603 Bilingual Education

I have to say that these past 2 weeks have been going really well with my Spanish Lessons with my class. They are really enjoying the lessons, and because I do use interactive videos they have a lot of fun with it. The majority of my students have even memorized a song from one of the videos, and they want me to replay that video over and over again. One of the assignments that I gave was a worksheet with questions, and they had to answer it on their own through research. Many students went online and used Google Translate (which I find to not be 100% accurate all the time) and others used a bilingual dictionary which made me very proud. This week I will be challenging them and only speaking to them in Spanish and seeing who can respond using complete sentences.

This week we had a total review of everything we've learned in our Spanish lessons.... I went over the 21 Spanish speaking countries (which many have already forgotten), the alphabet, numbers, days of the week, and greetings. I'm going to be teaching them the months and other phrases. Also as an enrichment project and for them to learn more about the Hispanic Culture, I'm going to have my students write a research paper on important artists and writers from Spain and South America such as Pablo Picasso and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uhqov233rri2cjm/Bilingual%20Education%20in%20India.pptx?dl=0

Teaching Spanish has been an amazing experience; but I still get a lot of racial remarks from my students. It's been a bit difficult this past 2 weeks teaching Spanish; but I continue to do so and I believe it's a great benefit for the students. I know that I am the minority at the school, and the parents and students have had ways to make me aware that I am a minority. I've had a priest who is Korean and who grew up in Paraguay and come in and speak Spanish so that my students can see that not only Hispanics speak Spanish. Unfortunately I have realized that my students aren't aware that Hispanics come from so many wonderful and beautiful countries and in their eyes all Hispanics are Mexican. When I teach Spanish sometimes they make fun of the "Mexican Accent," and it does bother me but I try to use what the say and turn it into a learn lesson and educate them. That's why about a month ago I made them memorize all 21 Spanish speaking countries and how 2 of...

This week has been a it difficult for me to teach Spanish because we had one extra day of Terra Nova testing and picture day for 3 days. I did review the alphabet and some of the numbers. What I did was to ask simple phrases like "Hola como estas?" and I would wait for one of my students to respond. Hopefully next week I can do a lot more with them :-)

This week my students had to take the Terra Nova exams which are Catholic school exams. What I've been doing is saying certain phrases to them during the day and seeing if they understand. Then I say it slower and dissect the words for them, and see how much they understand. I have to say only 2 students really understood. Tomorrow I will be handing them worksheets with introductions, and greetings. I've been showing them videos in Spanish as well and so they can see and hear it in another form. I might not be able to do much tomorrow because my students still have the Terra Nova's and half a day.