Tuesdays are filled with lots of action for us at Arizmendi Ikastola. I start my day by meeting Anabel by her typical classroom that is used for some classes. But today, we started in a section of the 6th grade level original classroom. When we walked in, all students were surrounding a student whose birthday was today! They all drew on the board for her because she turned 12. Today is Valentine's day, but my teacher just states that fact but none of the students care. I am assuming that most families do not put a lot of emphasis on this day, unlike Americans. Anabel states that we are going to try to finish this section of health and nutrition by the end of the week. Today we are talking about food safety. My teacher began to give little examples such as why we should be careful when cooking and what kinds of food should we be careful with. Anabel asks the class to explain times when they had problems after eating foods or troubles they have had with cooking. For the next activity, the first group of students had to cut out three sheets of cards for the game. This group of students work slower than other sections, but they all took great care in cutting these cards perfectly. Half of the cards have pictures and half of the cards have descriptions. These descriptions range from the temperature of the fridges and how to separate certain foods. Students were then instructed to pair up all the cards and we both will walk around and check. While this task should be easy, it took them quite awhile because they are still having a hard time to read and understand all the descriptions.
Once all groups had paired the cards, Anabel have them instructions that they needed to put all the pairs into 4 different groups: Clean, Separate, Cook, and Chill. Many students had no idea what chill meant; thus, I walked around giving physical actions of what chill means plus I would say frio, Spanish for cold. Lots of them kept asking for help, but it also took me quite awhile to figure out how some of these pairs fit into those categories. Once all groups made their groups, Anabel picked their names from sticks for them to read which cards are in certain categories. This tasks was difficult for some due to the pronunciation of some of the English words. When Anabel would ask for them to explain what the descriptions meant, they had a even harder time. The whole class decides that each category has 3 pairs in each. They all flipped to the next page in their textbook and they were asked to copy the descriptions into each category on the sheet. Some groups had already bunched up their pairs so this task took over 15 minutes to complete. Since the class was already done, I stayed back to grab the cards from all the groups. Anabel had to start the other section of 6th graders down the hall.
By the time I got to see the next group of 6th graders, Anabel had them in deep conversation about cooked and raw foods. What moldy foods do when you eat them. There was a diagram on the board, but it was all in Basque and I wasn't there to fully know what each side meant. When Anabel saw me, she was relieved because they were running out of things to say without those cards. I passed out the cards as Anabel explained that they too need to create pairs. These groups worked better together than the other sections; they acted more like teams and were very curious to see if they were correct. Anabel and I walked around to make sure they were all right before we told them to break these pairs into the 4 categories. Once again, this group worked quicker and asked for help when needed. I had a hard time explaining what re-heat meant due to their limited English vocabulary. Like the other class, Anabel would pull sticks for students to say what pairs went into each category. Each student copied the answers into their textbooks with time to spare in this class. In Anabel's teacher handbook, this lesson had a website to go along with it. She pulled it up to show how the students can get more information on all 4 categories and where to play games. For homework, they need to go watch the videos and games at fightbac.org. Many students were very interested in this and I hope they get to talk about it in the next class.
For the third class today, we had 5th graders. I saw this same group yesterday that played chess during class. Today though, they were going to work on the English program that is on the laptops. To begin to the class, they did the normal routine of asking what day is today and for them to talk about what they did after class yesterday. Next, they all grabbed laptops to start working. This program, Trainer, is used for most of the grades besides 1st grade. Many students are working with colors and emotions and are asked to match the picture with the English words. Other students are working on typing out numbers that are in the thousands. Some students are shown a sentence and they have to re-type that sentence below. In addition, some are reading stories and fill in blanks with the correct words or know if the title of the story matched the English story. While many were hard at work, as per usual, some students were too fixated on trying to find a good song to listen to on YouTube. As I walked around, I made sure students were on task just like Anabel. One student wasn't working until I watched and he was working on direction words such as front, on, under, and behind. I was very interested to see what types of music they all listen too and they all listen to American music in English. Many students were listening to Justin Bieber, Sia, Shakira, Ed Sheeran, and Chainsmokers. The students worked on this program the whole class period, which is normally an hour.
