own tour whose symbol is surprise-surprise... a yellow bike! So the Tour de Yorkshire is taking place this very weekend all around us.

Here is the promotional video which will give you a nice picture of the region we are living in:

Have we ever told you the name of Bradford's theatre which, by the way, is not very far from our residence? Have a go and guess! Or just go to the answer in the picture below!

Alhambra Theatre

That's it! Alhambra Theatre! It's a small but nice building where you can choose a different play to see every week. Remember to bring your student card for concessions (normally £2.5 off).

This week, the play was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Simon Stephens, based of the novel by Mark Haddon. So, some of us decided to go and we really enjoyed it. Tickets cost us £11 each in the upper level, however once there we were resettled in the front row in stalls! Lucky us!

Painting in the street for the play 20th April

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

In case you don't know the plot, we leave you the information available in the leaflet and a video:

'Christopher, fifteen years old, has an extraordinary brain - exceptional at maths while ill-equipped to interpret everyday life. He has never ventured alone beyond the end of his road, he detests being touched and he distrusts strangers. When he falls under the suspicion of killing Mrs Shears' dog, it takes him on a journey that upturns his world'.

We really enjoyed ourselves and recommend the experience to everyone!

I was not the only one who got a bit stunned when reading “meeting with the Pastoral Manager” in our training programme. After leaving my intuitions out to understand the meaning of the term “pastoral”, I did decide to google it. Poor me! I didn't research enough to realise it means more that one thing in English. So automatically I started wondering “what the h*** is a priest doing in a state-funded school?”. Poor me again, with all my secular prejudices!

Nothing further from the truth. The role of a Pastoral manager in an English school is something akin to our “orientador escolar”. And actually, Claire – whom we have the pleasure to meet- was great. Sometimes it is much easier to ask the people what they do in their jobs than to study the official tasks they're suppose to do.

Pastoral managers in BVG are responsible for any single students' concern that goes besides academic stuff. Just to mention some of them: groups tutoring, avoiding bullying and other forms of violence, integrating new students in the everyday school life, controlling attendance and punctuality and so on and so force.

Something interesting that showed up in the conversation was the organisation model they have built up. Unlike the horizontal system of tutoring we're use to, BVG has adopted a scheme that has become popular in the country during the last few years. The full student body is divided into seven “houses” that are named after a famous female intellectual to encourage them. There are no special criteria for the initial assignment to a house but to spread out the students with special need and to not separate members from the same family. Then, each house is divided again in groups formed by members of every year(vertical system) . This groups are meeting everyday for half an hour. During that time, a bunch of activities are done: from dealing with daily cohabitation problems to project-based works. It would be interesting to study the advantages and problems of this model by comparing it to the classic horizontal one. But I don't want to get annoying with long reflections.

Besides the meeting I just wrote about, we had a seminar session in college about behaviour management. Two excellent teachers provided us with some techniques for avoiding misbehaviour in class and then, we did some role-playing. Even if nothing too new comes into pitch, it was a clever, humorous synthesis of many strategies we have learnt this year.

Just to sum up, it's been a week with some very interesting experiences. I would like to thank all the Bradford College's and BVG's staff that are collaborating with us.

Antonio Yuste

My own view on Bradford City

Hi, fans from facebook, instagram...after some days spent on getting used to Bradford, and its amazing, wonderful "party environment", we were ready for starting our experience as assistant teachers in Belle Vue Girls' School!

The first thing that we had to do was to register our name in a device you could find in the reception hall. Then, we had to take a picture of our face, and stick that picture with our name to us, so everybody could see that actually we were teachers. Otherwise, no one would believe that...

Maybe in other posts we can share with you some of the pictures, which are truly marvelous :)

Anyway, there were some aspects of the highschool which impressed us, first of all, something that you might have guess with the name of the School, is that it is a Highschool for Girls, so the male teachers (specially me) created great expectation when they walked by the corridor. We also started to see a high variety of resources, available for a lot of different subjects, as well equipped labs, digital blackboards and...an impressive music classroom! The teacher (who was very kind to us) invited us to watch one of the acts of a band of student (which were formed by guitar players, drummers...) they were playing the song "I love Rock 'N' Roll" from Joan Jett (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFHg0uRAyVs). I have to admit it, THEY ROCKED IT!! The music classroom was also provided by computers with keyboards and microphones, so everybody could release the singer inside of them.

