January 26, 2010

I haven’t really thought about phonics since I learned it when I was little. But here I am, thousands of miles away from home, teaching it to kids who know no English at all. I am starting with the basic sounds—short sounds of vowels. “A” as in “apple,” “e” as in “elephant,” “I” as in “Indian,” “o” as in “ostrich,” and “u” as in “umbrella.” I am then giving them vocabulary words that make the same sounds, “hat,” “net,” “mitt,” “hot,” “sun” etc. I am using a basic phonics book that has outlined this curriculum. Now, the sounds in Spanish and English are very different, and it has been challenging to get the students to make the correct sounds. But today this challenge entered a new realm. One of the vocabulary words for ‘I” is “hill.” In my class I do a lot of repetition—I say the word and then the students repeat it. Well, the short “I” sound is one my students struggle with, and today, when I said “hill,” my students answered back with “hell.”

Other then the accidental swearing in my ESL class things have been going well. I really need to find different ways to teach world geography to my 9th graders; I am losing them almost every class. I talked with them today about it and I think we are going to do some group projects. Each week a group of 2 or 3 students will be assigned a country, and using the textbook they will create a short presentation about that country. Doing this allows the students to teach each other the content, instead of me giving them the notes. I will do that next week when we start Europe and see how it goes.

Other than school there hasn’t been too much going on. I’ve played Euchre with the girls the last two nights for about an hour and then just hung out and gone to bed. I am starting to get used to the food, finally. Although, I was thrown a curve ball this morning when I had some sweet bread, rice…. and fried chicken wings. That’s right, fried chicken wings for breakfast at 6:30 in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, they were delicious, but I felt like I needed some buffalo chips to go with them (that’s a Buffalo Wild Wings joke for those of you who don’t follow. I always get wings and an order of buffalo chips, sliced potatoes with cheese, at BWW’s). That was fun though. I am really looking forward to this weekend. A group of us are taking the 1.5 hour bus ride to Santa Rosa to hang out. We are leaving Saturday morning and coming back Sunday afternoon. The plan is to find a hostel where we can all crash for cheap Saturday night. It’s going to be nice to do something different and see another town. I’ll take pictures and will let blog about it on Sunday or Monday.

I am finally starting to feel much better. The cough has mostly gone away and I am only blowing my nose every once in a while. Paola, the 4th grade girl whose parents house I live at, has been sick all week with a high fever and has even thrown up a couple of times. I have been taken Airborne all week hoping I don’t get that flu.

Anyway, I am writing this while I am still at school. I am about to give my first quiz at the school, a quiz on Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, the Roman Empire, and Jesus. Hopefully I won’t have to rip up my first test. After school we are going into town and going shopping (like every Wednesday). I brought my camera and since I really do not have anything I need to get I will try and get some pictures of town and then post with this blog entry.

It’s quiz time!

So, I am writing this back at home after a trip to town and a visit to the clinic to see the American doctors I saw on Sunday. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to see any that I know because they were all busy. But I did talk to Anna Blauw, a girl I graduated high school from who is now a nurse working in Honduras. The plan is to still go to the hot springs with them tomorrow night. We did not get into town yesterday for the get together at Hotel Real because the weather was bad. I am looking forward to tomorrow though.

Anyway, I just graded my seventh graders’ quizes. I am so disappointed right now. Although I had one 100 percent the class average, 27 students, was 63 percent. Passing at the school is 65 percent, which means the class average is an F. This is a chapter that both the previous teacher and I taught, but I created the quiz and put a heavy emphasis on the content I taught. It’s very frustrating and I am going to have a nice talk with the students tomorrow.

On another disappointing note, my cameras battery died before I got into town. I did get a chance to take a few before it died so those are posted below.