What Am I Doing Here in Mexico?

You might be wondering just what is it that I do all day! The purpose of my visit this time is to write curriculum for the teachers to use next year in the pre-school and kindergarten English classes.

This is the first year that English has been taught at this level in the public schools in Puerto Vallarta and the supervisors are interested to see how the children are learning and they want additional curriculum for next year. Over 60 teachers are taking classes to learn English so they can teach it in the public schools.

When I arrived here, I went to a preschool/kindergarten where I observed the English teacher and her methods of teaching for about a week. Then for the next two weeks, I taught the classes there and then tested the students individually to see how well they are learning the language. I also tried different teaching strategies to learn what worked the best with the younger language learners. I was at the school from 9:00-12:00 and taught 1 three year old class, 2 four year old classes and 2 five year old classes.

In the afternoon and evenings, I met with 2 teachers and we began the tedious job of writing the curriculum.

I have finished at the school, although I will go back again next week to say goodbye to the children and the teachers. My job there, which was learning which teaching strategies work best with the younger children, has concluded. We know what we can use and what we can't use with the little ones who are learning English.

I continue to write the curriculum at home. Thank goodness for the computer and the Internet! That has been a life-saver for me! With the material available there, we don't have to try to reinvent the wheel! I can use songs, games and chants that I find on the web and that have worked well for other English teachers. The Mexican teachers are not aware of the wonderful world of information for teaching English that can be found on the Internet. They are like kids in a toy store when I show them a new website!

So here are some pictures of me teaching at the school. This first picture is the three year old class.




There are 19 three year old children in this class, including one set of identical twins!

This group of four year olds talk about the letter Aa and the apple! There were no bulletin boards in the classrooms so I used masking tape to hang the pictures on the chalkboard.

"Today is Monday. Yesterday was Sunday. Tomorrow will be Tuesday." Sing it and you can learn it. That's a good way to teach the days of the week!

This little guy gets to be a bee and buzz around the room! The "z" sound in English is difficult for Spanish speaking people to say. So we "buzzed" a lot!

These five year old boys are trying a conversation: "How are you?" "Fine, thanks. And you?"

"Come on, honey, you can say it! I'll help you."

I tested the children in both English and Spanish, asking the same questions in both languages. It was interesting to note that many of them knew the colors in English but not in Spanish! And when I asked, in Spanish, what the name of the color yellow was, about 95% of them replied "yellow" (in English) instead of "amarillo".

I enjoyed being with the children and seeing how they are engaged in learning to speak another language. It would be interesting to see this same group of children in 3 or 4 years to see how well they have learned English.

In the meantime, I continue to write the curriculum and hope that my help will ease the burden of teaching English for the new teachers next year by giving them some new ideas and methods of teaching. The supervisor says I must continue to help when I get back to Georgia and then come back on the fall! (Don't worry, Mr. Neat. That's NOT going to happen!!)

So that is what I do everyday, here in the land of sun and fun!

Hasta luego.