Part of my job is to float around different English classes
so the children can interact with a native speaker. The other day I was in Truce’s class and she
called me over and showed me what they were working on and told me that she
didn’t understand it. They were working
on the past simple tense (speaking about actions finished in the past with a
known time period – very exciting if you’re a grammar nerd), something native
speakers can do before their third birthday.
Truce is an adroit user of the English language and has found it
interesting to learn about her mother tongue as a second language. Things that she has done naturally she now
has to deconstruct and compartmentalise as well as name. EAL teaching identifies 12 active tenses and
12 passive tenses all taught at different stages of the students’ level of
understanding. You haven’t lived until
you’ve explained the different uses for the past perfect and the past perfect
continuous. As for her second language,
after only six weeks of immersion, where 80% of her lessons are delivered in
Castellano, Truce says that she is surprised how much easier it is to
understand what’s happening in the classroom and what is being said to her.
One of the high school parents runs a community radio
programme with a weekly print supplement.
He came around to our place last night to interview us about our
experience so far in 9 de Julio and ask us our reason for moving our family to
South America for the year. One of his
questions was what differences have we noticed about schooling here compared to
in Australia. The main thing is the social
distance between teachers, parents and students is very small here. Something else is that every so often, a dog
just wanders through the school looking for a meal then continues on its
journey.
The days continue to grow colder and while we have a gas
heater upstairs we are yet to receive our fist gas bill (they come every two
months) and are unsure how often we should light the heater. We’re a little uncertain how much we are in
for with expenses like gas, water and electricity. Talluah heated up a large rock in the oven
the other day to put under her feet while she was studying. This does give new meaning to the idea of
stone soup.
Depp was feeling unwell and had the day off school. He was told that he had to stay in bed all
day, with no iPad as I had school lessons to prepare and Talluah had uni work
to do. By midmorning he started to
realise just how boring a day at home can be.
Talluah invited him into our bed while she listened to one of her uni
lectures. A short time later he nodded
off. Later on when he was asked about
having a sleep he said that the sound of the lecturer’s voice made him fall
asleep. Looks like he’ll be a great
scholar when he’s older.
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