Alas, my two and a half month vacation is over! I thought the time would never come. Towards the end I was getting anxious about my schedule but it all worked out because I made it myself. I'll be meeting with three sections of level four classes twice per week. I don't have any super long days. I'll also be doing some scheduled one-on-one conversation practice with students. I'll be doing the conversation practice up to eight hours per week, not too bad.
Last term I was teaching 39 classes of level 1 - 3 students. I would teach the same lesson with modifications for the level of the class for three weeks. After the first week and a half it was difficult to maintain my enthusiasm for the same lesson. I tried to plan fun activities, especially towards the end of the semester, to keep things interesting. I enjoyed it even though it was hard at times - especially those days when I had four classes. The worst day was when I had class at 1, 3, 5 and 7 pm. That was a long day.
I went to the university a couple weeks ago to talk about the current term and was surprised to find out they wanted me to do something completely different this time around. As I mentioned, I'll be working with the level four students and the "Speaking Corner." Now that I've worked out my schedule I am so much happier with what I'm doing now! I've had a first class with my three sections. They're bright, engaged, and fun students, all of them! The fact that I meet with each class twice per week means I can have some continuity from lesson to lesson! I can create a unit! I can assign homework! Ah, the students may not be as excited about the last one.
I set up a blog for my students this term. I plan on posting an outline of what we did in class, a description of any homework assignment and I have a few other ideas of how I can use it. I'd like to post articles, poetry, short stories, who knows, anything! and have the students make comments. What the English department would like me to do is focus on speaking and writing with the students. I would love to see the students react to my postings, give me feedback, comment on other comments, etc. I think we call that a forum, don't we. :)
The bad thing is that these students have class for only seven weeks and we've just finished the third week. I only have four weeks in which to pack all my ideas.
Next week we're going to work on giving directions. I bought a big map of Cuenca and I'm trying to work out how I'll design the activity. I know I want students to describe how to get from one place to the next. Think of all the vocabulary! Across the river, up the stairs, down the street, cross the road, go to the left, etc. This is going to be part of my unit which will end with the students designing a brochure about something in Cuenca. It'll include directions, maybe a little map, information about the location, its history, hours, whatever is applicable. This is all still percolating through my mind.
Another lesson will have the students heading out into Cuenca to find an English speaking foreigner to interview. The students will then write an article about their subject. If they go into the main square in town you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a north american most days. I can also direct them to several restaurants around town frequented by foreigners.
Sound fun? Wish you were in my class? :) I bet you do!
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