Teaching English the Julie Andrews way

Last week I sang along with Julie Andrews and called it 'teaching English'. My role here is to get kids motivated to speak English. The grammar gets handled by my host teacher, Hugo. My job is to do anything that gets students listening to a native speaker and talking in English. I know that first requirement sounds like a joke given my propensity to babble on. But me talking and someone else listening are not always the same thing (as many of you are prone to demonstrate!) Better yet, how to get a room full of kids who don't know what I am saying to listen, that is the challenge. Julie Andrews singing 'My Favorite Things' to the rescue. For the fifth graders they count how many times she says "favorite things", then play again and they sing along 'favorite things'. For the 8th graders I add a little pantomime and sing the chorus together. For the 10th graders we translate some of the favorite things. All of which is followed by a ham it up karioke sing along complete with act it out arm motions. Finally for the 12th graders I add on some story telling about American traditions. You know all about how we all celebrate Thanksgiving with high school football in the morning, a four hour long feast in the afternoon and a couch potato evening watching the Sound of Music on TV. (On this last one, please don't tell anyone in Chiloe that we all don't watch Sound of Music when it is broadcast Thanksgiving evening. I needed a little enhancement for attention keeping.) Throw in a little lessons on how to waltz and you have a 45 minute lesson with 20 kids listening to and speaking English. I chuckled all the way home at the memory of high school boys swaying back and forth and belting out "I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel sooooooo bad."
(For photos of the school check out http://www.colegiocarpediem.cl/)
I don't know what it says about my teaching, that Sound of Music was a high point. On a given day I have 6 to 8, 45 minute sessions. Each class subject meets for 90 minutes. I take half the class for 45 minutes while Hugo has the other half and then we switch for the remaining 45 minutes. Monday - Wednesday I teach 8 to 4, Thursday I teach 8 to 1 and Friday I lesson plan (and recover!) from 8 to 1. The nice thing with the schedule is that we have a one hour lunch from 1 to 2. Teachers and kids all eat the same lunch together in the cafeteria. Berto and I share a table with students and teachers. Berto likes the celebrity treatment he gets from my students. I find it refreshing to have adolescents being friendly with their teachers.

Back to the teaching thing....Sing alongs do seem to work well to get the kids to speak. I can't tell if they like to sing or if they just are trying their darndest to drown out my singing. Either way, they vocalize, which is the goal. So if you can thing of any songs with repetition, clean lyrics and preferably pop and downloadable, send them along. I had good luck today with the Jackson 5 ABC and Sam Cooke's Wonderful World. Unfortunately the school's internet is too slow for most video. Only low quality or sound only YouTube seems to work in video.

In other family news, Gabi's day care teacher claims Gabi is making great strides with her Spanish. She can say Hola, Chaó (local slang for Goodbye), and Bravo - and she understands a lot more than she speaks. We are just happy that she enjoys going to 'sala cuna'. Mike navigated the local version of Home Depot to successfully order, pay for, and pick up a computer work station and two bookcases. Looks like the Chilean branch of the Eye and Ear is up and running.

As we look forward to longer days and warmer weather, I hope your summer is ending happily.