During the 2012-2013, I have had the pleasure of being a Language Assistant through the program Auxiliares de Conversación at Salvador Allende School in Puerto de la Torre, Málaga, Spain. During this school year, I worked exclusively with First Cycle, which is made up of both first and second grades. I was at the school 12 hours per week. I spent the most time working with 2ºB and they improved tremendously over the course of the school year.
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| Making materials |
A typical day in second grade involved explaining the themes of science class to the students. Pedro, the teacher that I was an assistant for, and I always tried to provide fun examples to help the students remember vocabulary. When we were studying the human body, we taped the names of the body parts all over one of the students in order to give them a real life visual. We also made lots of flashcards and coloring pages for the students to remember the vocabulary for each theme. Normally, Pedro would lead an activity in one of the second grade classes and I would lead it in the other class. We worked very well together in the classroom all year and he often asked for my input about the students and I would help to make new seating charts.
In my opinion, first grade is a more difficult level to teach because it is their first year in primary school and they are still learning how to communicate in Spanish. A typical day in first grade this year was practicing science vocabulary with the students. Using visuals, there was no need to translate to Spanish because the students could plainly see and understand the meanings of the vocabulary words. Sandra, the first grade teacher, and I found it to be the most helpful when I would leave the class in small groups. In this way, I was able to check the understanding of each student and help correct pronunciation. It was also very important that I was present when they took the exams because many of them are still becoming used to the school environment and the culture of test taking.
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| Amelia's talking about USA |
In the beginning of the year, the teachers and I had to discuss proper classroom behavior with our students before we could successfully begin the learning process. First grade had a lot of things to learn for the first time, such as raising their hands and asking permission to leave their seats. Second grade had behavior problems from the previous year so we had to start from the beginning with them as well. In general, if a class' main teacher provides rules and structures, the class will be easy to work with. However, the students have many teachers with different rules. If their main teacher does not discipline them, such as taking away recess time and writing notes to their parents, they will not behave for other teachers. Discipline is an issue for language assistants because we are not supposed to be alone in a room with the students and many times the students do not listen to us when we ask them to stop talking or take away recess time from them.
This year I was also part of the Bilingual Coordination Team that was made up of the four bilingual teachers of first, second, third and fourth grades, myself, and another language assistant from the Comenius program. This weekly meeting was very helpful to ask for ideas from the other teachers and to learn what the other bilingual classes were doing to help improve the English skills of their students. Our coordinator, Gracia, is very organized and helpful to both language assistants and teachers. She always had ideas and advice for us and knew the things that were happening in each class as well as being an excellent and dedicated teacher to her own third grade class.
In conclusion, this year has been a tremendous learning experience for me both professionally and personally. I plan to continue working with children in the future and will never forget the two years I spent as a language assistant in primary schools in Spain.
Amelia LeBlanc
