Magnificent Monday

Monday's at Arizmendi Ikastola start off with me following my main English teacher, Anabel. I normally walk up to the second level and meet her in the teacher room that has about 24 desks. I place my things down and follow her up to the next level. On the third floor, grades 5th and 6th are located. Our first class is one of the sections of 5th graders. We normally start the class by having one student come to the front of the class. Anabel asks her, "what day is today?" The student responds saying "today is Monday the 13th of February." Anabel has another student ask the main student "What did you do at the weekend?" The student answers the best to their ability, which normally has a few words in Basque and Anabel helps them translate the word. Then the student creates two times on a wooden clock. The first time the main student asks a specific student to tell the time to everyone. The second time the whole class tells what time it is. Next, the student in the front asks up to four people "what did you do at the weekend?" and they all respond to the best of their abilities. This whole routine happens in all Anabel's classes at the beginning of the hour.

The 5th graders are learning how to play chess. Last week, they had a worksheet on the names of each of the pieces and a small description of where to place these pieces on the board. In addition, as a class, they went through how each piece moves on the board. It is clear that many of the students already know how to play, but this was a great time to for these students to read English and it is something they are interested in. In class, we played chess in groups for the whole hour. I would sit next to groups and watch their concentration and strategies. I was asked to play with a few of the boys. I beat them! They were amazed that I knew how to play and could think ahead of their moves. I feel as though playing chess in class is a cultural thing because in the USA, there would never be time to teach chess and play for hours during school. I met with the other group of 5th graders before lunch and we repeated the same structure. The students in the second group had less students who knew how to play, but they all had a great time.

The second class of the day was with a group of 6th graders. They are working on health and nutrition. Last week, they were working together to create the best kind of lunch boxes. They had to make sure that their lunch box was balanced and healthy. Like the 5th grade class, we started the class with the same routine and more students wanted to express what they did over the weekend because one of the students had a birthday party. Anabel had to keep telling them to stop talking when someone else is talking. Last Friday, they were supposed to bring in the foods they had planned for their box. This group then shared with their partner what their final lunch box to each other and all their pictures were colored. As a pair they were supposed to orally state in English why their partners lunch box was healthy and or high or low in certain portions. This task did take quite a while for these students. As some students did not do the task, Anabel said she would write down their names on the board and if their name is there, they will need to work through the 30 minute break. Once four students were asked to state why or why not their partner's lunch box was healthy, she had all the students write their explanation in their textbook. This textbook also asks each student to reflect on how they feel about their lunch box and their explanations about what makes their lunch healthy or not.

After lunch, I was following the younger students' teacher Unai. We had both sections of 2nd grade today. First, they all sat by the projector to sing songs that they are preparing for Carnival next week. They sang along loudly and proud. The other 2nd grade teacher pulled up a few other songs, but just the lyrics. Once again, they sang them great. After singing, Unai and I took half the group, but stayed at the projector. Unai has a very similar routine to Anabel. A student stands in the front and is asked "what day is today?" and "what is the weather?" and "Are we missing any students today?" The student then responds to the best of their ability in English. Then Unai had lots of games to play for the day. They were all on websites that can be used for all ESL students and it was in English. The main game we played was memory and they had to match the words and pictures together. They played this game to work on colors, days of the week, body parts, and school supplies. The kids are super into this game because when a student gets a match, they all yell or "dab." The next game was a spin game that worked on animals, clothes, colors, and numbers. The group was split into thirds so they can have teams. Each teach would spin and then answer the question asked. Since they were sentence answers, Unai would read it to the kids. This game got very competitive as well.

When it was time to switch, the other teacher was loosing her voice and was not feeling well. So Unai told both classes to read and color. The other teacher needed to print out their homework and other things. As I walked around, it was very clear to me how much pride these students take in coloring and writing. They all have amazing and readable handwriting in cursive. Unai was also walking around and helping students with words in the books. I even was asked to read a word to a student, but obviously it was in Basque, so I wasn't much help. Looking in these books, the print is also in cursive. Most of the kids would come to me to ask if they could use the restroom. Even though many asked in Basque, I understood what they needed. Each class is about an hour so within 20 minutes, students got distracted and began to rough house and or talk with each other. Outside, it began to pour and we had high winds so it was a huge storm. By the end of the period, they called both classes back to the projector and they watched a new video that had more singing. And that was my typical Monday here in Arrasate!

Until tomorrow,
Jillian