Week 3: Beyond mere words through differentiated listening activities

Week 3  

At this point of La Guácima camp, there´s hardly any time left to insist on reviewing basic vocabulary lists. We´ve tried to keep up with Katherine´s lesson plans, but skipped a couple of final challenging topics to study numbers, dates, directions, likes and dislikes, hoping week 4 will magically expand. We still have to plan the activities for the graduation and the trip to the Amusement Park on Friday. 

It has been a blessing to have our Saint Paul College volunteers, so the class now divides into small groups to maximize their supervised oral practice time. Reiniery compliments the kids a lot every day, and I feel this is a key component to their motivation. I walk around listening to them and correcting their pronunciation (but I also carry a candy bag to "sweetly appeal" to their sense of improvement!) There´s more emphasis in listening now and depending on how keen they are to the exercises, I can better tell who is understanding more or faster. To be honest, we´re kind of choosing those kids who will be performing the main roles in our play.  

Our daily routine has allowed us to start early with fresh material. Next, we do some production activities with different grouping systems, and assign them into mixed groups for presentations. For healthy competition sake, we´ve established a daily $20 base per kid (Jumpstart money game) which is reduced every time they speak Spanish without the hat or misbehave. It has worked incredibly well after Katherine announced there would be prices. Breaks have been shortened so presentations are rehearsed outside of the classroom. In the second half, they perform and get feedback, and finally, get back to their workbooks. At the end of the day, they give me their workbooks and show off their well-kept $20 bill. I add up their dollars in the chart by the end of every week. The winner(s) is/are announced on Mondays. We start the following week with lots of praise and challenges to come. 

For some strange reason, the boys definitely outnumber and outperform the girls in our camp; thus, Reiniery and I have to keep them under very close supervision encouraging them to catch up. We´re slowly making progress with the shy girls, but we had to speak to the boys about tolerance and bullying behaviours.  We told them through a children´s book called Geral the Giraffe that all people were different. Surprisingly, the boys were a little better after that. 

A Great reading activity we did this week

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We Are Half Way Through The Camp

Time does fly fast. We are already done with our second week of the camp. Due to medical reason, I was absent from the camp for couple days. When I came back, I saw a welcome back message left by my students for me. My co-teacher did a good job with the camp during my absence. I was very grateful to have a motivated co-teacher. He told me that he made the right decision to participate in the camp despite the long trip that he has to make every day. He enjoyed seeing the improvement that the students made, and the camp is a good opportunity for him to practice his English.

 It has been two weeks since we started our Spanish Hat rule. It has proven to work very well to prevent students from speaking in Spanish. My students have been really into it since Day 1. They would catch other students and of course their teachers who didn't use Spanish Hat when they spoke in Spanish. Also, using the ticket out to allow students to leave proved to be a good strategy to reinforce what the students had learned on that day.

                                   Below are photos of what we did to learn about body parts.

Students in group of 4 created their monster by using the body parts vocabulary that they learned. Then they had to present their monster to the whole class, "our monster has one eye, ten legs, four hands etc."

Students were divided in 5 different teams. Each team chose a model, and they had to work within their team to paste the right labels to the body parts.  

A blindfold student was guided by the whole class to paste parts of the face to the right place. 

On Friday, we had our review session of all of the topics that the students learned during that whole week. We played category game where students, in groups of 4, had to put vocabularies under the right category. The first group that finished putting them correctly was the winner. Later, we played Jeopardy where students were divided into 2 groups. There are 3 different categories. Each category began with a question that worth from 100 to 600 points. The higher the point, the difficult the question is. For example, at 600 point with personality category, the students have to create 3 sentences using 3 different possessive adjectives, 3 different family members, and 3 difference personality. They would get 600 points if they could write the 3 sentences correctly with the required components within 1 minute.  Students seemed to do well although they still struggled with the grammar part. We ended our second half of the session by learning how to make friendship bracelets. 

Halfway through Jumpstart La Rambla!

It's hard to believe Jumpstart started 2 weeks ago and we're already halfway done. For the most part, camp goes by fast but it can be exhausting. But now that we're at the halfway point, I'm hoping to completely savor the time because it's been so enjoyable.

