Day 15- Letters to Amigos

Today we were given the opportunity to observe a first and second grade english classroom. In the first grade, the english teacher was teaching about nuclear families and the names of each family members. She focused primarily on the mom, dad, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, me, and dog. It was really interesting for me to view a different country's teaching style and notice the similarities and differences between the United States and Costa Rica. The first thing that I noticed right away was that there is absolutely no behavior management at all throughout the whole school. Even at recess, all the kids are outside without any adult supervision. The teacher spent a lot of time drawing the face of each family member on the board, and while she was doing that, the kids were completely off task and not paying attention at all. Once the teacher had drawn every family member, the students were to draw and write the exact same thing in their own notebook as notes for later. It was interesting to see that the teacher did not expand upon any family member or say anything about the words. She just had the students repeat after her about ten times and then they spend the rest of their class time drawing the same pictures in their notebooks. The classes that we observed at this particular school were only about 30 minutes long and by the time the teacher had changed classrooms (the teachers change classrooms and the students stay in the same classroom all day), students calmed down, and the teacher started teaching, they only had about 25 minutes left. Then there was another 5 minutes wasted for students to pack up their materials. This left about 20 minutes of instruction, which is very difficult to learn something in only 20 minutes. I am not criticizing this type of instruction by any means, but these were just some of the differences that I noticed while at the school. We then went into a second grade classroom where the English teacher taught family trees again, but with a few more members added in. She added cousins, son, and daughter to the tree and it seemed like the students didn't really have much of a clue what they were writing down, they were just copying what the teacher wrote on the board.

After observing, we went into a fourth grade classroom and taught them how to write a letter to a friend. Our professor, Dr. Powell, had brought letters that students had written in the United States and the hope is for the students to become pen pals eventually! We had them write their sentences in English, so we had to teach them how to spell, read, and write in English. It was pretty difficult for them, so it required a lot of one on one attention to help them complete the letter. Our primary goal for the lesson was to allow the students to make connections and be more engaged rather than just sitting in their desk copying what was written on the board. The letters were meaningful to them because they know that they will get a response from a student in the United States. I think this type of learning is very powerful for students because they need to be able to make connections and have learning be authentic. I learned a lot through this lesson that I can take back with me in my future classroom.