Casa Achoy Day 1

Today was my first day at Casa Achoy and I hadn't heard from Marielos or Eduardo since our meeting, so I was still a bit uncertain of exactly what was to go down.  I trusted, though that when they said it would be easy, that time would fly and that I would enjoy it that they were right.  And they were. 

Mabel came home from her school at 2:45 to help me get to Casa Achoy. I had a general idea of where it was, but since it is downtown, we were afraid that a general idea wasn't good enough.  We figured out the exact bus stop I need as well as how many blocks I needed to go in each direction.

We got there early (thank goodness, and no surprise with the combination of Mabel and myself!) and Eduardo was trying to hook up the projector.  

We spent about 20 minutes trying to fix that and Mabel left, confident that I knew how to  get home.  She was right!  We were unsuccessful with the projector, but Eduardo left a note for someone in hopes that tomorrow it would be ready.  Today we would just "wing it."  Cool.  

Then he told me, "Don't you know, Mexico is the country of 'tomorrow'?  Always tomorrow."  Don't I know, Eduardo, don't I know!

The first group arrived and there were 12: 6 boys and 6 girls.  We taught, meaning I read this information sheet, for about 2 minutes. Then we did a review.  The kids needed to know:

Octavio Paz was a writer; he was born in Mexico; He wrote The Labyrinth of Solitude and that won the Nobel Prize.  We asked them yes/no questions and then asked them open ended questions like "Where was he born?"  This is called scaffolding in the world of education.  You support the student as much as possible in hopes of taking them to a higher level.  First you tell them what they need to know.  Then you ask them in yes/no format so they can easily answer and have some small victories.  Then you ask open ended questions for which there is a definite right answer. 

 Then, at a very advanced stage, open-ended questions for which there is either no right answer, or for which and answer must be defended.  They did pretty well.  They played a game with letters, spelling out the key words from the story and then they made a little book with the front cover of The Labyrinth of Solitude, and the keywords and Octavio Paz's biography on the inside. 

The last twenty minutes, we prepared them for their exam at the end of the year.  We listened to some of the listening portion so they would be familiar with the format of the test.  Suddenly time was up.  They were as surprised as I was! 

This is a nice program because the groups are smaller than the classroom groups because it is voluntary and they have to provide their own transportation.  It also is just 5th and 6th grade, so they do pretty well with the comprehension.

I'm going to enjoy this!  I'm also going to go early some days and grab some tacos, horchata and churros before it starts!