Tuesday April 20th

Hello hello-

Sorry that I have tripped up on the blog-posting lately. I go to work right after teaching and often don't get back until late and forget to write. My apologies.

Anyway, I taught yesterday and on Friday. Friday's class actually went really well. It was rather small- only about 15 guys ended up showing up, so we gathered tables together and sat conference-style which seemed to keep everyone much more engaged. We went over I.O.P. again (and again) and it seemed to click for a few students. I know they've learned this over and over again, but I think each of us must present it slightly differently and hopefully the repetition helps for those who are struggling to grasp this. Because Friday's class was so small and people took a very long time to trickle in, I ended up meeting with several students individually in mini-conferences so we could discuss where they were at in the class and talk about where their individual strengths and weaknesses seemed to be. This seemed to be really helpful for the guys and I recommend we do this again later in the week for the students who there wasn't time to meet with last Friday.

On Friday Angel also gave a fantastic presentation on Spanish-language music. He had written out poster-sized lyrics of several different artists and brought some CD's to play in the class, which the other guys loved. It really helped with listening comprehension and associating particular sounds with their spellings.

A whole group of students requested the opportunity to work n some extra credit, so we spoke about a written composition that must be turned in by next Tuesday, April 27th. I'd like to write up some formal expectations for this and perhaps offer a second option for those who would rather do an oral presentation instead.

As for yesterday, we spent still more time on I.O.P., though I tried not to let that monopolize class time. I also moved into L8 and we learned the preterit of ir and ser and I also introduced them to estar in the preterit, though this doesn't appear until L9, but I thought it'd be good for them to learn ser/estar at the same time so they can continue to sort out the difference between these verbs no matter what tense they are in. We went over some of the exercises in L7, particularly those that included both D.O.P. and I.O.P. I think it'd be a good time to move on to L8's lesson about the 'order of operations' in a sentence when both types of pronouns are present. We also spent a fair amount of time reviewing the difference between demonstrative pronounts and adjectives, and this seemed to go well. I find it helpful to do short grammar lessons in English when introducing this kind of stuff, because if a student doesn't know what a pronoun is in English, it often seems to present an unnecessary stumbling block to understanding these concepts in Spanish. I also handed out L8 workbook packets to those who hadn't received them, but didn't assign anything specific yet.

That's all I can think of! I know I have been one of the worst at posting on the blog, but I would like to make a request that we try to keep each other apprised of our lessons (at least the teachers who come in the day after us), because it is difficult to go in and teach if you don't know what's happened the day before. It sounds like the students loved listening to Willie Colon yesterday, but I had no idea what happened on Monday, so it was a bit hard to know what to plan for Tuesday. If the blog isn't working out, I'm happy to return to emailing.

And one last thing: who is able to help grade?? I am drowning in homeworks, quizzes, and extraneous assignments that keep trickling in. Would love some help. Let me know and we can figure out where to meet and hand off hw- karaurion@gmail.com. Thanks!