Teaching Peru

I have spent the last year and a half teaching English at the Colegio Particular Huascarán in Huaráz, Peru. My philosophy has been that students learn best when you provide them with exciting, challenging experiences that immerse them in the subject matter. The following are some highlights from the year as my students developed reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills through my methodology.

Magazine Project

The Magazine Project required the students to create their own English magazine. At the beginning of the year this was a big undertaking for the students who had a limited vocabulary and not much confidence in their English ability. Working through the draft writing process and stopping to highlight various grammar points throughout the project, the students eventually created articles that they were proud of. Once they were finished the students distributed their magazines throughout the school.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull Project

The Jonathan Livingston Seagull project required my students to read the book with full comprehension. Reading a book might not seem like a project, but reading in a foreign language requires the students to use many different skills in order to extract meaning. The students kept vocabulary and scene journals that helped them plot out the main events of the book. In order to understand what was going on, the students acted out different scenes and drew comic strip like summaries. In the end the students were very excited to have read an entire book in a foreign language. They also learned 250 new vocabulary words in the process.

Film Analysis Project

Students love watching movies at school. The problem with movies is that students associate moving watching time as "no work time". Since movies in a foreign language are loaded with teaching potential, I used the idea of movie watching as a project idea. The students watched three films that had very different accents and styles of talking. The students were asked to look at the dialogue critically, extracting meaning of words and phrases through context clues. The students were also asked comprehension questions based on their understanding of the language. Afterwords, students developed speaking skills by describing various aspects of the films. Unfortunately, my students didn't get to turn off their brains for this movie watching session.

Reflection

All the projects include a reflection element where the students are asked to critically analyze their learning and language development. This is not a graded part of the projects. It's used so that the students understand how they learn and what they need to do in order to learn more. I focus on the reflections more than I focus on grades because I believe that learning should be regarded as intrinsically valuable to the students. If the focus is entirely on grades, then there is a risk that the students will only want to learn for extrinsic reasons. A focus just on getting good grades does not foster a love of learning outside of the institution.

Project Planning

I allow my students a lot of freedom to explore their projects and produce a final product that they are happy with. In the Peruvian teaching system which is often dependent on lecture and rote memorizations, I sometimes get funny looks from other teachers when they see my students working freely and independently. Most of my work is done behind the scenes, where I dedicate hours and hours to preparing all the parts of the projects. The projects usually include various assessments, different steps that focus on different areas of learning, key vocabulary, materials that will be used, and examples of the final projects at various stages of completion. I'm kept pretty busy working all of those things out in the office.

Teaching Peru

If you make it fun, they will learn.

2009 Projects

Colegio Particular Huascarán

Magazine Project

Cooking Project

Cooking Project-Fajitas

330 Verbs Project

Jonathan Livingston Seagull Project

Film Analysis Project

Group Challenges- Toxic Waste

Blindfolded

Group Challenges- Lava Cross

Reflection

Project Planning