Wonderful Wednesday

Wednesday's at Arizmendi Ikastola is filled with the little kiddos. I am following the guy English teacher, Unai, for most of the day. I did not realize until today that, while Unai does see the 1st graders, he does not teach them English. All of first grade has 20 to 30 minutes at the beginning of the morning to do whatever they want. Most students play with legos or color or talk with each other. As you can imagine, students are rough housing and some get hurt. I love how close the kids are to Unai and the other teachers. Unai loves on them when they are hurt and they feel better before you know it. While all the students were engaged in their activities, a little boy was walking around slowly and kept looking at me. He finally made his way over and in a very small voice he asked me something in Basque. He looked like he was about to cry so I held his hand as I lead him over to Unai to translate. Apparently, he was asking if I could get him a coloring sheet. Unai said he was very shocked that he asked me because he never talks in class. I helped him and he went hard to work. Practically all the 1st graders have barely any vocabulary in English so we all just stare at each other and or smile.  After their free time, they all met by the projector to watch and sing to YouTube videos. All the grades have been working on a song for Carnival. The song is located below! Once they had finished singing, Unai took our 1st grade class to the floor to talk about what they were going to do in Basque. They all then stood up and grabbed a computer. Unlike the other grades, 1st graders are working on a program in Basque that helps them with vocabulary and spelling. The program is a cartoon story that leads them to different activities and videos. Since they normally only have about 20 minutes to work on this program, their main teacher allows them more time from their math lesson. While I was watching them work on their programs, I began looking around the room. I love that everything is very bright and colorful. The class has 3 large fish as pets and have lots of artifacts around the room. I then caught all the letters of their alphabet, which is way less than ours. Since most of them are certain sounds, I was not able to write down all of them or understand how they connect to English.

The next class we had was 2nd grade. We took them into a separate classroom down the hall. They all walked in with their pencil cases and placed them before they sat down in a square on the floor. Like the other classes, they have a normal beginning routine. One student sits at the front of the room and is asked what day is today and what is the weather like today. Then the student is asked if anyone is missing, which means that the student needs to count all the students in English and then say who is gone. I can Unai is starting to try to speak more English is his English class around me so I understand more. He explained that they are going to go over the flashcards of the vocabulary that was used in a story they re-enacted last week. Most students had to think a little about the pictures, but a few were right on the mark immediately. Then Unai explained the next game we were going to play. He was going to pass out flashcards to pairs to have. As he kept trying to say it in English, students were super confused so he switched to Basque. I just watched to get the rest of the instructions. A student would pick two cards and say they need to switch. It is a running game so they do not have to be in the front to pick the cards. This class always has a lot of energy and Unai normally has to wait to keep the game going until they are quiet. After they did about ten rounds, the main teacher walked in and took about half of the class. The rest of the class was given instructions, in Basque, about the next project they need to complete. They are given a sheet that has 4 talk bubbles. The other page has 4 descriptions that fill those bubbles; thus, the students needed to figure out the order of the descriptions that are in English. They recognize the main characters due to the story they did last week. I was asked to check off students before they cut and glued them down.  There wasn't enough time for most students to finish. I sat next to a student who had hurt his finger so I cut the paper for him and once we finished, he high-fived me. Then it was time to clean up and head back to their main classroom.

The third class of the day is the other 2nd grade class. We followed the same routine. These students had more to say in English than the other class. The timing of the class was different and we did not have time to do the flashcard games. They just went through them all to make sure they knew what each one was. Then he just talked in Basque to explain the next activity with the two sheets of paper. This group had a hard time listening to the instructions; thus, they really had no idea what to do when they sat down. I walked around more to help because many did not remember the story they heard last week so I was trying to explain the story. Unai kept following me to make sure that if they did not understand the English, he would repeat in Basque. I sat next to a group and watched them work for awhile as well. Most students again were not able to finish, but more were determined to stay after to finish cutting and gluing.

After lunch, I had my only class with Anabel for the day. We had a 6th grade class. Today we worked on our health and nutrition section. Anabel was stuck in a meeting and came about 10 minutes late to class. We started with students telling things that happened that was exciting last night. Since it was one of the student's birthday yesterday, she explained to us what her favorite present was. One student said that they had a large music exam yesterday and it went well.  This class was then shown the website that connects with the lesson we worked on yesterday where they can play games and watch videos. Once all the students wrote down the website for homework, Anabel had them look at the categories we did yesterday. They were given 3 minutes to try to remember which ones went into each category for the next activity. As they were working, Anabel pulled up a document that had 3 sheets full of pictures. She had already had 5 copies of them printed, but kept them on her desk. She asked the kids to then look at the projector and they looked at the first 3 pictures. They had to describe what the picture showed and say if it was a rule or not. The students had to explain in English, which was very difficult to do because they did not know all the vocabulary in English. Anabel then passed out the sheets to each table and told them that they all need to go one by one to pick a picture and explain it in English. They also need to say if the rule is right or wrong. I was walking around and only a few groups were doing this activity in English, but a few groups would ask me for vocabulary. After a few times, Anabel started a list on the board of vocabulary they needed to go over. The words that were on the board were: Pan, Trash Can, Chopping board, to burn, danger, and oven gloves. Anabel asked the students to describe these words and if not, she drew a picture of them for them to understand. For a few, she had to write down the Basque word for the item for them to connect the words. Anabel then asked them to write these new vocabulary words into the English textbook in the back with other learned vocabulary.

My last class of the day was with Unai in a 3rd grade classroom. I walked in a few minutes late and the class was in a new room in the school. The students were going around talking about what they were going to do after school. After this, the students played the guessing number game. First, a student picked a number between 0 and 200. They picked on students to guess and the student at the front of the room had to say if their guess was higher or lower than the right number. The second round was a number between 0 and 20. However, if the student who guessed was wrong, they needed to spell out their number in English. Unai then held books for the students, but he told them he had a special surprise. He said that since today has been so beautiful outside, that they are able to play outside during class. All the students ran down to their room and ran outside. I am very glad that they got to play outside because it is normally raining in Mondragon. I love watching them all interact and have fun!

Until tomorrow,
Jillian