JumpStart Costa Rica: Guacima

Showing posts with label Guacima. Show all posts

1/31/14

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

1/20/14

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:

1/15/14

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.

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