This week marks WEEK 1 of the Spring term here at work and at during the first release of the schedule it didn't look like much if anything was going to change classwise for me for my upper levels. It was then determined to make sure that the upper level students are exposed to more people and don't begin to get attached to one teacher's style that the other upper level teacher would take the listening classes that I had the students for reading for. I was all for this as I get his middle level classes and I am super excited about them as I've done both ends of the spectrum, but I haven't gotten to explore in the middle yet. I also don't like to be viewed as a one trick pony in regards to teaching so branching out like this really drives that point home.
My younger classes this term are the super young kids and then a group of older (younger) kids that advanced from where I had them last term. I share the youngest of the kids with another teacher and they are absolutely adorable. The first time I saw them in my classroom they were all chitter chattering and I stuck my head in and went "BOO!" and they all scattered like a bunch of cockroaches. It made me laugh. They laugh a lot at me and with me. I'm going to say that it's mostly the latter, but then again who knows. They're probably in 1st grade from what I can reckon and so their English skills aren't the best. I ask them how their day was, *no response*. I then go thumbs up or thumbs down for your day, *still no response*. Finally it's smiley face, straight face or frowny face. Then it's "oh, teacher thumbs up!". Absolutely adorable. Monday's lesson was Blue and Red, Wednesday's was Green and Yellow and Friday's is Pink, White, Orange and Yellow. Definitely a change of pace from talking about the death penalty and the Vietnam War like with my upper levels. There is also a silly, stupid song that is for each week that I'm going to try to remember to bring my tablet to work tomorrow and record it so I can post it here for your enjoyment.
My upper level classes are also putting a mega-smile on my face. My Monday class is all repeat students except for one. It was only two students this week, but that's because several came on Tuesday to make up for it but they'll be regularly attending Monday's class. Tuesday's class with the makeup students was awesome. First of all it was 15 people including myself in a room made for maybe 10 plus the teacher. Luckily I had twelve desks. I had one girl sit at my desk and then I ran and grabbed another desk and put it in the aisle and we just moved it for break times. Excellent thing there wasn't a fire as this was probably more packed than sardines in a can because they don't have to deal with desks and chairs taking up space as well. Not only was the class big, which made me happy, but they were all participating and we on point, and just awesome. I couldn't have asked for more. Then last night (Wednesday) I had my upper upper levels which was mostly new students and it was an even bigger class than this class the previous term. The nice thing about it was I had had the students that had leveled up the previous term and so knew which ones participated and which ones didn't, or so I thought. This new environment changed them and the higher stakes brought out better responses and better observations from everyone which was great.
The students also have a vocabulary quiz each week for words that they are provided to study that they will encounter in that week's listening passages or readings. I, last term, would make up small flashcards for my classes that they could utilize and study with if they showed up early as I would leave them up at the front desk. Nobody used them :-(. Then I had a student ask if I'd make a set so she could take them home. I started to think about how many students this would be, how much paper it would use, YIKES. I resolved the problem by just making a PDF of the flashcards and making it where students could print them off and use them at home. Now how to get the PDF to them. Hmm. Solution? A blog for each class. A simple web address that I quickly snatched for each class where links to an online version of the PDF vocab cards is posted for each week and they can choose to download and use them or ignore them. There were a couple students that were super excited about this and I was like "REALLY?!?! because frankly the same thing's been available to you but you've never taken advantage of it, but as soon as it involves being online and a computer you're all gung-ho about it?" Shook it off and figured whatever helps them is a good thing regardless.
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