Jumpstart La Rambla has a total of 14 students, 3 from the Barrio El Carmen in La Rambla and 11 from La Chaves. The students from La Chaves are students of my co-teacher Froilan. La Chaves is about a 25 minute drive from La Rambla and Froilan picks the children up every morning. The motivation and dedication coming from the students and Froilan alike is astounding. Froilan leaves his house in Cariari at 5:45 each morning, drives an hour and a half to La Chaves then backtracks to La Rambla to be at camp by 8AM. He repeats the path every day after camp. Froilan's motivation lies in his passion to teach the students the most possible, by taking them to camp and by improving his own English as he practices speaking with me during the breaks.

The 3 students from El Carmen have only ever had 1 year of English classes, in 5th grade. Regardless of this disadvantage from the rest of the class, they are thriving and learning at the same pace. All of the students understand everything I say to them with little repetition and at the fast pace I'm told I speak with. I feel extremely lucky to have this group of kids to work with.

Little by little all the students have gotten more and more comfortable in the classroom and being with each other and with me. Their goofy personalities manage to shine through into the lessons even if they can't express themselves fully as they have to speak English at all times. There is always laughter in the classroom, there is support from one student to another and respect for the teachers. Every time I ask for volunteers, every students ends up making their way to the front.

A little about each student:

Alfred - Alfred is my go-to guy if somebody misses a day and needs to be caught up. He gets mixed up sometimes but always knows how to correct his mistakes and is super helpful to anyone sitting around him.

Ariana - An outgoing girl with a shy personality when it comes to speaking English. Usually second-guessing herself but also usually correct in her English knowledge.

Betzabeth - Betza is the most shy and sometimes takes a little longer to process the information presented but she stays motivated and always powers through.

Cristian - I was told by Froilan that Cristian has behavior issues in other classes and I would have never guessed by how he acts in English class. He enjoys learning English so much he becomes a serious, focused student.

Cristoper - He struggles a little but on the very first day of class he came in and said to us "I want to improve my pronunciation" and that's the motivation it takes to really learn.

Donald - Lacks confidence (probably from his lack of experience with English) and sometimes gives up when something seems too hard but when he is given 1-on-1 attention, he really flourishes.

Drexel - Drexel is a mixture of Yerbis's knowledge and Donald's slightly problematic behavior. But Drexel is intelligent and always one of the first ones done with assignments.

Emilena - A typical girl who loves Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and English class. 

Jordi - Jordi can be a serious kid which means he takes the class seriously. If he sees he is struggling, he tries and tries until he achieves what he wants.

Maykel - The class clown! Maykel has gotten so comfortable he makes strange noises throughout the lessons but all for a good laugh. Even with his goofball behavior, is never too distracted and learns everything along with everyone else.

Sheirys - Sheirys has the softest voice of the class but everything she says is exactly right. She is very smart!

Steven M - A goofy kid that enjoys the class. Gets a little mixed up but always recovers. 

Steven L - He is probably the perfect mixture of silly and smart. Gives everyone a laugh and manages to answer all the questions first and with ease.

Yerbis - My most surprising student, Yerbis is one of 3 that have only had 1 year of English. He surprises me everyday by learning everything super fast and even somehow remember information from his brief time with English.

Pictures!

the sign outside the classroom

a classroom awaiting it's students

first day ice-breaker: the human knot. they all grab random hands and have to unknot themselves into a circle. I wanted them to really get to know each other :)

playing a version of Duck Duck Goose

Steve M. introducing himself (name, occupation and where he lives)

playing BOOM, a game used to review vocabulary

learning so much!

outside playing "Everyone Who" - one person in the middle makes a statement "everyone who… lives in ___ / is __ years old / etc" and those the statement apply to have to get up and find a new seat

Naty teaching numbers

the Spanish hat in action! nobody in the class is allowed to speak Spanish unless wearing the hat

Froilan going over physical characteristics

Ariana and Steve M (with Emilena and Maykel not completely pictures) playing Guess Who

Cristian, Drexel, Betza and Yerbis playing Guess Who

Sheirys, Steven L, Jordi and Alfred playing Guess Who

learning and learning

the ladies of Jumpstart La Rambla!

posing for the camera! Steven L, Jordi, Alfred, Maykel, Cristian, Betza and Donald

a clip of "Everyone Who" - Alfred in the middle says "Everyone who is 13 years old", those who are 13 get up and find new seats

Welcome to Jump Start 27 de Abril!

