Cupid Shuffle – 01/17/14

Fridays are the busiest days of the week. We always say we will start lesson planning at 7, but nothing ever really gets done before the coffee’s ready. Let’s be honest. After breakfast, we plan our ESL lesson and our teacher workshop lesson.

Because today’s topic in the syllabus was writing, we decided to address several topics. The outline of the lesson looked like this:

– Warm up about what we talked about last weekend and check if teachers have journaled this week (highly unlikely)

– Intro to free output à assign a free write with a topic. The topic is “classroom management.”

  • Concepts of freewriting (timed writing, free output, topic selection, context, summarizing the freewrite)
  • Give teachers about 5 minutes to free write, then discuss

– Spiel

  • Decontextualization doesn’t work
  • Grading (don’t grade/correct everything)
  • Timed vs. untimed writing
  • Feedback and peer feedback
  • Importance of production

– Vocabulary development

  • organize by topics
  • take notes on what vocabulary has already been taught
  • mind map (use the classroom mgt vocabulary)
  • lemmas (inform, manage, transport, person) à do an example on the board

– Reading in relation to writing

  • importance of journals and vocabulary logs

I think that the writing workshop went pretty well. It didn’t get underway until about 2:30, but we did have time to address everything. A more detailed lesson plan can be provided later. We decided in advance to have an unofficial last class with our ESL students, in which we would discuss party vocabulary. We made a mind map on the board, and then moved to different types of music and dance. Marie and I tried to teach students the Macarena and the Cupid Shuffle, but to no avail. The volume on my computer wasn’t loud enough to be heard in the courtyard, and all of the high school students were too cool to dance. However, they were very impressed with our efforts, and took the time to tell us so at the end of class.

Tonight, we went to the disco with Lacroix and Jean Louis. Evens met us there. The name of the disco is called Zenith Nightclub, and Lacroix’s uncle Fred owns it. There are no lights except a blacklight and bar lights. Everything is outdoors, except the pavilion which is shaped like a circle. We go get Prestige and then sit at a small table with folding chairs. The DJ lives in a box and can’t see the dance floor, so he doesn’t know which songs people like. They always play either kompa songs or Dominican music. Kompa is always love songs that have the same rhythm. There is a distinct Haitian flavour to it – it’s slow and happy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3lqWwOrnds

So ends another full day. Tomorrow is the Teacher Workshop where we’ll talk about how to teach reading. Afterwards, Evens is going to take us to Bassin Zim. We’re so excited! Search it right now on Google images. So rad. And look at this site: http://www.zoomsurhaiti.com/guided-tour/attraction/voyage-au-coeur-dun-patrimoine-naturel/#.Ut6hKo56hFY