So after nights and nights of no sleep and finding my front door wide open in the morning I have moved out! I am now living with another Spanish teacher from my school….I love it! It is so nice to feel comfortable in my own house, and actually have someone to talk to. We shoveled and played Just Dance all morning 🙂
Because of my messed up living situation, these last two weeks at school have been tough. Its hard to put up with 100 teenagers on 2 hours of sleep, but I made it! My relationship with me coordinating teacher has been getting stronger and I really enjoy working with her more and more everyday. At first I wasn’t sure how well we were going to get along, but she has been such a great resource in school and just in life. She helped me get out of my living situation and has put up with me on very little sleep haha. I am very grateful to be with her. I know I have mentioned this before, but I am also so pleased to be in the foreign language department and to share share an office with the social studies department. Our office is unique to the others in the school and I really feel like we are a family. They have taken such good care of me!
Now that I have full control of the Spanish class, I am trying to make it not so mundane. They do a lot of practice essays and practice tests, and about 90% of them are failing the practice tests, and the real test is in 2 months! I need to get them ready, and what they are doing now obviously isn’t working for them. On Friday I played Guerra de Verbos with them. You have 3 dice and have a pronoun, verb and tense column up on the board. Each one corresponds to a number on the dice.
1- Yo 1. Ser 1. Presente
2- Tu 2. Estar 2. Imperfecto
3- El 3. Tener 3. Preterito
4-Usted 4. Ir 4. Pluscuamperfecto
5-Nosotros 5.Comer 5. Presente Perfecto
6-Ellas 6. Ver 6. Futuro
I roll the di and then say the numbers in order that they land. Say I roll a 1, 2 and 3. They have to use the pronoun 1 from the first column, the 2 verb (estar) from the verb column, and the 3 tense(Preterito) from the tense column. So on their white boards they would write Estuve.
The kids had SO MUCH FUN with this! I was running around the room giving points, corrections and helpful feedback. I took something boring that they do everyday and made it fun; I tricked them into learning! I didn’t give them any rewards either. If I would have tried this with my Spanish 1 class from last year, they would have either not done it or thrown a fit because they weren’t given a rewards. My kids are internally motivated to do well and use Spanish successfully and I absolutely love that!
My ESL kids have been getting a little rowdy. I think I started out too nice with them, and now I’m having to reevaluate and almost start over again with them discipline wise. I still enjoy teaching them.
I am soooo excited about the project I just started with my FACTS class. They are reading Romeo and Juliet in English class, and in my class, they will be making Toon Dos to retell the story. I was scared they weren’t going to be creative, but they are proving me wrong!!! I have already seen some amazing prologues!!! The example I gave used the traditional story, but with a different theme, Jersey Shore. I wrote a Toon Doo called DJ Romeo and Guidette….the kids were laughing the whole time and were surprised with my “with-it-ness”. I have seen some kids doing Romeo & Juliet al estilo Mexicano and in space. They have to bilingual as well 😀
Oh yeah and it snowed a ton…..it’s still snowing
Loni's Teaching Adventures 