Second day of project

Today was my second day of project at Old Trail School! My first one was cut a little short due to AP testing in the afternoon. However, on my first day, I was warmly welcomed by my sponsor, Senora Arnold. In the two hours that I was at OTS, I had an opportunity to settle in and was shown how to use various machines and systems throughout the school. I also helped Senora with some paperwork and copying lessons for the class. It was fun being able to meet some of her students that I would later be working with. Additionally, I talked to Ms. Reid, who is in charge of a large part of Old Trail's technology department. She explained that I am going to be recording podcasts of a fourth grade student who is fluent in Spanish. On the Garageband application on my mac, I will record the student reading childrens books in Spanish. This is so that students in the kindergarten class will be able to listen to an audio recording of the Spanish books as they read along! I was really excited to learn how to incorporate technology into my project.






Today, Senora taught two eighth grade Spanish classes. I sat in on those and listened to Senora teach. During the classes the students did group work, so in each class I would participate in one of the groups. Although I haven't previously taken Spanish in a course, I felt that my French background helped and that I could catch on pretty quickly! Senora also taught a seventh grade English class today, during which the students watched a movie. I was able to practice some listening comprehension skills and listen to the language being spoken. Today was a good day to begin to learn Spanish.

Along with going to classes, I was able to help out Senora with copying lesson plans for the students, and I kept some of them for myself to look over in my free time. I helped out Senora with making a bulletin board covered with Spanish postcards that the students made. Furthermore, the students are going to be doing a project regarding locations where Spanish is the spoken language; for this, I will help look up travel sites for all of the places they could do their projects on. I also spoke with some of the eighth grade teachers about tutoring students in any subject (math, French, history, etc.) during their free periods.




Also, today was the first day I spent working with the Spanish-fluent fourth grader. The podcasts recordings went smoothly, and we were able to record three books. He projected himself very well, and it was a great learning experience listening to a child fluently speak the language. I can't wait to work with him again!


Overall, it's been wonderful to be back at Old Trail. I'm enjoying every minute of it, and am really looking forward to continue to work with the teachers and students.