Tuesday 13th

Los lunes se recoge la basura orgánica, el compost, y los martes el resto; hoy, martes, las calles están llenas de cubos: llenos por las mañanas y vacios por las tardes






There is another Spanish teacher at St. Thomas High School, Loli; today we swapped classes: she attended Mr. Katz´s classes and I attended her mentor´s, a Spanish teacher called Hillary Cruickshank.

Periods 2 & 5: Spanish 2 IB (= second year Spanish)
This is Ms. Cruickshank´s Spanish classroom

The Spanish classes take place twice in a cycle and they last 50 minutes, like all the other classes at our school. Today was Day 2 (of the nine day cycle at St. Thomas). Each school distributes the days and the time for each period. Some of our colleagues at other schools attend lessons which are 75 minutes long in a five day cycle.

Attending a Spanish class meant Spanish as a foreign language, not a first or second language - which is what English and French are. That is probably why I found some similarities between her lessons and ours in Spain - the use of a coursebook was the first one.

One of the things I liked the most in the classes today - and I have noticed it in many of  the other classes I have attended here - is how activities and tasks that seem to be unrelated and improvised are not so but they always have a purpose and by the end of the lesson it is easy to see the connection.

For instance, the teacher greeted the students reminding them that today was Tuesday, not Monday so there was no reason why they should be tired today; therefore, they would start the lesson with some physical exercise. The students stood up behind their chairs and the teacher started giving them instructions in Spanish (and miming them): "arriba / abajo / a la izquierda / a la derecha". They had to imitate her at the same time as they repeated the words; this lasted a

couple of minutes but when they sat down, they had all got the meaning and the pronunciation of the words.





I find that the students learn a lot by repeating things over and over again. Hillary also played "Simon dice..." for a couple of minutes to reinforce the vocabulary they had just learnt

After this, Hillary wrote "las preposiciones" on the blackboard and asked them to jot down the four prepositions the had just learnt. So the learning in this case had taken place by doing.

Then the students got to work on their presentations, which will take place next week; it was a dialogue they were given but they had to personalize it. As part of the introduction to this dialogue, the students found the verb "bump into" which they had to understand and translate; some of them knew the Spanish for it was "encontrarse" and Hillary explained the irregular conjugation of this verb as the one of the verb "poder" they had just studied. Thus, the relation once again. To practise the conjugation of the verb "poder", Hillary asked each and everyone of the students in the class to ask her for a "galleta", if they wanted one; this meant that she walked around the classroom giving them a biscuit when they asked the question correctly.

Periods 3 & 4: Spanish 1 IB

Hillary greets these students with music (salsa) so some of them come in dancing, either at their desks or in front of the room.

Introducing me to the class also helped to check if the students remembered how to ask and answer questions about their nationality.

And then they start practising the alphabet, also with a song (a type of salsa song). Eventually, she asks them to dance a conga repeating `the alphabet song´. They get so carried away that they leave the classroom - led by the teacher- go to the classroom opposite theirs and dance around the desks there.

During 5th period, the teacher in that class led her students into Hillary´s classroom just for fun. A couple of minutes lost but a lot of time gained as for a nice atmosphere in the class and a better concentration afterwards - it seems to me as if these moments when they move around are just a benefit for the rest of the period because students seem to focus more deeply on what they have to do. I think this is a lesson we (Spanish students) should learn: when students move around a little bit, when students do something together, when they hold each other and touch each other in a dance, for instance, all that has to do with feelings, emotions... and emotional intelligence is something we have not been taught how to deal with in Spain - but we know it works effectively in learning.

There was also a listening exercise in the class to practise the alphabet in a different way. As Hillary knew one of the words used to teach it was "yuca" (fot "y"), she brought one to class and showed it around.

At the end of the class, Hillary handed out the tests they had done last week and asked the students to bring them back, signed by their parents, for the next classroom.

Temperatura en Montreal hoy: 12º C/ 17º C