day 19

the week is half way through, and i had a break through today. my little second grade class of kids that are extremely difficult went amazingly awesome. after the poor test they took last friday, i had been thinking of how to change the class so the kids could pay attention and still learn. mind you, they can't read spanish yet, and the english textbook they have forces them to read english. i know what you're thinking, "that doesn't sound too bright. why would they buy that sort of text book?" don't worry, i asked the same question. but needless to say they did and so i have to go through it. so i can comply to that request, and we will fill out the answers in the book, but i'm teaching in a new way from the way the book tells me... i think, the instructors book has the teaching guides in spanish, so i'm relatively cloudy on what exactly it is saying.

here's what i did. i went through the next unit and looked at all of the vocabulary words that they will be learning. and i drew pictures of each of them on small flash cards. and today, we went through them once as a class and then i split the class in half - team 1 vs team 2 - half way during the game i changed the names to team bird vs team star (bird and star are two of our vocabulary words) the class was attentive, excited, and it seemed as though they were really getting it. praise god. b/c i was losing a lot of patience with them. so i will be thinking of new ways to incorporate pictures and flash cards and word memorization. i will also be giving another test, one that is picture based and oral b/c about 10 parents have come to the school worried about the low score that their offspring had earned on last friday's test. since i didn't teach that entire unit, i'm throwin it out and doin another one.

another exciting thing happened today. one of the student's uncle was visiting from riobamba, ecuador, which is about 2.5 hours from shell up in the mountainous highlands. he gave me his name, address, and phone number and told me that was a place in ecuador i needed to go and see. so i might be heading that way soon. kind of crazy, but lots of fun.