My Environment

The kids are 13-14 years old going to 8th and 9th grade. There are 6 girls and 2 boys. They all attend the middle school where Ana works and most live in the community in which the school is located. Ana is amazing. She works so hard for these kids and their school. She has basically given me creative control of the program. She has been great as an adviser and has given me great ideas as well. Ana introduced me to an English teacher at the school who offered to help

and talk with me if i needed it.

I am working at the community library, which is about a minute from the school. The people there are great and they help me with things I need for the class. There are also some computers there that I am able to use for the class which have been very useful.

Most of the lessons I came up with myself. Ana had suggested doing a different theme each week, so I went of of that and started thinking about activities related to those subjects that would be interesting. Some lessons like the Nouns and Verbs, and Sentence Structure I found online. After the first activity we did I realized that the kids really needed help with sentences and verbs, so i looked online for something that would help since I haven't taught any of this before.

Teaching English, Getting Comfortable

My first week teaching was both challenging and exciting. I have never taught more than one person at a time. Now I am in charge of teaching English to ten students. I have enjoyed my first week with them. They are all really nice and want to learn. The hardest part is that not everyone is at the same English level. I have a couple of students that are fluent and can write but on the other hand, I have students that can barely understand what I am saying.
The second week was much better. The students are starting to loosen up and I am getting more comfortable as their teacher. They really enjoyed the field trip this week. I wanted to show them that English isn't just for the classroom. We will definitely be taking another trip.

*The class is Monday to Thursday from 9:00am to 12:00pm

A brief overview of the past weeks (each week has a theme that I try to incorporate into the

lesson plans and field trips):

Week 1: Game Week

• Monday
• Overview of program
• Icebreaker (get to know your classmates)
• Games:
• Picture, telephone?
• Draw the Picture
• Tuesday
• Lesson on sentence structure, nouns, and verbs that I found online at http://www.instructorweb.com/languagearts.asp
• Wednesday
• Short Story: "Just Once" by Thomas J. Dygard
• Read out loud and discuss with class
• Thursday
• Movie: The Game Plan

Week 2: Career Week

• Monday
• Talk about professions they are interested in
• Activity: look up information about a profession you are interested in and share the results with the class.
• Tuesday
• Talk about elements of a story
• Book report:
• Choose a short book from the library
• Read it and write a report
• Share the results with the class
• Wednesday
• Watch Grey's Anatomy and House
• Thursday
• Field Trip: Visit a veterinary clinic