So, this was the actual first week of class everyday, Monday through Friday. I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot, even if the kids still don’t know what to say when I ask, “How are you?” Monday, I had “coordinación,” two periods of coordination/planning with other teachers. My first one was with Guillermo, the gym teacher, and Lourdes, the secretary/music teacher. Basically, the hour was designed to be a time for them to practice English. Next year, the bilingual program will expand so that gym classes are taught in English. I’m not sure how music plays into the program, but I’m sure in the future it could be taught in English too. My other coordinación was with David, the bilingual coordinator. He also teaches 5th and 6th grade English.
Tuesday I had the three-year-olds and second-grade science. For the three-year-olds, I had to sing “Mary had a little lamb” over and over again. We had a recording of it on a CD, but this was in British English, which was impossible for me to sing. She had me explain the song to them in English and Spanish. They’re so cute, they just sit there and stare up at me while I talk. In second grade, the kids were learning about the 5 senses (in English and Spanish). They had already covered the parts of the body, so I made a worksheet where they had to unscramble the body part (ie: “ear”) then draw a line from it to a picture of it (an ear) and then another line to it’s function (hear). I explained the activity in English and Spanish to make sure they understood their task. The activity took almost the full class time, and for the remaining five minutes, the kids wanted to review “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.”
On Wednesday, I met with the science teacher for our “coordinación” period. She’s really nice and had lived in Priego for her entire life, except for her time at university. After that meeting I had second-grade and fifth-grade English. The second-graders are pretty well behaved. They listen to Ana and do the activities. The fifth-graders are not well behaved. The ones that I had on Wednesday are 5A, the better of the two. They’re just really immature. It’s hard to think they go to high school after sixth grade. They never bring their books to class and rarely do the homework and the teachers let them get away with it. The fifth-graders level of English is pretty low considering their ages. They have had English classes for a few years now and they still don’t understand the concept of third-person. We tried to play a board race game where I would say, “play” and “he” and the first student who writes “he plays” is the winner. The problem was that the students did not know how to spell “he.” This meant that the game didn’t really work and they didn’t really do anything. We also read a story. David (the English coordinator and their teacher) was going to play the recording of the story, but I suggested that each student take a box and read it. The boys told me they were not going to read and the girls were jumping out of their chairs to read. One boy, in particular, was not very good at reading (in English or Spanish according to the other students). David even said maybe I should skip him in the order. That, to me, seemed counter-intuitive. If a student is not great at reading, you should offer him more support rather than skip him in the order and figure that somehow at some point he’ll figure out reading. We read the story slowly and went through each part to make sure the students could understand what was going on. It seemed pretty successful: they understood the gist of it.
Thursday I had the first graders. Twice. There are only ten students in the class, but they are awful. Andrea, the adorable girl who is always very fashionable, is so badly behaved that she equates to 5 students. During one class, she took her safety scissors and tried to cut another student. She’s constantly hitting kids and finishes all of her work in two seconds because she just scribbles instead of coloring. Another student, Said, is pretty chubby and throws himself against teachers and students because he is so full of energy that runs around the classroom. We’ve seen him around town a few times. His mother and grandmother are pretty scary – they yell a lot and have really high-pitched voices. Said is constantly eating sweets. We saw him at the bakery, throwing a temper tantrum and refusing to eat a pastry he didn’t like. He made his grandmother buy him a new one (she did).
During Thursday’s science class, I made a sheet of foods and another with four “plates” each representing breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner. The students’ task was to color and cut out the food and then glue it to the correct plate. This took more time than the allotted (45 minutes) class time, but the teacher thought it was a great activity. I walked around the classroom asking all the students what they had eaten for breakfast. Most hadn’t eaten much: they told me they had a class of milk or chocolate milk. Some had eaten hot or cold cereal, but not many.
During English class, the first graders were awful (again). Ana had to take Said to the principal’s office because he was yelling that Ana was hitting him (she would absolutely never do that). I think he had also done something during recess also. So, I watched the students in the stairwell for a little while and then we went to class. I couldn’t think of any good activity that went along with their lesson (red, blue, 1, 2, chair, book, desk, square, circle, triangle). I made a sheet with a farmer and a dog on it (for them to color) and taught them Bingo. I did most of the singing, but had them spell BINGO (while I pointed to the letters on the board). They absolutely loved it. I’m sure I’ll be repeating this song at least a few more times. During English, Ana had to leave the room for a few minutes to make some copies. The students immediately started taunting me by asking where Ana went and if I was alone with them. They figured I wouldn’t be able to control them. Andrea finished her coloring in two seconds and started wandering around the classroom. I made her sit up front next to me. She told me that she wasn’t allowed to because she had to sit in her own desk. Said wanted to go to the bathroom; I told him no way (he “goes to the bathroom” aka wanders the hallway). He started running around and grabbing this other kid (and dragging him around the class). I asked him about his time at the principal’s office and then asked him if he wanted to go back. Everyone stopped and looked at me. He shut up and sat down. When Ana returned, they were all coloring quietly. It was blissful…until they had to line up to go back to their class. They all started screaming and running toward the door, which meant they were crashing into each other and smacking each other. Ana couldn’t figure out who was supposed to be the front of the line so I said I was. They kids got quiet and looked up at me with big eyes. They then followed me, in silence, to their class.
Friday was my “easy” day. I had 5A for 45 minutes. I made bingo cards for the kids. They loved the idea of playing bingo, but were not great at it because they don’t study their words and don’t like to listen. I made them put everything away and sit at their desks. They were not happy about this: they like having their pencil cases out so they can play with stuff and not pay attention. When I told them the game didn’t even require a pencil, they were not pleased. It took a while to get through the game, but we did get a winner.
No comments:
Post a Comment