Second Grade

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This past week I taught science instead of just math and syllables! Maya and I did body parts together with the first and second graders on Wednesday. For one of the activities we had them color body parts on paper, cut them out, and then they had to tape them on the parts of their bodies that matched. So we had a bunch of kids running around with bits of paper taped all over them. It was really cute!!!
Thursday I did the circle of life, which for second graders consists of birth, growing, reproduction, and death. Each kid made a Book of Life with one stage on each page. I brought up a stapler to put the books together. It was the first time any of them had seen a stapler so it was like magic for them! They were all curious to see how it worked. But from now on the 2nd and 3rd graders are banned from science. We're only allowed to teach spanish (syllables/reading) and math because they're all so far behind. For a long time Lucila was the only teacher with all 40 kids over 7 grade levels so of course it was really hard to keep them all on track. So we have some major make-up work to do and we were told to focus only on spanish and math. It makes sense that they need to try to catch-up some, but just doing spanish and math all day every day is going to be a challenge! Next week all I have is ta, te, ti, to, tu and basic subtraction for the whole week. I'm going to have to do a lot of brainstorming to come up with enough different ways to teach the same thing to fill up the whole week and to keep it interesting. It will be a challenge!

The hardest thing about teaching here is that we have 3 classes in a classroom that's smaller than a normal classroom at home. And all the kids are loud, especially when we have them repeat stuff or call out answers, they love to shout instead of just say it. So when one class is doing something loud, it's of course distracting for the other 2 classes and we always feel like we have to yell to get their attention. Not because they don't listen (although sometimes that is the case) but mainly just because the general noise level is so high!

Friday (13) the kids had cultura fisica (PE) and Lucila was there for the first time since I've been here! So we got to see the kinds of things that they do. She had them all running around the concrete ¨playground¨ area, high knees, kick-your-butt, jumping on one leg, racing, long jumps, etc. Also a little bit of stretching. One activity they all lined up in a forwards bridge and they had to crawl under eachother. They were in 2 groups (boys and girls) and the older kids helped the younger ones. It was really cute! It was also both amazing and depressing how well the kids listened to Lucila. They always listen to her a lot better than they do to us. I think because they know she's a teacher whereas we're just introduced as volunteers. Plus we play with them at recess and so we're almost more friends than teachers. And it's not like we're going to stop playing with them because that's the most fun! We try to separate recreo and classroom roles and we've talked with some of them about how when we're in the classroom, we're their teachers and they have to listen, but we'll never be as well listened to as Lucila is.

Friday Betty and I also taught english to the kids in 5th 6th and 7th grades. It was a lot of fun! The older kids are fun to work with and they listen a lot better than the younger ones! We mostly reviewed to see where they're at: colors, greetings, numbers, animals, fruits...

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Photos

Body Parts
Abel, Elieser

Body Parts
The niños