So today felt especially long. We had homeroom for twenty-five minutes first thing today. And then we had planning. And then came second period. And then lunch. And then third period. And by the time fourth period came around I was so thankful that I haven't started full-time teaching yet. The students had been dragging all day (half of them trying to sleep through class). The students who weren't half asleep were trying to throw crayons and other pieces of paper all over the classroom. If I had had to teach fourth period today, I don't think there would have been much Spanish spoken at all. Other than that, everything went well.
The students started making books today that will be donated to a local child development agency and most of them really enjoyed knowing that their Spanish could be useful to real people.
I may also just be tired because I have been trying to create a unit plan for the next unit which is coming closer and closer and I am just a little stressed because I don't know which days we will be giving quizzes for the unit so I don't really know what to include in my daily lesson plans. Oh well. I plan to get to bed early tonight and worry tomorrow. :)
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Week 1
So I picked up my first class this week, second period Spanish 2. The kids have been behaving pretty well for me so far, no real issues to deal with. Funny enough, the first day teaching went really, really well, whereas the second day had a melting point before the students and I got on the same page.
The first day was a 5-stepped-vocabulary day. It seemed to me that the kids really did learn a lot on that first day and they somewhat enjoyed the lesson. (Either that or they thought I was crazy, pero a mi, no me importa as long as they learn). We learned all the vocabulary from the new chapter dealing with self preparation and then the students used the vocabulary in a circumlocution activity.
Then came day 2: a PACE lesson on reflexive verbs. Here is where we butted heads quite a bit. The students are used to getting grammar lessons in English and I wasn't going to speak English. I started asking questions for the co-construct phase and thinking back on it, if I had been in their seats, I wouldn't have known the answers to my questions either. I had also created a prezi on reflexive verbs which had all the right information (key word all as in WAYYYYY too much). The kids felt overloaded and just got lost. But then after we finished the paragraph of very non-concrete information on the first slide and moved to seeing the rules applied, I actually heard some students saying "OHHH!!! I get it!" as the light bulb went off for them. Thankfully my University Supervisor was there that day, and along with help from my CT, we revised my lesson plan and I retaught it fourth period, completely doing away with the prezi.
Now maybe I'm one of those people who has to see both extremes before I can get it right because for some reason, even after watching my CT teach the lesson and trying to combine hers and mine, I just completely skipped explaining how to use reflexive verbs at all. I tried to just show the students without providing any guidelines whatsoever. But at least now I have a pretty good idea of what will cause information overload and what is just not enough to work with.
So after seeing how lost the kids were due to a lack of guidelines, I kind of just put my lesson plan down and explained it to the kids as if they were learning it for the first time in language that was slower and clearer (hey! That's exactly what they are and exactly what I should have done the first time. I don't know why I didn't understand that to begin with). I wrote an example on the board and explained it, moving the pronoun to the front or leaving in the back on the end of the pronoun depending on what the situation was. Then the kids came up to the front and practiced with it. Some of the kids actually left smiling and saying they were surprised they actually understood something in Spanish (which made me feel really good). However, there were a few kids who still didn't understand, so I will have to work on finding a way to reach those kids.
The first day was a 5-stepped-vocabulary day. It seemed to me that the kids really did learn a lot on that first day and they somewhat enjoyed the lesson. (Either that or they thought I was crazy, pero a mi, no me importa as long as they learn). We learned all the vocabulary from the new chapter dealing with self preparation and then the students used the vocabulary in a circumlocution activity.
Then came day 2: a PACE lesson on reflexive verbs. Here is where we butted heads quite a bit. The students are used to getting grammar lessons in English and I wasn't going to speak English. I started asking questions for the co-construct phase and thinking back on it, if I had been in their seats, I wouldn't have known the answers to my questions either. I had also created a prezi on reflexive verbs which had all the right information (key word all as in WAYYYYY too much). The kids felt overloaded and just got lost. But then after we finished the paragraph of very non-concrete information on the first slide and moved to seeing the rules applied, I actually heard some students saying "OHHH!!! I get it!" as the light bulb went off for them. Thankfully my University Supervisor was there that day, and along with help from my CT, we revised my lesson plan and I retaught it fourth period, completely doing away with the prezi.
