JumpStart Costa Rica: 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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Week 3: Beyond mere words through differentiated listening activities

Week 3

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