I would like, once again, to thank you for this opportunity.
During the last month, I've been in charge of the students in 2nd grade. As you can imagine, the teaching of a second language when children are still developing an understanding of their first (that is, English) is quite challenging. Nevertheless, my focus has been to performing communicative activities based on the topics we have discussed.
The following list, I believe, summarizes the content areas that all three of us (in Spanish) have taught:
1. Greetings and good byes
2. Numbers (0-30/50)
3. The Spanish alphabet
4. Days of the week
5. Months of the year
As I previously said, I tend to focus more on communicative activities in second language acquisition: I want my students to be able to express themselves in a new language using the vocabulary we have learned in context-based situations. For example, we discussed numbers in small digits (e.g. 1-5-6-4...) by asking "What is your phone number?" (in Spanish, of course) question and then, having them respond to the question with an imaginary phone number they had wrote or were given. This way, children understand that even at their age level they can communicate (involving reading, listening, writing, and speaking) in a new language...and while having some fun as well!
Of course, having divided the original group (of almost 30 students) into three age-based categories has been very productive. I must say, though, that with individual classrooms our students will benefit more from every lesson we teach them. If each instructor has an individual classroom, students at every level will have less distractions and will enjoy each lesson to the same extent they would benefit from their regular classes. I suggest this is something we could re-arrange for the spring 2013.
I wish everyone a happy winter break and I'm looking forward to seeing you again in January.
~Sr. Luis López
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