Teaching in Spain

I´ve been sick and/or out on the town a bit with friends as well as too lazy to walk to the library to get internet access to post. My bad.

Soundtrack for the weekend was this chick. That is all I´m going to say about that.

Anyway, today I taught in the science class and it went rather well. I started thinking about what made a class “good” or “bad” to me. Before I get into that, here´s a rundown of how my classes are organized:

This is not my actual class. I posted it cause it is supposed to be a classroom in Bahrain and I´m looking at the kid with the Mike Vick jersey on.

I teach in the bilingual program at my school, so these students have signed up to learn a portion of their subjects in English. I teach in the 1st and 2nd of ESO (educacion secundaria obligatoria) which is equivalent to like 6th and 7th grade in the US, 11-13 year old students. I teach an almost equal split of hours in 1st and 2nd of ESO. I attend science, english, math and art (only with 1st). So that´s two classes of science, two of English, two of math and 1 Art class per week. Each teacher organizes the class differently and has me doing different things.

For both math classes, I just come in an read the worksheets the teacher has already prepared so that the students can hear my pronunciation of the words etc. The students then re-read the word problems aloud, translate, then solve the problems. Class runs smoothly cause the math teacher is no joke and he keeps the kids in line. It is very funny when he is fussing at them, but he definitely helps them learn a lot.Some days I come in for 30 minutes, others for the full hour.

In both English classes, I have a more advisory role and I can design my own activities for the kids to do. I also attend these classes twice a week each.

In the older English class, I pull one student at a time to speak to me in the back of the classroom about whatever topic they are studying that week in class. For example, they were studying “describing people” so I asked them to describe what they were wearing on one day, and on another I had them describe their best friend (their personality). I have also started assigning them homework to help me “Get to know Spain” because, why should I do all that research and work to find things out when I have an army of hyper preteens who need something to do? It works out better for the whole world. So last week I assigned them each a city to research the history, things to do, how to get there, what it is famous for etc and they had to present it to me in English. I learned quite a bit about Spanish cities that way. This week, they are telling me about their favorite music, the main rule being that they must talk about someone who is from Spain or who sings in Spanish. They also must ask their parents about their favorite music. That way, I figure I can get a good range of different music types in case the kiddies only listen to rubbish (do you know how upset I´d be if they all put Pitbull?!) which will shortly go onto my mp3 so I can work out to some Spanish tunes.

In the 1st of ESO Spanish class, once a week I take small groups (10) at a time and play a game, have them present something to me or do some English exercises with me. The other week, we played “Concentration” using our English vocabulary for foods. They really enjoyed that although they couldn`t concentrate on the beat and remember to say a type of food in English at the same time to save their lives. I think I will include this in the repertoire to get them to practice vocabulary words. It is easier to do the breakout groups because otherwise the volume in the classroom gets too loud. This week, I had them do “factual worksheets” about animals that I assigned, then the group had to get up and present it to me in English. That went fairly well too.

Finally, Science. The teacher gave me a list of topics that I could design lessons around, and these topics directly relate to what they are doing in the book. He also thought I could infuse some American culture in there when I talked about each topic. For example: Natural Parks, Ecosystems, Recycling are some of the topics I can cover. In the beginning, I did a lot of `fill in the blank`worksheets where I read a text and they have a worksheet with the same text with some words missing. The problem with those is that it is very passive and I think they get bored with it very quickly, especially if there are many words they don´t understand in the text. I think it is a good activity for them to practice listening comprehension though.

Today was a good class in science today (usually is though). I prepared a worksheet with questions, fill in the blank, true/false, and `bubbles` for producers/consumers/decomposers. I had the links for 3 short videos on youtube that would help them complete the worksheets. I even told them a story about how my brother and I used to hunt for slugs to salt them when we were very young- they found that disgusting and cruel (which it is) but also interesting and I am sure they will remember the word `slug`from now on.

So, I think I have prepared a good class when the troublemakers or the “I-dont-want-to-be-here” or the “I`m-to-afraid-to-speak-in-English” students are engaged and participating. Today I had like three of those students raising their hands and answering questions about slugs, snails, decomposers, types of producers and consumers, ecosystems and all sorts of science stuff. These are kids who never raise their hands.

She´s not paying attention AT ALL.

There are two little girls in the 1st of ESO class who I think go into a panic when I call on them or come near them to speak. They are very smart girls who study a lot and know many of the answers (in Spanish), they are just too nervous to speak their English.  When either of those two are participating, I believe I am doing a good job.

If the shy girls raise their hand AND smile while answering, I`m doing a bang-up job!