Student Reflection

by Marlee Stein


I went to my usual placement again this past Tuesday.  After a relaxing spring break at home, where I did not use any Spanish, it was a little challenging to get into the swing of things again.  I now am consistently working with one girl, and I really enjoy it because as opposed to my classroom placement earlier in the semester, I am able to create a one-on-one bond with one student.  My student had minimal homework so we were able to spend a lot of time reading.  The homework she did have concentrated on using sounds such as he, hi, ho, and hu to make words.  She had to fill in the blanks to complete Spanish words such as hada (fairy) and many others.  She did another activity where she had to color in spaces that had the sound ce or ci in it.  It was easy for her to locate the words that started with those sounds such as cero (zero) or cine (movie theater) but she couldn’t identify words such as hace quite as easily.  After we finished her homework we read two books.  One about Clifford the big red dog, and the other was Little Red Riding Hood.  I really enjoyed reading Little Red Riding Hood in Spanish because it is one that I had read in my Spanish classes in Junior High.  Sometimes students blindly read and do not really understand the plot, so what the teacher had me do was ask her to identify the protagonist and explain what they do in the story.  My student seemed to understand the majority of the plot, but sometimes she would get stuck so I had to ask her questions to lead her in the right direction with out giving away the answer.  I also got to learn more about her as a person.  I learned about her family, and that she came here from Guatemala.  Overall it was a successful week in placements!

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