Jump Start! Week One in Review

Jump Start 27 de Abril welcomed 40 students to the colegio last week. In the usual Jump Start fashion, the new 7^th graders arrived a little shy and uncertain about spending the last month of their vacations speaking English all day. I asked if they were excited to start classes in the colegio and… silence. Then I asked “Are you anxious/ nervous about coming to the colegio?” and got a lot of head nods. Luckily, we had a lot of special guests to get them excited. The first day, the resident goat, Giovanni, waltzed right into the classroom to break the ice. His appearance certainly brought a burst of energy!

Giovanni visits our class daily.
Giovanni visita nuestra aula cada día.

The second day of camp we had a much more esteemed visitor, Marta Blanca, the director of Costa Rica Multilingue. She had even the shyest students sticking out there tongues to pronounce “thank-you” and rubbing their bellies                     as a cue to pronounce nammme. 

                For day 3 – ‘Where do you live?’ 

We brought all the students together to play outside. We made a circle of all 40 students and 4 teachers and took turns calling out one of the ten communities where we live. When your community is called you have to run to find a new spot on the circle. The students loved <3 making our MEP co-teachers run! The game also had an unexpected and welcome effect, of motivating our campers. Since we have 40 jump starters at the colegio, they are divided into 2 separate, more manageable groups of 20, receiving all their lessons separately. My group was begging for more English classes, concerned that the other students ‘knew more’! Music to my ears!                                  

The Spanish Hat! El Sombrero de Espaol!

High School students speakers.
Los estudiantes del colegio.

The last two days of the week the students finally started to relax and even if they are just saying a few words of English the embarrassment is fading. The Spanish Hat finally became cool!! Students were initially refusing the hat, but after a few days they were posing with it for photos and asking if they could wear it during recess. We ended the week with games like charades, bingo and races to review our English. We also had some amazing colegio students come to address hopes, worries and questions regarding starting high school. Thanks to our guests, the Jump Start students are much more excited and less nervous for classes to begin. Week one was a big success in building confidence for our Jump Start students!

Charades. Juegos.

Jump Start – La Primera Semana en Repaso

Jump Start 27 de Abril dio la bienvenida a 40 estudiantes en el colegio la semana pasada. En la forma habitual de Jump Start, los nuevos estudiantes del septimo llegaron un poco tímidos y inseguros a pasar el último mes de sus vacaciones hablando Inglés todo el día. Les pregunté a ellos si estaban emocionados para comenzar las clases en el colegio y todos se quedaron en silencio.  Luego les pregunté "¿Están nerviosos por llegar al colegio?" y la mayoría estaban de acuerdo. Por suerte, teníamos una gran cantidad de invitados especiales para ayudarlos a motivarse. El primer día, el cabro residente, Giovanni, ingresó a la aula para romper el hielo. Su entrada, sin duda trajo una explosión de energía!

El segundo día del campamento tuvimos una visita mucho más apreciada, Marta Blanca, la directora de Costa Rica Multilingue. Ella logro que los más tímidos de los estudiantes participaran y hizo que los estudiantes sacaran la lengua para pronunciar "thank-you" y tocando su panza como una señal para pronunciar ‘nammme’. Para el día 3 – el tema era "¿Dónde vives?" Trajimos a todos los estudiantes juntos para jugar al aire libre. Hicimos un círculo los 40 alumnos y 4 profesores y turnamos gritando una de las diez comunidades en las que vivimos. Cuando decían el nombre de su comunidad tenían que correr para encontrar un nuevo lugar en el círculo. A los estudiantes les encantó <3 mandaron a correr a nuestros compañeros  del MEP! El juego también tuvo un efecto inesperado que  motivó a nuestros estudiantes. Tenemos 40 estudiantes en el campamento, los cuales están divididos en 2 grupos separados de 20 cada grupo para hacerlo más manejable. Gracias a este actividad mi grupo me pidió más clases de inglés porque les preocupa que el otro grupo sepa más! Música para mis oídos!

