I would be very happy if a native could read this to me a natural as possible. I need to know how it would sound like for an upcoming oral exam. Feel free to correct any mistakes. Thank you very much ^^.
My grade school was the smallest school in Thuringia with only ten to fifteen students. The school had only one teacher and one educator. That teacher was my mum.
The size is not the only special thing about the school. We also had a different way of learning, to help you understand it I will just walk you through a normal school day.
Our day started with our so called free learning time. During that time, we could decide on our own what we wanted to learn. All students sat together in the same room doing the tasks they decided on. If we had any questions, we asked our teacher or other students who might know the answer to the problem we had. Despite that we still had a weekly plan of tasks we had to complete each day. This included math, writing and reading. Usually the tasks were something like do half a page of math, write one page and read 5-10 min, thus leaving the decision on what exactly we wanted to do to us. Sometimes fields in the planer were left empty giving us complete freedom on what we wanted to do as long as it included one of those topics. To prove that we finished something we would show it to our teacher and she corrected it. If we made mistakes she would explain to us what we did wrong and we had to redo the exercise.
After that we gathered for our morning round. For that, we sat in a circle and everyone would tell something about what they have done and sometimes present parts of it. If they read an interesting book for example, they would present it to us. Then we had our first break.
Afterwards we continued with structured lessons. Here we had only one subject we did together with our teacher. That one was more like normal classes but the seating arrangement was still quite different because the entire class, teacher included, sat at one table. The subjects were art, science and social studies, music or English. We had all of these subjects together, except for English, but usually the older students got more complex and harder tasks and the younger ones were often allowed to leave early so the topic could be discussed more in depth with the older students. Those who had to stay were usually in grade 3-4. For English we were divided into grade 1 and 2 and grade 3 and 4. Grade 1 and 2 learned English in a very playful approach with singing songs, listening to stories and starting with very basic words. For grade 3 and 4 a substitute teacher would come in to teach them English like in any other school.
After that we ate lunch. The lunch was supplied by the school and we all ate together.
Later in the afternoon we continued with our special activities. Some of those activities were supported and accompanied by a parent who knew something about a certain topic. For example one of the parents had a market garden and helped us tend to the school garden. We also had crafts and non-violent communication or recorder lessons.
Another one of those activities was printing our own school newspaper. The newspaper was printed with an old letterpress machine. We sorted the single letter blocks into texts and colored them with ink. After that we put paper on it and went over it with a drum.
During all these classes we never received grades or took exams. We were solely evaluated by the progress we did. We didn’t even get a normal school report with grades, but only one that showed our progress.
When I went on to secondary school, I had to adept to some practices that I wasn’t used to. For example, the difference in authority the teacher had over us and learning how to learn for exams. Regarding my knowledge, there were a few subject areas where I was lacking, but there were others where I was ahead. All in all, I liked my grade school and the transition to secondary school wasn’t as hard as I thought.
Paragraph 1: you have used the word ‘mum’ which is used in the UK and Australia, but later used American style words, in the US they say ‘math’ and color but in UK/Australia we say maths and colour. So either keep math and color and change mum to mom (US) or keep mum and have maths and colour (UK/Aus)
Paragraph 3: planer should be planner
Paragraph 5: say: grades 1 and 2 and also grades 3 and 4
(grades not grade; and maybe put the also in so that the meaning is more clear
Final paragraph: adept (meaning skilled at something) should be adapt
But well done, great job