Meter la caña

Entry 4, Wed 16 Nov

Following on from my previous post, I thought that today's lessons were definitely worth a mention. Over the past 2 weeks, I've found that 5° and 6° primaria are the most difficult classes to manage, as they outgrow the teaching methods used for the younger children and they also realise that they can get away with a lot more bad behaviour.

Today I decided to give the students feedback on the present simple worksheet that Maria gave them to do as homework. Before starting the lesson, I explained to the children that each time they speak without putting their hand up, a line will be written on the board (representing 1 second) which is the extra time that they will have added on to the end of the lesson before they can go for lunch.

It started off really well, as normally when nominating students to give answers they start talking/shouting over each other. Not anymore! haha. Later on, after they had completed one of the exercises in pairs, they started talking over each other again at which point they quickly started racking up extra time which they did not like. I'd turn round to them and say, "More?" and by then they were soon telling each other to be quiet and we got on with the lesson.

I think I remember Michael showing us a similar classroom management system during the training week...in any case, it helped a lot! Maria was very pleased, and she even used it with them later in the afternoon in Spanish class. This also leads me to a new idiom I learnt in Spanish today - meter la caña or 'crack the whip' - some of the classes really are in need of some discipline and structure, especially when there's so many of them!

¡Hasta la próxima vez!

Giacomo