This week concluded the second week of our teaching practicum. The first week of practicum I taught 8th graders and after the first day I realized that my lessons were a little too low for the majority of my students because their English was very good. This meant rethinking my lessons for the rest of the week. After some initial stress and some boredom from my students I ended up finally figuring out how to make lessons that were challenging enough for the advanced one, but could also work for students who had lower levels of English.
My most successful lesson during the remainder of the week was a lesson that I did on letter writing and descriptions. After reviewing the pieces of a letter, I had everyone close their eyes and I gave them the following prompt, "Imagine you are looking at the person that you want to marry. They are beautiful or handsome. They are smart and educated. They are respectful and kind. They are talented, funny, and athletic. They are your perfect match. However, there is a problem this person is on the other side of the world and they only speak English." I had students then write a letter to help their future spouse find them and convince them that they are the right person for them.
After the students finished their letters I collected them all and passed them back out. We read them as a class and tried to decide who wrote each letter. Students with more basic skills stuck to just physical description of themselves. However, students with broader vocabularies had some very creative letters. In one of my favorite letters, a student told his future wife that she could be his Juliet and he would be her Romeo.
Fifth grade was more challenging for me. I admire the energy required to be an elementary school teacher. It's especially difficult when teaching another language to elementary students when you only know basic things in their home language. Throughout the week I got a lot of blank stares, but overall, I think they learned some things.
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