603 Bilingual Education

This week teaching Spanish was very interesting. I had one of the Priest's from the school come in and speak to my students. He walked in the classroom greeted everyone in Spanish, and they were really surprised he spoke Spanish. He spoke about different cultures, and the importance to speak another language and he also spoke about bullying. He's really popular at the school, and the students love him because he's young (he just turned 30) and he's so playful with the children. I went over the alphabet and numbers with my students. I showed them a video on both, and questioned them on what was different about the Spanish Alphabet. They did notice that there are extra letters. We are reading a book which I'm personally loving called Esperanza Rising   , and there are a lot of Spanish words so I take the opportunity and give a Spanish lesson on the words. I found worksheets on Esperanza Rising   with Spanish vocabulary and I had my students translate it in English...

I teach all subjects in my 5th grade class including Spanish. The way I started off in my class was greeting my students in Spanish. Then for some reason I asked them what language was I speaking, and from the majority of my students I go "Mexican." I'm not going to lie I was stunned!!!! I repeated the question and again the majority said "Mexican." Then I asked what nationality do you think I am? They said Ms. Slater you are Mexican because you speak Mexican and my cleaning lady is Mexican. Again I was stunned, and not in a good way!!!!! Obviously I corrected them but it gave me the idea of teaching a Geography lesson part of my Spanish lesson of all Spanish Speaking Countries in the world. Many students didn't know that Spain and Equatorial Guinea are in other continents and the naive language is Spanish. The next day I found a video with a map and all the Spanish Speaking Countries and I'm making them memorize it and they will be quizzed on it. My ...

The Girl Who Wouldn't Sing   was a really great read. I enjoyed reading about Kit Yuen Quan and her struggles. When I first started reading it, it made me think a lot about my mother, and how she also struggled when she came to the United States. I was able to picture Kit as a child and envision her in school because I've seen students with that same fear, and how they hide and protect themselves because of fear of rejection or children making fun of them. I've seen other children pick on those struggling student's especially those who do not speak English because they are "easy targets." Seeing how Kit "rebelled," and came out to her parents with her sexuality, and moved out as a teen made me believe that she was looking to find herself.   I was a bit surprised to see that Chinese became her second language, meaning that she was as fluent as when she was a child. She felt a thrill when she was able to recognize a character from a restaurant or a ...