Today I taught my first large English class to teenagers! There was about 60 of them! But between Jo, Madi, Claudia, and I, we were able to split the class up into groups of 15. So I went to the whiteboard and began attempting to teach my lesson plan that I had wrote last week. First, we began talking about contractions and I gave some examples of spanish contractions. Then we went into talking about English contractions such as "what's" and "it's" and "they're", etc. Then I would ask them to give me more examples or ask them what the contraction of "it" and "is" was, but they were all so shy and distracted because they are all around 14 years old and technically they are on their summer vacation, so they weren't too keen on participating.
Eventually, I just ended up making them each give me an example of a contraction and they understood the concept, so I told them after one more activity we would play a game. So I split them into groups of four and I wrote 5 questions on the board in English, "What is your favorite band?" "Do you have any brothers or sisters?" "Do you have any pets?" etc. Then they had to ask each member of their group each question in english and write their response in english as well. Once they got started, I went around the class and asked them if they had any questions and I asked them to translate each question into Spanish to make sure that they understood the question. They actually asked me some questions about what certain words meant and how to pronounce words. Once they were done I had each group write two of the questions and two of their answers up on the whiteboard. Then they had to present their two questions and answers to the rest of the class. They were so shy and embarrassed; they kept laughing and I kept telling them, "No necessitan tener miedo! Son tus amigos!" (you don't need to be afraid, they are your friends!) They loosened up a bit, especially with my terrible spanish accent and grammar. Once each group presented I told them that we would play a game because they all did really well.
For the game I had each of them write a spanish word on a piece of paper. Then they had to crunch the paper up into a ball. Then we had a 'snowball fight', throwing the papers around the room. Then I told each of them to pick up a piece of paper and open it up. They had to say the spanish word, then say what the English translation was. After that, we still had some extra time so I suggested Charades because, I mean, who the heck doesn't like Charades? Apperently, they don't because I acted a few words out first and no one wanted to guess because they didn't want to act in front of the class. So I changed the rules a bit. I told them that whoever guessed the word got to pick someone else to go act out a word. All of the sudden they were shouting out the answers to they could embarrass their friends. We finished our lesson and I was mentally exhausted but in a good way. I have so much more respect for my spanish teachers growing up now, lol. I had an amazing sense of accomplishment and I couldn't wait to go back and fill their little minds with knowledge!
After going back to PSF HQ for lunch, I went to Ludoteca. After playing a few games of UNO, the kids worked on long multiplication. I sat there and helped them and corrected their papers when they were finished. It was awesome, because math is the same in every language. After playing games for a little bit longer, Robbie began the English lessons with the older kids. We went over how to order food in a restaurant. Robbie is Irish, so of course all of his pronunciations of everything was wrong. LOL
After Ludoteca, we went back to PSF and had a delicious German meal cooked by the four German girls. Afterwards, I had a nice sleep. :)
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