Monday May 27th, 2013

Monday was my first day teaching and boy was it an experience.  The school is operated very differently here in Ecuador.  Students are able to talk out of turn, when they need the teacher's attention they scream "teacher, teacher, teacher!" instead of raising their hand quietly, and they do not listen to directions very well.  So, knowing that information I bet you're thinking my first day of teaching went realllllllly well ;)

It actually was not too bad.  The students are working on asking questions like "Do you have...?" and responding with "Yes I do have..." or "No I do no have..." To reinforce this concept I had the students fold a piece of construction paper in half.  They were instructed to write two questions, one on each half, that they wanted to ask their classmates.  After they wrote the questions they went around the room asking one another their questions.  They were to write the answer on their classmates paper and were asked to use "Yes I do have..." or "No I do not have..."  This activity was very unusual for the students, they normally sit at their desk and complete worksheets, so some of them had a difficult time understanding what to do.

Here are some pictures of the students work.

I was very impressed with their work.  

If you're wondering...Minecraft-Juanca is a game they play :)  

Things I need to work on the rest of the time I am here:

• Giving clear, simple directions.  Sometimes I think I get excited and I talk really fast using words that students in the US would understand but these ESL students do not.
• Setting my expectations for behavior.  Since students are so accustomed to talking out during class, I need to le them know that that is not appropriate when I am teaching.  I need to let them know that I expect them to raise their hand and that if they do not follow my rules there will be consequences.  
• Presenting the students with a different type of learning strategy each day.  The students like to do different things and I think that if I continue to use something they are not used to doing they will be more engaged.