Los dos últimos días de la semana, los estudiantes por fin comenzaron a relajarse y están diciendo algunas pocas palabras en Inglés y la vergüenza está disminuyendo. El Sombrero de español por fin se convirtió en una cosa tuanis! Los estudiantes se negaron inicialmente usar el sombrero, pero después de unos días querían fotos con el sombrero y preguntar si podían usarlo durante el recreo. Terminamos la semana con juegos como adivinanzas, bingo y carreras para repasar nuestro Inglés. Algunos estudiantes escribieron cuales son sus esperanzas y preocupaciones y preguntas acerca de cómo comenzar el colegio. Gracias a nuestros visitantes del colegio, los estudiantes de Jump Start están mucho más emocionados y menos nerviosos para el comienzo de las clases. La primera semana fue un gran éxito porque nosotros pudimos mejorar la confianza de nuestros estudiantes de Jump Start!

First Week of Osa Peninsula JumpStart

YAY!!! The first 7 days of the camp went very well despite my worries.  I have a total of 19 students from 5 different communities. There were 3 of us facilitating the first week of camp, my co-teacher, another PCV, and myself. I deeply appreciated my co-teacher’s effort for coming to the camp everyday even though he lives in a city that is about 2 hours from the camp site.

Some of my students seem to be very quiet, and I was glad to see that the other students encouraged them to participate in class activities. I also felt really happy to see students who had no problem with the topics of the first week helping students who struggled with it.

On our last day of the first week, we played a blindfold name guessing game to review all of the questions that the students have learned. Basically, the blindfolded student had to point at one person and had to ask that person a question (they could not directly ask for his/her name). Judging by their answer, the blindfold student had to guess who she/he was having a conversation with. It was fun to see that the other students tried to change their voices so that the blindfolded students couldn't guess it correctly. When it came to number practice, we asked students to work in pairs and invent a difficult number. They had to be able to pronounce the numbers that they created. My co-teacher was so impressed with the students’ creativeness that he declared everyone a winner. He told the students that everybody is a winner because in the elementary school they only learned from 0 to 100. Now, they can actually say something that is greater than 1, 000!!!

JUMPSTART hits Siquirres!

Hello All,

Sorry this update is coming to you a little late but we are now in our second full week of Jumpstart camp!
We have a full camp this year and the students are learning at an alarming rate!
 Our camp started off with a great group of students who were a little bit shy and hesitant to participate. That didn't last long...our students are now bursting with energy and constantly wanting to volunteer for the next activity. They are exceptionally bright and I find myself having to plan 2 or 3 extra activities since we seem to move through the material very quickly. Every once in a while we will play a game that has NOTHING to do with English and that keeps the mood light and fun.  The best part of these first two weeks is seeing the leaders in the group emerge and help other students when they fall behind.
This past Friday we had our first "high school readiness" lesson, where we talk about the transition for these 6th grade students into high school. I had the help of a wonderful youth development volunteer who was able to come in and talk to group about bullying and goal setting. The students were very responsive and vulnerable and I think the experience brought our group closer together. The students took the goal setting lesson very seriously and they were able to set short term goals for themselves, to be accomplished in the next six months. Many of these students have very little resources and opportunities and to see them thinking ten years into their future and setting short and long term goals was inspiring.

More to come soon!

Fun activity to end week 1

Getting ready for this second week, I definitely see room for improvement in our classroom: specifically their playing by the rules, thinking of meaningful incentives, and more focused review. Despite our teaching experiences, Reiniery and I have to find ways not to be outsmarted by our Guácima Jumpstarters.  We negotiated our very first recess time to be 5 minutes longer based on effective class attention, good discipline, and collaboration. Soon, these quick learners were negotiating everything! To spark spontaneous participation, we´ve taken turns bringing tiny prizes (lollipops, candy, sweet tangerines which they don´t seem to appreciate as rewards anymore!) So, we told them about Fridays being super special. And we delivered: we "pair-tested" them successfully with conversation slips, reviewed body parts vocabulary with Simon Says, but the cherry on the pie was my volunteers´ yoga and stretching session.  A little reluctant at first, most boys felt physically challenged, but seemed to enjoy learning about how far girls could stretch their bodies if properly trained. Reiniery honestly tried to keep up, but it was hopeless! Thanks to our Saint Paul´s 7th grade volunteers of this week: Ana Lucía, Lucía, Adriana, and Juanpa. You brought the extra energy and fun to wrap up a great week. Check out some of the photos and videos here:

I live in San Marcos. She livessssss in Sabalito. We live in Costa Rica!