After lunch, I was with Unai with 4th graders for Gym class. I love my time in gym because I get to bond with students through physical activities that cross over from Chicago to Mondragon. There are lots of 4th graders that are very touchy and like to hang on me. I love the hugs, but the language is hard for communicating that I am still a teacher and not your best friend. For this experience, love will have to do. We all meet at the school and walk through Mondragon University, where I live, to get to the indoor gym. As we walked, many students were trying to ask me questions in English. Some were trying to teach me some Spanish. Once in the gym, the student go put their things away in lockers and I was with Unai and the other teacher in the center of the gym. All students were instructed to sit and they had a discussion in Basque. I tried to sit next to students that were not hanging on me so they weren't distracted from listening to Unai.
Since Carnival is next Friday, they had to practice their dance. Last week, we all learned the dance and I was partnered up with the other teacher, but this week, a student did not have a partner. While I know he wasn't in gym last week, he knew every step and was very into this dance. We stand in two lines, a boy partnered with a girl. There are 3 moves that we repeat. We hold hands in the air and walk 6 steps to the right until we are back to our starting point and then do the same but to the left. Then we walk and stare into each others eyes for 6 counts until we are back at our starting point. Then we do the square around each other with our backs at each other. Then we clap as the first two couples run down the middle of the lines and then back up. Once they are back at the front, they skip around and the lines follow. The two couples that ran create a tunnel for the rest of us to go under. We keep repeating these movements until the music is over. We practiced without music for about 5 minutes and then we were able to keep up for the whole song. My partner gave me a high-five after and said I did a great job; he is so supportive.
After that, we played sharks and minnows. Once you are tagged, you have to try to help tag everyone with the four main taggers. I will make it very clear that I am very out of shape and figured that I should just hide behind students as we ran across towards the taggers. I guess it worked because I was the final 2 players left. Since the rest of the students were tagging, we both got out right away. Lucky us, we were the new taggers plus some others. This is where I got super out of breath and tried my best to help out my taggers. Before I knew it, we had won and the game was over. Again, all the students were told to meet in the middle to make a circle. They had a longer discussion in Basque and a few students stood up while explaining to their teacher. As expected, I had no clue what was happening and just stood up when they all did. I stood in one place as other students screamed and were running to other places in the gym. Turns out that we were playing line tag where you can only walk/run on the lines of the floor of the gym. I was the first one tagged. This game was not as popular so we only played one round.
Each grade is broken up into two groups, S and T. Thus, the 4th graders were asked to get into their classes. I was pulled in both directions to be apart of S and or T. I had to tell them I wasn't playing yet. The first team building activity they did was kinda like leapfrog. One student would crouch and the next student would jump over. Once they jumped over, they had to stand with their legs open for students to crawl under. They repeated the same pattern as they went through. The student at the end would then go through the line until they all made it to the other end of the gym. This was a difficult task because some students were aggressive and some were taking their time. It took longer than I expected for both groups to make it to the other end of the gym. The students, though, were super into this game and were very competitive. The next game we played had S on one side of the gym and T on the other but diagonally. Each team was supposed to open their legs so students could crawl under each legs. The student in front runs down to the other end of the gym and back to the line of students; they crawl through, and once through, they tap on the shoulders of the student in front of them. The students touch the person in front of them once they are tapped. When the person in front is tapped, they run. Since one group needed an extra player, I was called to join. Both sides were super into this game and the pressure was rising. For awhile, my team had the lead. I was given the pressure of being the last player. When it was my turn, it was neck and neck between the teams. I was running as fast as I could and was super nervous about getting through all the legs. From afar, you could tell the students were trying so hard to make it large enough for me, but I was struggling to get through the line. I was army crawling as fast as I could. Surprisingly, my team won!
There wasn't much time left; thus, Unai got out 6 basketballs. They split the whole group into three and they were instructed to play knockout, but they called it something different, but I do not remember. I played with one group and was knocked out after 4 rounds, and I was proud of them for not being intimidated by me. They are all great sports and work hard in gym. Once again, I had a great time with all of them and I love all the love I receive from them. So far, they are one of my favorite groups to learn from.
Cannot wait for all the little kiddos tomorrow with Unai!
Until tomorrow,
Jillian
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