ELLE MORAN, OUR LANGUAGE ASSISTANT IN A PANDEMIC (SCHOOL YEARS 20-22)

 

Hello, my name is Elle and I am the language assistant at IES Pablo Neruda. My job is to help the students to practice and improve their English language skills. I am present with every class in different subjects. While in the classroom I help to engage with students in English through reading, writing and speaking. In all the classes I reinforce the language in different ways and each class is unique. Reading is very important and most students are willing to read in English which makes me very happy to hear them feel confident in their abilities, as they should. Students are given the opportunity to read at any occasion they see fit and this is great for them to practice and also for me to help them improve their pronunciation. If they say a word incorrectly I can kindly correct them and help guide them through words that are intimidating and seemingly hard to pronounce. Many students have improved tremendously and it makes me very happy when they correct themselves and remember how to properly pronounce a word. I am impressed by their skills and I am happy to be able to help the students and make them feel comfortable to express themselves in English. Though I get to work with all the students I work with each grade in different subjects. Next I will outline the classes and grade levels that I have the pleasure to work with. 

Physical education: 

The first, third, and fourth years are all in PE with me. In this we mostly work on learning different sports and parts of the body. I try to reinforce the parts of the body when warming up through stretching and articular mobility. We learn the muscles and joints and use this vocabulary in every PE class. On top of that I will plan games around the themes we are focusing on. It can be a fun game of capture the flag or just an exercise to reinforce particular skills like passing in volleyball. PE is a fun way to connect with the kids because the class is very open. 

Technology:

With third and second years I get to join their technology classes. In these classes we really work on pronunciation and reading. For the second years I usually am able to do an activity that is planned by the teacher or myself and the students complete it all in English. For the third years we really focused on vocabulary in technology so we played a lot of games of jeopardy. I made these games and we played them in class after we had already gone over all the vocabulary that would show up in the game. This was all good and fun to see the students challenge themselves and problem solve. An example of a jeopardy game can be found at this link: https://jeopardylabs.com/play/structures-432

History: 

In second and fourth I also joined them in history. My main role in these classes was to assist with reading comprehension and pronunciation. We did a lot of reading while highlighting key words and taking note of words that they did not understand. Through this activity students became more open to participating and were thoughtful readers. They were also more open to asking questions when they did not understand something. The teachers did come up with acitivities to do with the students to reinforce the theme and find a way for them to more critically think about the topic. 

Biology: 

My final class with the first year was biology. The teacher this year was very on top of creating an activity in English for me to do with the class. We would do a fill in the blanks, matching, and identifying parts of a photo. The activity helped them with vocabulary, pronunciation and reading comprehension because much of the text coincided with the activities that followed. The students were very responsive and eager to participate. 

 

My final advice to the next auxiliar would be to try your best to connect with the students on whatever level they are at. We can’t expect all the students to be on the same level, so trying to understand students' desire to communicate and understand in their own capacity is important. Also, as an auxiliar, we are in the unique position that we can help the students to reinforce ideas about class but do not have to grade them. At the end of the day we are not teachers and not expected to be teaching the students, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself and just do the best you can. Our job is to assist in the classroom with bilingual themes so it is unnecessary to feel pressure to be perfect. We are all on our own journey and being your authentic self is the best way to connect and teach your culture and language.