The moment of truth: Let's face the students!!

After crawling around the different buildings of the highschool, the second day we would have the chance to go to the classes from different subjects as observers. We weren't creepy at all, we were just taking notes "on the sly", without being notice. We could say that we looked like this guy...

From the observations, we could start to realize about the great classroomss equipment: teachers used the digital and interactive blackboards all the time, during different workshops students were provided by laptops from the university, and science labs had all the resources they need to carry on the experiments. By the way, did I say that science teachers teach inside the lab so they can do there the experiments?

Of course not, it was only a nexus to this paragraph, about other thing that surprised us. Each teacher has his/her own classroom, with all the materials they need. "This is my classroom, I have everything I need here, it's something that is mine, so the students go here to carry on the class". Sounds logical, right? This is one of the first differences with Spain that we saw: students have to move from class to class, and the teacher will be waiting in his/her own classroom (music classroom, theater classroom, science classroom...).

We could also attend to other classes that are not typical in Spain, as drama or technology (a special technology, were they learned how to sew, and other very interesting skills), anyway, we will talk about these classes in other post.

Respect to the technology class, we were amazed by the resources that students could use during the classes. In one of them, they had to make cushions with different images, which were designed by them, and the material for doing that were...Sewing machines!! We could see dresses, costumes, and toys made from different materials (wool, fabrics...). In addition, they could use the computers in the class to work on the design they wanted to use. As far as i have seen, they are very competent.

I don't want to bore you, so we will tell you more soon.

See you!!

In this entry you can find some basic information related to the educational system in England. We have learnt a great amount of details concerning this topic since we have the chance to enjoy the wonderful lectures offered by Prof. Joanne Courtney at Bradford College every Thursday. Besides, our days at Belle Vue Girls School make us experience the daily routine of a school in our own skin!

As you may know, there exist some differences among the regions that belong to the UK in terms of educational policies. Here, we are going to highlight those aspects that are specifically connected with the English system since Bradford is located in there.

As an introduction, it is useful to know that the majority of schools in England follow the National Curriculum, which was introduced for the first time in 1988.

Types of Schools

On the one hand, they establish two main groups and divide them into "State Schools" or "Private Schools". In the first group, the State Schools, parents do not have to pay for education. Here we enumerate some of the most important examples:

Community schools: controlled by the local councils. They are not influenced by businesses or religious groups.
Foundation schools, with more freedom than in community schools.
Academies: run by a governing body, independent from the local council. They can follow a different curriculum. Belle Vue, the site for our school placement, adheres to this subtype of state school.
Grammar schools: run by the council or a foundation body. There exists a previous selection of students based on their ability and there is often an exam to get in.

However, when parents decide to pay for education we find Private Schools. They are also called public or independent schools. Then, instead of being funded by the government, they charge fees to attend. Moreover, they do not have to follow the national curriculum that is something compulsory in the rest of schools, although they are inspected regularly as state schools are.

There are also free schools that are funded by the government but aren´t run by the local council. They can use academic selection processes like grammar schools and set their own pay and conditions for staff, change the length of schools terms or school day, and don´t have to follow the national curriculum.

Distribution of Key Stages and Years

The system is divided into Key Stages (KS) and Years. There are 4 Key Stages and 11 Years that are distributed in the way we show in the table below:

Describing the educational system in general terms is sometimes useful. Notwithstanding, it is better to apply theory to real practice and experience the reality of a school in England to fully understand how it works.

Our experience at BVG so far

Our experience here has been interesting because we have been shadowing and observing both the teachers and pupils from different ages in a big range of subjects. We will highlight the most essential characteristics we have focused on during this week:

