I've been to school today.
Saturday, March 7, 2009 @ 8:01 PM
Pulpi Council run a Saturday morning class for the spanish children to have additional english tuition and also the english children to get help with spanish at the local Cultural Centre here in Terreros. This is run jointly by a Spanish lady and an English lady and all the children are between about 4 and 9. There are a couple of teenage boys who are 14, who come and help organise the children and the rooms and all the books and also help teach them things like the days of the week, the numbers and colours.
Last week we were asked if some of us would go down for an hour to help with the children's reading in English, to help with pronunciation and also to help explain some of the parts of the stories they don't understand and so today I went down to help.
The first thing that surprised me was how many children were there, there must have been over 30 of them. They are very boisterous and took a lot of settling. The smaller ones went off to a seperate classroom and the older ones (7 & 8 year olds) found their folders and settled down to learn the different names for items in the supermarket and items of clothing, and as the pictures have both Spanish and English underneath them it's also useful for me.
I was to work with an 8 year old girl who wanted help with her reading and so she chose a book and we sat down in a corner so she could read out loud to me. Her reading was very good and she understood a lot of what she was reading. The bits that she didn't understand I found I was able to explain to her in Spanish quite easily. We did Little Red Riding Hood and Jack & the Beanstalk.
Overall we worked together for about half an hour and when it was time for her to leave she was reminded to thank me and to say goodbye in English. I met a couple of the mothers who also thanked us for going down to help.
What a lovely way to spend an hour on a Saturday morning.