Day 12-Sing and Dance

Today was a big learning day for me! I started off my day eating pancakes and always fruit from my mama tica and off we went to the Elementary School located in Santa Elena. We were greeted at the school by the principal who gave us a tour around his school. We saw their school garden, complete with cucumbers, peppers, and spices. We then saw their classrooms, offices, lunch room where I think the hardest workers are! The cooks for this school not only have to make lunch for every student in the school, but they only have one class set of plates so every time a class is finished eating lunch, they have to quickly wash them before the next class arrives a few minutes later. At this school, there is a building where teachers can live, along with a soccer field and and another garden that the United States helped fund through partnerships. We then arrived in the classroom we were going to be teaching in. We broke up into small groups, with each of us taking 2-3 students to teach to. I worked with Jessica and Steven, who were so engaged and seemed to be really happy to be learning both English and Spanish. Our lesson for the day was about leaves and we had brought leaves from around their town to look at and describe. We put the leaves in order from biggest to smallest, talked about their colors and size, measured them, and felt the different textures. After my lesson, I still had about 20 minutes to spare, so we began learning the colors in English. Jessica ran to her desk and brought back a pack of crayons that were in English so they could see the color and the spelling right on it. After mastering the colors, I taught them how to sing head, shoulders, knees, and toes in both Spanish and English! They didn't know the tune in Spanish so we worked on what was most comfortable for them, Spanish, before moving on to English. I know I always learn best through songs and movement, so I hope this helped them learn in a different way in which they were used to. By the end of the class, I had about 10 students in a circle all learning the song and motions! It was awesome to see such attentive learners and students so willing to learn.