Tuesday

The Walk to Los Fresnos

 

 

Our morning started off with a leisurely stroll from our apartment up to Los Fresnos. Year 8 awaited us. They are a lively bunch and their enthusiasm is infectious. We started off the workshop with Pictionary. The students picked items to draw on the board based on a pre-approved list. The entire class got involved. We made sure that every student got their chance.

 

We then moved on to a free writing session. We asked the students to write what they know about Ireland. The responses we received were quite humorous.  We then used a spider diagram to illustrate associations with Ireland such as dance, music, celts, banshee, sport, food, St. Patrick. We introduced them to Irish legends such as leprechauns, banshees, phukas and Sidhe.

 

For our next class we had Year 10. We had high expectations for this group having listened to their narrative and descriptive pieces last week. We asked the class to write a very short story to improve their story telling ability, show them how their characters can overcome obstacles, how they can get straight to the action without getting bogged down in description and how to problem solve. The activity required them to choose items from a pre-approved list on the board. They were split into groups of four and each member of the group got to choose an item, once an item was gone it could not be chosen again. They each took their turn and were assigned a character and along with their four items had to create a story involving how their character used these items to either escape from a deserted island or survive on it. Again, we received mixed reactions. Some students thrived and some students had no interest and resorted to speaking Spanish despite the protestations from their teacher. In general, the class struggled to get their ideas onto paper. They seemed comfortable to talk about their story ideas but were reluctant to commit them to paper.

  

For our last class we had the same group again just under a different teacher. We had a word with the teacher and gave honest feedback on the last session. She was surprised at the low quality of the work that they produced. We ran our lesson plan by her and she had some extremely helpful and practical suggestions. We noted that certain groups did not prosper so she offered to assign groups based on who could work well together. We happily accepted.

 

Year 8 Students knowledge of Ireland

At the start of the lesson we asked the class to write about what they know about Ireland and we wrote their answers on the board and elaborated on each point. We explained that particular emphasis would be placed on Irish myths and legends as they would be producing their own narrative during our placement here. To wrap up the session we handed out story evolution worksheets and asked the students to complete it with their new found knowledge of Ireland in mind.