I am going to keep dating my blogs until I am all caught up from Christmas vacation, which will take awhile. Speaking of Christmas vacation, I recently posted a blog about a tour I took in Barcelona and I made a mistake and I was so happy that I had an outsider comment on my blog and correct me! Please if you ever have any questions or doubts about my blog, don't be afraid to comment. I try my best to fact check and recall all the information when I am blogging about places, but I am only human. I make mistakes. Anyway, this correction caused me to look further into the flags of Spain and I found a very interesting article written by Miquel Strubell i Trueta, a Catalan sociolinguist. If you would like to read his 34 page article, click here, otherwise I just want to point out one thing from the article. It is a graph that shows how people (specifically young people) identify with the Spanish flag vs. their regional flag. This graph is from 1999, so views have most likely changed a little, but I still find the graph very interesting.
So, as you can see, the adolescents from the Basque Country, Galicia, and Catalonia have a small amount of attachment to the Spanish flag (at least in 1999).
Anyway, back to my day today. I was back at school for my first normal day since before Christmas. The students are starting to learn the members of the family in English. It's kind of cute because they are learning the British-English words, so Mom becomes Mum. Aunt becomes Auntie. Grandpa becomes Granddad. Grandma becomes Granny. Cute, huh? Too bad, it's hard for me to remember all that. I keep saying the wrong words. Ha. At least they are getting more vocabulary in those little brains. In Science, they are starting to learn different animals. I am always so shocked to see how much they know before even starting the unit. I'm not sure if they retain the vocabulary from kindergarten or if they have private lessons outside of school, but it is amazing. Before we even started the lesson, we asked them to name animals that they knew and they knew a good amount. It's incredible! Now if we can just get them using the vocabulary in a communicative way. :) On another note, I got another drawing from two students today. I love it when that happens. It makes me feel so good and loved by my students. :) Can't wait to really have my very own classes and students. I never thought that I would be teaching elementary school, but I really do enjoy it.
I had to leave school slightly early today to get to a meeting for my program. I was actually dreading going to the meeting because it was scheduled to be three hours long and I just did not see the point in going because I had no idea what they could possibly talk about for three hours, but I actually really liked it! The first part was kind of boring, but after we had two speakers that were great. One speaker talked about teaching a foreign language using the methodology of CLIL (Content and language integrated learning) which is learning a subject and a different language at the same time. For example, I teacher Science to my students in a foreign language, English. CLIL is used all throughout Spain and in the European Union. It was an interesting speech and since I will be a Spanish teacher in the future, it was helpful to hear what she had to say. The second speaker talked about co-teaching, which is essentially what I am doing in the classroom everyday--two or more teachers working together in the classroom to help teach the students. Again, this was a very helpful talk. I learned about co-teaching in my college education classes, but it's always good to review things you can do in the classroom. I always like refreshing this information, which (I think) is a great quality to have as a teacher because I will always be learning new methods and reviewing old ones to use in the classroom. I guess I know I am in the right profession when I enjoy sitting in a seminar for three hours. Ha.
After the "course," I went home and made dinner and relaxed. Nothing more. It seems like it's been a long week, but it just started. I think I just know that I have a lot of things to do. I will eventually catch up. :)
Lastly, I'm an idiot! I mentioned our new roommate, the hamster, that we have, but I forgot to mention that we have an actual new roommate! Her name is Rocío and she actually lived here before I came. I technically stole her room, but she's back and happy, I think. :) She is a nurse at a local hospital and she moved in over Christmas break, so that is one of many great things that happened over break!
Well, that was my Tuesday! Hope all of you are doing well! I doubt I will get to another Christmas break post, which is unfortunate, but I am trying! Have a great week!
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