Calle Hernandez

Day 5:

I'm starting to feel a little bit at home here. My host family is so welcoming and fantastic. This morning I even braided my little tica sister's hair before school-- so I am pretty much officially a part of the family now! 

Yesterday we collaborated with the Missouri State girls to create 1st and 3rd grade English lesson plans for today's lesson at Calle Hernandez Primary School. As we were planning we had a copy of their teacher's objectives, but we didn't really know what to expect and what level they would be at so it was pretty challenging. Most of us would really like concrete plans with specific activities, but we are learning that sometimes you just have to be flexible. That has been a little hard for me because the idea of being in a new school and teaching a lesson on my own for pretty much the first time was intimidating. And the idea of just having to "wing it" if they are on a different level than we expect was even more intimidating, but when we got to Calle Hernandez and met the students I felt a lot more comfortable. All the students were so excited to see us and fascinated by the idea of 10 new teachers being in their classroom. We broke the 3rd graders up into small groups and Tess and I co-taught our group of three students. We introduced them to the English words for family members by presenting pictures of our families then asking them to illustrate their families. After they had the family members down and were able to introduce the group to their family, we moved on to the rooms of the house by illustrating our own homes and asking them to draw and label their's. These modeling activities proved to be pretty successful since we were supposed to demonstrate vocabulary rather than translate it to Spanish to get them to understand. There was one little girl with a limited understanding of English who would just copy down exactly what we drew and wrote rather than illustrating her own family or home. It was really difficult to try to explain the activity to her in different ways without just translating it. When I saw her getting frustrated, I finally broke down and just translated the assignment to Spanish so she would understand. At the time, I didn't really see the big deal with translating it for her, but after talking to Deena, the English teacher, I realized that when you translate, then the student stops trying to think in English. Deena also added that some students will get lazy and just ask for a translation because it is much easier than thinking through the description in English. After these two activities, we still had a little bit of time left so we started working with prepositions. Tess and I acted out different prepositions by getting under, behind, in front of, and on top of different things and after each of our demonstrations, we asked the student to do the same. We played a game of preposition Simon says and they picked up really quickly on some of the phrases like: on, off, in front, and behind, but struggled a lot with beside and under. I think it is because those were a little more difficult to demonstrate. When it was time for the third graders to go we said our goodbyes then regrouped before 1st grade arrived. Overall, everyone seemed to have very positive experiences and we were all able to go with the flow and think on our feet during our first lesson. I was a little more confident going into the first grade lesson after having such a good experience. With first grade, Tess and I taught the nuclear family members by showing pictures of our families and introducing them like we did in third grade. After, we asked our students to draw a quick picture of their family and explain who everyone was to us. Once we had an ides of who was in each students' family, we gave them an index card for each of their family members and asked them to draw each family member on a separate card.  When they were done, we labeled the cards with the English vocabulary for them and played a game where we named a family member and they held up the corresponding card. Our students really seemed to enjoy this interactive activity and once they got the hang of it, we were able to introduce the family song. 

Visiting Calle Hernandez was an awesome experience because the school is so open and different from any campus I have visited in the USA. The students are able to spend free time outside between classes with their friends. The "hallways" are all outdoors, so students get some time to play and just be kids during class changes. The school seems to be very laid back, some students play soccer in the field, some are on their phones, some come say hello to us, and there is even a dog roaming around the school! After we divided up into groups in the classroom, all of our small groups just picked a place to have class outside in an informal setting. The students seem to be used to having this freedom and know when it is and isn't okay to be social. Since they have short breaks to play and just be kids, when they get to class they seem ready to focus on learning. The campus has a very open and welcoming vibe in my opinion which is something I think we need to strive for in all of our schools.