School Placement
I was placed in CEIP Dionisio Ridruejo, a bilingual school in Hortaleza. Hortaleza is about a 45-50 minute commute from the city center of Madrid. I teach students from 3rd-6th grade. The subjects I have been assigned to are social science, natural science and English. I work Monday to Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with two hour breaks (from 12:30 – 2:30). On Wednesdays I only work up until 12:30 p.m.
Teaching Experience
One of the main goals for myself is to learn about myself and gain some interpersonal skills as I go. My main goal for the students is for them want to attend school and learn something new. I really want them to engage and actually try to speak in English with me. After all, this is why I am here. Throughout this experience I have had to create power-points.
My first powerpoint was about me. In this powerpoint I talked to them about where I come from, my family, my hobbies and interests.
My second powerpoint was about one of America’s major holidays; Thanksgiving. I gave the students a brief history lesson on the holiday and shared with them what a typical Thanksgiving dinner looked like. At the end of the presentation I have them a mini quiz to see how well they understood the information I gave them.
The students actually get fairly excited and ask me several questions about my home country (USA). One of my most proud moments was when I was giving a presentation on Thanksgiving and I got one of the quietest kids in my 6th grade class to engage. Other things I have been in charge of have been giving lesson plans, correcting homework assignments as a whole class, helping the students with their homework assignments and sometimes actually taking over the whole class (obviously with another teacher supervising).
My Contributions
I have had involvement outside of the classroom also. Along with my other fellow language assistant, we have been in charge of decorating the school gymnasium for halloween week. Aside from this, we also organized some game stations. The games we chose were ghost bowling, mummy races, musical chairs and bozo buckets. The students loved it and were excited throughout the entire time. The teachers also enjoyed the games.
Another thing my fellow language assistant and I were in charge of was decorating the classroom doors with christmas spirit! This actual took quite some time since we had to measure the doors to make sure the paper fitted precisely.
Alondra's Teaching Experience in Spain 