Week 1 of JumpStart Sabalito was a success! We have two camps of 22 students each with a total of 44 students facilitated by two MEP teachers, Diego and Teresa, a recent college grad volunteer from the U.S., Shareesa and myself, a Peace Corps volunteer.

On our high school tour today (as part of the high school preparation segment), the students told us their hopes, worries, and questions about high school. Most students worried about not being able to find their classrooms on the first day or not being able to pass their classes. They told us that the JumpStart camp is helping them to meet friends and feel more comfortable in the high school before school starts. I asked one student, Daniela, if she missed her vacations, “No,” she replied, “this camp is more fun than my summer vacation at home!”

Using English only in the classroom, we have been taking tickets when students have spoken Spanish. This week, we had 11 students (half the class) who didn’t speak English all week! We gave them cupcakes and special pens as prizes. The other half of the class had only spoken English one to five times the entire week! So far, speaking English unless using the Spanish Hat has been a success.

The students have been supporting each other with their learning. When we were learning the verb “to live,” and a student would say a sentence with “he live…” or “she live…,” the rest of the class would chime in with “sssssss” to remind the student of the 3^rd person form “livessss,” and we would all end up laughing at how silly we all sounded. We can’t wait for Week 2!

JumpStart in Guardia, Guanacaste!

  I am so glad I decided to do JumpStart , it’s the perfect way to close up two years of Peace Corps service doing something I have no doubt is truly making a difference here in Guardia. The first day was challenging, transportation hiccups, kids talking too much out of turn and making fun of other students.  The second day I switched up the seating and reiterated the rules and things went much smoother.  Besides my co-teacher Mauren, Mireya, the school’s cook whose daughter is participating in the camp has been helping us out every day.  I truly feel supported by my community and am really proud of my students.

There is no doubt in my mind that they are an exemplary group of kids and I feel honored to get to work with them.  In one of my seating changes I placed one of the more advanced students next to a student with a learning disability. I had planned to talk to her after class about helping him out; it was great seeing her help him this morning without me having to ask. My counterpart was hesitant to recommend one of our students for JumpStart because she didn’t work in class during the school year and was disruptive in class, she’s turned out to be one of the students who is most eager to participate is always engaged in class games.  It’s been great running a classroom on the principals the Peace Corps TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) project is based on, a truly interactive and engaging learning environment.  It’s so motivating to see my students wrapped up in games in English and laughing in class and I look forward to the rest of camp!

First Guácima Camp

When I met English teacher Reiniery Amador from Liceo de la Guácima, I immediately felt his enthusiasm and resolved that he´d be the ideal teaching partner for this ambitious project. We completed our Pre-Camp training at Peace Corps Headquarters and came back home loaded with materials and the hope of doings things right in our first Jumpstart Camp- La Guácima. We both appreciate being able to teach youngsters and to live in this traditional, yet blossoming Alajuela area with lots of potential for economic growth and development. Just like in many San José neighboring towns, La Guácima shows a contrasting reality: small public schools and family-run businesses yuxtaposed with amazing real estate development projects, sometimes unaffordable to many local people. Our school Once de Abril, for example, lies in front of Ciudad Hacienda Los Reyes, the best golf community in the entire Central Valley, where an average property´s area is 13,000 ft2. Children here are used to attending school surrounded by the still sounds of nature and the screeching tires of amateur speedy drivers who feel nostalgic about the old race track days. In this setting, Reiniery and I have encountered twenty monolingual Jumpstarters who are pure dynamite. Over the course of these four weeks, they will meet my twelve Saint Paul College Teaching volunteers ranging from ages 12 to 17. The latter are bilingual teenagers eager to do their social outreach hours during the summer. Who knows what awaits them?  As I feel about my coworker, I certainly hope they begin new friendships and enjoy wonderful experiences together.