Classroom Activities.

24 Sep 2012 4 Comments

by Yari in auxiliares de conversación Tags: , , ,

My first week at the school ended pretty well after I spoke with the principal. The students are pretty great and have a decent level of English. The activity that I’ve done with all my classes (except for 2) during my first class with them is interviews. They have to pair up with the person next to them, interview each other, and then present to the class what they learned about the other person in English. The students did great with that activity! They all were really eager to participate and were pretty creative with the questions they asked one another. Afterwards, if we had a few minutes to spare, I would let the students ask me questions. The questions that I got asked the most were: Where are you from? What does your tattoo mean? And how old are you?

I did a slightly different activity with one of my smaller, older groups. I took out a roll of toilet paper and told them that they should grab as much toilet paper as they believed they would need for the activity, but that I couldn’t tell them what the activity was until after everyone had their toilet paper. Afterwards, I told them that for each square of toilet paper they had, they had to tell me a fact about themselves. This game is always fun since, inevitably, someone takes half of the roll. This time around, a girl had 36 squares. After we finished that activity, we did a Guess the Celebrity game. In this game, you think of a Celebrity and you have to give the class clues (In English) that describe the celebrity until someone guesses correctly. It was really fun and a lot of the students in the class are really funny, which makes the class even more enjoyable.

Well, I’m off to search the internet for videos and such about tectonic plates for my Freshmen class tomorrow since that’s the material they’re on. If anyone has any fun activity suggestions that I could do with the students, I’m all ears. I really want to get a good rapport with the students and do activities like the interview one before I start to have to give them class using the material that they’re learning. I’d also really love some suggestions for the younger kids (3-7). I thought I could do a game like hot potato and whoever has the ball has to say something about themselves or answer one of my questions regarding a certain topic. Like I said, I’d love to hear some suggestions 🙂

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Back to School. Back to School, to Prove to Dad That I’m Not a Fool.

17 Sep 2012 Leave a comment

by Yari in auxiliares de conversación Tags: , , , , , ,

That song from Billy Madison always gets stuck in my head for the first day of school and today was no different. Granted, this was my first day of school as an auxiliar de conversación, which is infinitely more exciting than being a student (at least in my opinion).

I woke up today at 6:15 and after getting ready and commuting, I arrived to my colegio around 9:00. The principal took me around the school and introduced me to the majority of the teachers (this took about 2 hours). Afterwards, I met with the director of primary levels and he gave me my schedule for the primary grades. And then, I met with the director of the secondary levels and he gave me my schedule for those grades. That’s right, I will be working with all of the grade levels. Ages 3-16. When I realized this, I was slightly taken aback, but it wasn’t until they told me that starting in October, the hour that I work with each grade is my time. As in, I will be responsible for coming up with a lesson plan that works in conjunction with what their teacher is teaching them and I will have to teach it to them. By myself. Alone. Without the teacher being present. My initial reaction was to panic, but I figure that if the past auxiliar could handle it and he is now a teacher at the school, it can’t be all that bad. And he said he’s more than willing to help me out and give me tips/ideas, which I really appreciate.

Oh and the course that I will be teaching in secondary grades is History/Geography. Of course, I have no idea what history they’re learning. If it’s the history of Spain, I know next to nothing so it will be a learning experience for all parties involved! And for the month of September, the school lets out around 1:50 so I won’t start working the full day until October. I like and dislike this at the same time. Obviously, I enjoy getting out of work early but that means I won’t be meeting some of my classes until October. One of those classes happens to be the infantil group, which makes me sad since I LOVE that age group. But it does allow me to slowly ease myself into the school and adjust to my job before having all of the grade levels, so it is very nice in that regard.

I’m off to go spend some time with my “adoptive” family here. I really do need to write a post talking about my experience living with the family here. It’s been nothing short of wonderful 🙂

I’ll be sure to keep you all updated on my experience at the colegio and I’m still planning to write a post this weekend about my trip to Segovia when my sister and brother in law were here.

¡Hablamos Pronto!