Week Three Update!!

 I can't believe we're already into week three of our time in Spain! It really has been flying by. I'm just going to update you quickly as to what's been going on with me recently. Last week was enjoyable but there were some definite ups and downs. It's been interesting to see how different classes (of similar levels of English) respond differently to the same material. Last week, with my secondary classes, I taught a pair of lessons about going to a restaurant. The first lesson focused on relevant language, such as 'starter,' 'main course,' 'waiter / waitress' and so on. We played a 'word tennis' game focusing on food vocabulary which went down really well with some groups, but kind of got stuck in the mud with others. We also talked about problems which you can have when you visit a restaurant, such as having to wait a long time for your food. To put these ideas in context, we watched a few clips from 'Hell's Kitchen' in which customers were kicking off about this, that, and the other. I think that this listening activity worked better in theory than in practice. The problems that I had chosen were quite simple, but the speaking was rather challenging because it was normal native speech. It proved to be pretty tricky for some groups and almost trivial for others. However, nothing could be as tricky as finding clips where Gordon wasn't swearing!! Count yourselves lucky kids!!

 In the second lesson, I asked the students (in small groups) to design and produce a menu for their dream restaurant, and then to perform a restaurant role play using their own menus. All my classes seemed to really enjoy this lesson! They all engaged with the task well and there was a lot of cooperation going on. During the role play stage, I saw a lot of creativity coming from the students which was fantastic! For example, near the end of the activity, the 'waiters' all went away and produced a bill for their tables, completely unprompted by me. One group even mocked up a card machine using a calculator which gave their restaurant a truly authentic feel!