Morning Class
In the morning class I usually worked with one student in particular named Edalia. Edalia does not attend regular school but she can communicate in English quite well. The first week that I worked with her I got her to read several storybooks to me to find out what her reading level was, and did some vocabulary by having her pick the appropriate word for a sentence. We also covered and did lots of practicing on identifying nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The last week I was there we covered some verb tenses: simple present, simple past, simple progressive and past progressive. She is able to comprehend the rules for a particular verb tense, but in the last couple of days of class when I tried to get her to identify what verb tense she needed to use she found this more difficult.
For other students that came to class less regularly, we would often have vocabulary/translation worksheets ready for them to work on. First we asked them to identify as many as they could without a dictionary, but then would provide an English-Spanish dictionary. If time permitted we would also try and test the children on this new vocabulary. Also depending on a student’s level we may also have had them arrange flash cards with written numbers, days of the week, and months. If a student was more advanced, they were asked to identify an appropriate word to complete a given sentence.
Afternoon Class
We covered the date, “my name is” and “his/her name is “, alphabet, numbers up to thirty, family vocabulary, and shapes and colours. We divided the children into two groups ages 7+ and under 7. I took the younger group and we worked on the alphabet. Most of the kids in this age group could sing the abc’s, but most had trouble identifying letters out of order. I would use flash cards which they loved, or made my own alphabet cards that kids would put in order and then colour and decorate after. We practiced identifying the sounds of letters, and would also review numbers, colours and shapes. As a group we would practice songs such as Head and Shoulders, Row, Row, Row your Boat, and the Itsy Bitsy Spider.
The 7+ students did all of the above and started to learn how to tell time, read, spell, and perfected the vocabulary in the songs we would sing. We brought A LOT of stickers with us and they served as a great way to motivate the kids and keep them on track.
Evening Class
With the intermediate class, which was mostly made up of kids in high school we focused on verb tenses. We did a lot of practice on simple present, simple past, and present progressive, past progressive, future simple and progressive. I went over each in detail and gave lots of examples. Once I felt that the group was comfortable with these concepts I would mix up the verb tenses in worksheets and then they would have to identify which verb to use. One student in particular, Vilma, is more advanced and I did begin to cover irregular verbs with her. I would always leave some free time at the end of class for reading or questions. Many of them would be at the appropriate level for reading compression.
The advanced class would also arrive in the evening. They are most keen to work on grammar and we went over the following tenses:
Present simple, perfect and progressive
Past simple, perfect and progressive
Future simple, perfect and progressive
We also went over prepositions of time and place and irregular verbs (past and past participles).
Horacio, Darwin and Alberto are the most advanced students and all of the above concepts were a review for them which they found relatively easy and made few mistakes. Alberto enjoys reading comprehension, but there is a lack of appropriate books for him to read. He is 13 and has read the first Harry Potter book. He said that he enjoyed it, but he found it difficult. If you are able to supply some books for the school, I would recommend some low level chapters books. Horacio and Alberto both have an interest in space and I’m sure they would enjoy some books on this subject.
Noldan and his sister Maria are also in the advanced class, but are at a slightly lower level. Noldan has very good conversational English, but Maria is shy when she is asked to speak (although her written is good). These two benefitted the most from the grammar lessons and were keen to learn.
I would say that the greatest challenge with the advanced students was finding activities and lesson plans that were beneficial and interesting for them. They were not as motivated to work on mini projects that applied their English as they were to do grammar lessons. They all enjoyed simply talking and learning through conversation. I also taught them the game “20 Questions” which was fun and would start conversation.
Suggested Supplies/Activities:
• Workbooks/worksheets of all levels
• Whiteboard markers!!! (We had dry erase workbooks that the little kids LOVED but all 12 of our markers were dry by the 4th day! They are also very useful for teaching the advanced/intermediate students on the whiteboard)
• Supplies for any games/sports you would like to do
• English-Spanish dictionaries (the morning students did a lot of translations, but there is only one dictionary at the school)
• The students like challenges and some had t-shirts that a previous teacher had brought as prizes for the challenge week she set up
• Pencils, markers, crayons
• Stickers
*Some of these supplies you can get in Nicaragua, but are not easily accessible in Merida*
