Music in Education

On Wednesday, I got to see the 6th graders again for the second time. I really, really enjoy working with them because they are at a much higher level of English than the other children I work with and there is so much more we can do together. I was told by the teacher that when I come in, she wants me to do fun stuff and has given me pretty much complete liberty to do what I want to reinforce what they are doing in English class. Right now, they are learning about comparative adjectives (faster, bigger, smaller, etc.). So, I thought that something fun we could do would be to listen to a song and fill in the lyrics that I removed. I was trying to think of a good song that had a lot of -er words in it and I came up with the song "Stronger" by Kanye West feat. Daft Punk. The students loved the song and really enjoyed the lesson. We also started pen pal letters because they are going to have pen pal's in the US in my good friend Jennifer's classroom. They didn't finish their letters, but they are extremely excited about having a new friend who lives (as one student put it) "millions of kilometers away!"

Thursday I got to prepare a ton of materials for the Halloween party we are having at school. The principal of the school told me that I was working too hard, like a dog. I did a lot of cutting and laminating which wasn't a whole lot of fun, but now they will have the games and flashcards for years to come. The most frustrating part was trying to print the stuff out. We found a lot of great materials on www.sparklebox.co.uk, but then our color printer wasn't working and for some reason, it would not save to my flash drive. So, I had to re-find all of the materials that I had found before and print them out in black and white.

Yesterday, we went to the beach in Cadiz. The last time I was in Cadiz, it was only for one night for Carnaval. It is a beautiful city with really nice beaches during the day. The weather was perfect for the beach and we are really glad we went since it is probably going to be our last beach day until March.