Student Reflection: Back to School


by Megan Knight

This past week I started my volunteer work at Leal Elementary School. I work with two different classes: a first grade class and a fifth grade class. In the first grade class I worked one on one with the cutest little first grader named Maria. She read a story about bears and then I had to test her comprehension. We also used flash cards to test her vocabulary. It was very laid back and fun.

Now, the fifth grade class was a whole different ballgame. I was introduced to about 20 Hispanic fifth graders from Mexico, Costa Rica, and Peru. I was actually really nervous having to work with these kids because they understand so much more and they will notice if I conjugate a verb incorrectly or if I use the wrong word. They all seemed like really nice kids and we just worked on reading comprehension in their class as well, but I feel like they will keep me on my toes this semester! I’m hoping they’ll see me as more of a friend than a teacher’s assistant and hopefully we’ll be able to have some fun and THEY can help ME with my Spanish.

Comments

  1. Ms. KloeckerFebruary 9, 2009 at 8:40 PM

    Cool Megan! That sounds like lots of fun. Watch out with the word 'buena/o'. Last semester when I led a Girl Scout troop we were doing an activity about friendship and I said something like "tienen amigas buenas?" thinking it meant "do you all have good friends?". But all the girls proceeded to giggle as I was clearly equivocada... An older girl in the group who spoke both English and Spanish told us that 'buena' is slang for 'hot'... that was a fun day. :P heh.

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