Subjects offered at school: the majority of us have been shadowing in subjects such as English, Maths, Textiles, MFL (Modern Foreign languages), Physical Education, Technology, Science, Drama, Chemistry, Arabic, Sociology, Religious Studies, etc.
Communities or Tutor Groups/Assemblies: One important difference that we have encountered here is that they have created what they call "Communities". The total amount of girls in the high school are divided into different communities whose names are based on famous women who were successful in the past like Marie Curie, Sanderson or Bronte. They meet together everyday to share aspects of life that are of worth, act as a medium for communicating matters of significance from one generation to another in terms of academic life, personal life and other interests. We found this amazing!
Ability/Streaming: the classes are classified according to the level of the students or their ability. Thus, we encounter classes that are called "low ability classes" or others that are "high ability". Teacher Assistants play an important role especially in those classes where there are girls with special needs.
Regarding classroom organisation, they are distributed in groups in the classes. Triangle tables facilitate this and there are no problems when teams have to be created or dissolved.
The access to ICT is wonderful. Every classroom provides an interactive whiteboard, they have visualisers for the teachers to make real documents digital, they have Macs to use them in subjects such as Music or Science, a music studio is ready for them to record their own voices or a great variety of musical instruments is available for them to practice. A 3D printer is also coming soon.
When students are asked if they are happy in their school, they tend to give us positive answers, emphasizing the quality of the education they receive. In fact, ofsted results underline that students respond well to high expectations set by the teachers, have a positive attitude to learning and are keen to do their best (Ofsted, at BVG webpage).

In a nutshell, it is a real pleasure to be part of this brilliant experience. We really expect to continue learning as trainee teachers in this fantastic school and, of course, post the most important details for you all here!

On our first weekend, some of us decided to visit York. In order to get there, we took a bus from Bradford to Leeds and then from Leeds to York. It took us two hours to get there but it was definitely worth it.

En nuestro primer fin de semana, algunos de nosotros decidimos ir de visita a York. Para llegar hasta allí, cogimos un autobús de Bradford a Leeds y después otro de Leeds hasta York. Nos llevó dos horas llegar, pero definitivamente mereció la pena.

York is a lovely city with a lot of beautiful places to visit - monuments, buildings, etc. And, on top of it all, we could enjoy a super nice day in the English sun!

Es una ciudad encantadora con muchos sitios bonitos que visitar - monumentos, edificios, etc. Y, además de esto, ¡pudimos disfrutar de un día súper agradable y soleado!

York

We even met some locals and made new friends!

My favourite part of York was The Shambles, which is a 14th century street where the butchers used to display their products. It is full of little timber-framed houses and they overhang the street by several metres.

Mi parte favorita de York fueron los Shambles, una calle edificada en el siglo XIV en la que los carniceros solían exponer sus productos. Está llena de casitas con entramados de madera que sobresalen unos cuantos metros por encima de la calle.

Some of the Shambles

The shambles were crumbling above us!

We also went to see the famous Clifford's Tower. When we saw it, we were actually expecting a proper castle, but instead we got this peculiar and kind of lonely tower which we all liked very much.

También fuimos a ver la famosa Clifford's Tower. Cuando la vimos, en realidad esperábamos encontrarnos con un castillo hecho y derecho, pero nos encontramos con esta peculiar y algo solitaria torre que, aún así, nos gustó mucho a todos.

Delia and Laura with the Clifford's Tower

All in all, the six of us enjoyed our trip very much and had a wonderful day!

En resumen, los seis disfrutamos mucho del viaje y pasamos un día genial.

From left to right: Laura, Manu, Nacho, Delia and Juan at Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate, the shortest street with the longest name.

Hey there!

Friday at least! We have survived our first week in Bradford. We have been doing a lot of things this week and we are trying still to process all that brand-new information to write some good entries for the blog. We leave you a sneak peek of our week below!

At Belle Vue.

At Bradford College on our Thursday lesson.

Be aware of the ducks!

Have a nice weekend!! :)

Food for thought

Headscarf and RS

Headscarf

Religious Studies

Further reading of the use of hijab at schools

Learning to think

The end of the Adventure

Let's do Science!

Cooking at school? In BVG everything is possible...

Ingredients

Method

About Bradford

A rewarding experience

Basketball Experience Abroad

School Facilities

The Belle Vue sport facilities

Sport facilities

The mystery of the yellow bikes

Bradford Theatre

Herdding our puppils. A lightly confusing introduction to pastoral and behaviour management

Next stop...

Let's go to class!! Please mom, 5 minutes more...

The moment of truth: Let's face the students!!

Some basic characteristics of the educational system in England

Visiting York

First week

About the blog

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