Teaching Already!

The past couple of days I have been taking on more and more responsibility. As I said in my previous post, flexibility is a must for Costa Rica. Prime example: Yesterday my cooperating teacher asked me to teach a lesson on Persuasive Letter Writing for our 5th grade English class. I have taught an entire unit on this in the past, so I felt confident about the content. However, I didn't know about teaching it until right before it was time to teach. There was a PowerPoint presentation already prepared, so all I really had to do was go through it and talk about it. Although it was SUPER last minute, it went really well. My cooperating teacher loved it and gave me great feedback. The students were really engaged and I was able to use my previous knowledge to make the PowerPoint come alive. It was fantastic.

I also had a great week with our 4th graders. The started a really cool project the other day where they were assigned a classmate and they are to predict their future. The objective for this project is for students to practice using the future tense in English. They are to demonstrate their competency through an oral presentation and written descriptions. We provided magazines for them to cut out pictures and create a poster of their person's life. This project was so fun. We finished the project today and the students began to present. They had so much fun with it! I love when students get enthusiastic about their learning. This project really allowed for them to be creative and express themselves.

Overall things are going great! I'm really tired at the end of the days though. My brain gets tired from the back and forth of English and Spanish. I'm lucky I have a decent background in Spanish, but I'm nowhere near fluent. I pick up on most things, and most people are willing to speak English if necessary. My goal is to work on this a lot and come back near fluent. It's going to take a lot more practice, but I think I can get there...or at least closer.

Currently, Rachael and I are looking into our first weekend excursion. I think we might try to get to the beach...somehow. Public transportation down here is pretty easy and inexpensive. People have been so helpful in telling us how to get around. We're hoping to make it to the beach, or do some more urban exploring. If the beach isn't an option, we'll spend some time in San José. There are a lot of museums and art exhibits that are supposed to be pretty amazing, so I hope we get a chance to check those out.

I'm having trouble loading pictures today...probably because of the rain. There are some on facebook. I will continue to add as I'm able. Love you all! Oh, if you have questions or want more detail on ANYTHING, leave a comment below and I'll answer your questions in my next blog post.