Now maybe I'm one of those people who has to see both extremes before I can get it right because for some reason, even after watching my CT teach the lesson and trying to combine hers and mine, I just completely skipped explaining how to use reflexive verbs at all. I tried to just show the students without providing any guidelines whatsoever. But at least now I have a pretty good idea of what will cause information overload and what is just not enough to work with.
So after seeing how lost the kids were due to a lack of guidelines, I kind of just put my lesson plan down and explained it to the kids as if they were learning it for the first time in language that was slower and clearer (hey! That's exactly what they are and exactly what I should have done the first time. I don't know why I didn't understand that to begin with). I wrote an example on the board and explained it, moving the pronoun to the front or leaving in the back on the end of the pronoun depending on what the situation was. Then the kids came up to the front and practiced with it. Some of the kids actually left smiling and saying they were surprised they actually understood something in Spanish (which made me feel really good). However, there were a few kids who still didn't understand, so I will have to work on finding a way to reach those kids.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Oh my God that's Wednesday...
So I've been working on planning my first lessons for about two weeks now and I have finally finalized what I want to do on the first day of my teaching, also the first day of a unit. I went over it with my CT and we are both ready for me to take over my first class on Wednesday, which, I realized Friday, is only two school days away. I think I'm ready because it won't be the first time I've stood in front of these same students and tried to teach them something but I think I'm actually starting to get butterflies because I know the exact day and time that I will begin standing in front of these kids all day everyday and teaching for the next 5+ weeks.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Just try and figure it out FIRST!!!
So last night was Meet the Teacher night and it went really well. We didn't have many parents come out but the ones who did really did seem genuinely interested in what we were going to be doing this semester and excited about the fact that their child would have two Spanish teachers this semester. We explained our expectations for the students to their parents and that the students would be held accountable for the time and effort (or lack thereof) that they put into the class and the parents seemed to agree with that expectation.
However, I find it to be extremely interesting that the biggest thought in my head by the end of fourth period was "Just try and figure it out on your own FIRST!!!!" The students were writing a script for a flip camera project and I was really excited in 2nd period by how into it the students were. They were really trying to make it interesting/funny/correct. They really wanted to use Spanish. (This was one of the first times I have seen these students excited about Spanish.) But my excitement was short-lived because I quickly became a walking English-Spanish dictionary in a classroom where the students were speaking completely in English to write their Spanish scripts. At first I was just telling them how to say things, then I started making them say "Como se dice _____?", and by the end of fourth period, when I was asked how to say things, all I could think to say was "tenemos diccionarios aqui." I was not irritated at all by the fact that they wanted to know how to say something, but rather by the fact that they did not even attempt at any sort of Spanish version of a question or to look in one of the 20 dictionaries lined up on a shelf in the classroom. How ironic that we had just discussed that very same idea (that they must put forth effort) with their parents the night before. I feel like there are a few posters of "non-negotiables" that must be made and a whole lot of ignoring questions in order to force students to put forth the effort instead of asking for everything to be fed to them on a silver platter...
However, I find it to be extremely interesting that the biggest thought in my head by the end of fourth period was "Just try and figure it out on your own FIRST!!!!" The students were writing a script for a flip camera project and I was really excited in 2nd period by how into it the students were. They were really trying to make it interesting/funny/correct. They really wanted to use Spanish. (This was one of the first times I have seen these students excited about Spanish.) But my excitement was short-lived because I quickly became a walking English-Spanish dictionary in a classroom where the students were speaking completely in English to write their Spanish scripts. At first I was just telling them how to say things, then I started making them say "Como se dice _____?", and by the end of fourth period, when I was asked how to say things, all I could think to say was "tenemos diccionarios aqui." I was not irritated at all by the fact that they wanted to know how to say something, but rather by the fact that they did not even attempt at any sort of Spanish version of a question or to look in one of the 20 dictionaries lined up on a shelf in the classroom. How ironic that we had just discussed that very same idea (that they must put forth effort) with their parents the night before. I feel like there are a few posters of "non-negotiables" that must be made and a whole lot of ignoring questions in order to force students to put forth the effort instead of asking for everything to be fed to them on a silver platter...
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