Class - Day 9 (Week II)

Another crisp, lovely day in Galway with lots of sunshine and happiness.

This morning brought, as Julie assured us, our last formal grammar lesson. We are all very happy despite knowing we have to teach a grammar lesson in about a week. The rest of the morning session was spent in teacher observation which is when we sit in on an ESL class and observe the teacher in action. We had an intermediate level class with five students all from different countries (Japan, Korea, Belgium, Switzerland and the Canary Islands.) The teacher, Tristan was very patient and did a wonderful job explaining the part of speech "use to". As in "I use to go to school when I was a child. I use to be thinner. I used to have a friend called Penelope." I think I belong in their class because I found it easier to understand than our advanced grammar lessons.

The afternoon was all about teacher practice for me and Aiofe and we were both ecstatic at the end of our lessons. Aiofe's, on rites of passage was really interesting and the students (of which we only had three, Karen from Austria, Nuria and Diago from Argentina) gave some good input about their countries rites of passage. Nuria brought up the 15th birthday celebration in Argentina when the girl basically is presented to the world (her coming out.) Nuria said they don't do it as much any more and that the girls prefer to go on some vacation than to have a big party.

My lesson as I mentioned in yesterdays entry was all about theater and I was beyond excited. It went so well and the three students really had a great time acting out the little drama I had come up with for them. They really impressed me and I got so excited that my cheers and accolades were apparently heard by other students in rooms down the hall from ours. I just couldn't contain my joy for all their great work. And as a happy side note, our entire group (me, Maura, Louis and Aiofe) were once again kindly given distinctions for our presentations. We have been very fortunate to get great teacher observes grading us but we must not get too preoccupied with the grade and only focus on giving four more lessons that our students will really benefit by.

I'm now in a tiny room in the school studying so I'll have less to do this weekend, or at least I hope so. As you can see from the pictures the room may be small but it has great resource materials as well as a large window overlooking the river so it's not so bad being here late.