It has barely been a week and so much has happened since our arrival in Leon. Friday night we began to familiarise ourselves with our local area. As soon as we finished our late night meal in the dorm we headed out to see what we could find open so late in the evening. Turns out most places are open late here in Spain. Leon has an incredibly laid back vibe. Dinner doesn't get eaten until as late as 9pm. At first this seemed strange but now it feels normal.
Leon is a very pretty city. In some ways it reminds me of Chester. It has an ancient city wall, it has a big central cathedral and the local people are very friendly and helpful.
On Monday I visited my school called Colegio Marista Champagnat and introduced myself to the headmaster, the teachers and students. I received a warm welcome from everyone. The headmaster immediately wanted to immerse me into the culture of the school and personally took me from class to class to meet and introduce myself. Together we looked at my timetable. Initially I only had 19hrs but this has now changed to 22hrs. I have said that I would also like to observe the history lessons and expressed my interest in history and my background in archaeology. The headmaster was more than happy for me to do this. On my first day I found out that the school has a motivational word every year and this year's word is 'cambia' which means change. I also found out that the school is celebrating it's 100th birthday. The school are holding a fiesta on the 16th and 17th of May which I am looking forward to.
Today (Thursday 9th May) after three days of observations I was allowed to take over the reigns a little bit. In the morning from 9am - 10am I introduced myself to the 6th year primary arts students. I gave them instructions and I supervised the classroom when the teacher Sandra had to step out for a few minutes. Between 11:20-12:15pm I introduced myself to the 3rd year primary English students. Their teacher Daniel showed me the class workbook. During the class I asked Daniel if I could do a small activity with the students based on the simple future tense they had just learnt which was "I am going to..." to talk about future plans and intentions. Daniel had already written 4 example future plans on the board. I added 2 more examples which were "go swimming" and "have dinner" on the board and I numbered them 1-6. I had a large foam dice with me and instructed the students to roll the dice and read "I am going to..." plus the examples from 1-6 depending on the roll of the dice. The student passes the dice onto the student next to them.
Daniel was very supportive and open to allowing me to include this activity into his lesson and I was very pleased that the students enjoyed it. I am looking forward to working with Daniel tomorrow with the 6th year primary students.
From 12:40pm - 2:15pm I joined the infants class which consists of 3-5 year old's. This group are incredibly sweet and fun to work with. Their teacher Patricia introduced me and let me observe some of the things she does during her class to teach English. Patricia is very keen to get me speaking in my native English with the students. After demonstrating how she uses flash cards during her lesson I felt inspired and asked if I could use the flash cards to sing the rainbow song. However, the flash cards are tied together and difficult to sort out. So when I tried to sing the song I was getting tangled up with colours in the wrong order. Patricia still backed me and allowed me to find a song on YouTube to sing with the class. She wants this song to become my song so that the students associate it with me. I picked the wrong rainbow song, however it is still a nice song and the class started following the lyrics. The class got very excited when they saw the colours and they could repeat after the song. I wrote out the lyrics on the chalk board and did a little bit of choral drilling for the unfamiliar words "beautiful", "rainbow" and "in the sky". The more the class practices the song the more they will become familiar with it. Patricia showed me the other songs she uses in her classes which included 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' a good classic. I am hoping to develop this song into an activity for the class. Patricia has also given me a story book to read to the learners.
I can't believe how fast the week has flown by. A lot has happened and it has taken some time to sit down and digest all of it. I think the pace is only going to quicken from here on out. But I am truly enjoying my time here. My colleagues and team are wonderful, my school is lovely and I am doing what I intended to do out here which was to continue teaching practice and encourage more students to learn and develop their language skills.
Leon is a very pretty city. In some ways it reminds me of Chester. It has an ancient city wall, it has a big central cathedral and the local people are very friendly and helpful.
On Monday I visited my school called Colegio Marista Champagnat and introduced myself to the headmaster, the teachers and students. I received a warm welcome from everyone. The headmaster immediately wanted to immerse me into the culture of the school and personally took me from class to class to meet and introduce myself. Together we looked at my timetable. Initially I only had 19hrs but this has now changed to 22hrs. I have said that I would also like to observe the history lessons and expressed my interest in history and my background in archaeology. The headmaster was more than happy for me to do this. On my first day I found out that the school has a motivational word every year and this year's word is 'cambia' which means change. I also found out that the school is celebrating it's 100th birthday. The school are holding a fiesta on the 16th and 17th of May which I am looking forward to.
Today (Thursday 9th May) after three days of observations I was allowed to take over the reigns a little bit. In the morning from 9am - 10am I introduced myself to the 6th year primary arts students. I gave them instructions and I supervised the classroom when the teacher Sandra had to step out for a few minutes. Between 11:20-12:15pm I introduced myself to the 3rd year primary English students. Their teacher Daniel showed me the class workbook. During the class I asked Daniel if I could do a small activity with the students based on the simple future tense they had just learnt which was "I am going to..." to talk about future plans and intentions. Daniel had already written 4 example future plans on the board. I added 2 more examples which were "go swimming" and "have dinner" on the board and I numbered them 1-6. I had a large foam dice with me and instructed the students to roll the dice and read "I am going to..." plus the examples from 1-6 depending on the roll of the dice. The student passes the dice onto the student next to them.
Daniel was very supportive and open to allowing me to include this activity into his lesson and I was very pleased that the students enjoyed it. I am looking forward to working with Daniel tomorrow with the 6th year primary students.
From 12:40pm - 2:15pm I joined the infants class which consists of 3-5 year old's. This group are incredibly sweet and fun to work with. Their teacher Patricia introduced me and let me observe some of the things she does during her class to teach English. Patricia is very keen to get me speaking in my native English with the students. After demonstrating how she uses flash cards during her lesson I felt inspired and asked if I could use the flash cards to sing the rainbow song. However, the flash cards are tied together and difficult to sort out. So when I tried to sing the song I was getting tangled up with colours in the wrong order. Patricia still backed me and allowed me to find a song on YouTube to sing with the class. She wants this song to become my song so that the students associate it with me. I picked the wrong rainbow song, however it is still a nice song and the class started following the lyrics. The class got very excited when they saw the colours and they could repeat after the song. I wrote out the lyrics on the chalk board and did a little bit of choral drilling for the unfamiliar words "beautiful", "rainbow" and "in the sky". The more the class practices the song the more they will become familiar with it. Patricia showed me the other songs she uses in her classes which included 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' a good classic. I am hoping to develop this song into an activity for the class. Patricia has also given me a story book to read to the learners.
I can't believe how fast the week has flown by. A lot has happened and it has taken some time to sit down and digest all of it. I think the pace is only going to quicken from here on out. But I am truly enjoying my time here. My colleagues and team are wonderful, my school is lovely and I am doing what I intended to do out here which was to continue teaching practice and encourage more students to learn and develop their language skills.
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