Silent and Gifted Children

So, yesterday I was super impressed by the behavior of the kids at the school where I went to observe, and was nervous because the teachers from that school were coming here after recess. You can read more about that in my previous blog, if you haven't already.

Today, I started teaching after lunch as the two women arrived and found seats in my class. As I started with the lesson, I was shocked to find my kids to be SILENT. They were yelling out answers, but only the answers as I asked them. And when I was done asking the question, they stayed quiet until I asked another one.

It pretty much continued like that for the whole hour that the women were there. It was crazy. I would often see them glance sideways at the strangers who were watching them as they gave their answer, hoping that they were looking and impressed with their answers.

I was surprisingly not as nervous as I thought I would be as I started teaching. I just chose to ignore the presence of the other women and just made sure my kids looked extra smart and good. :) It took a lot of effort for me not to try to show up the other teachers. Your kids can sing 8 little songs in English? My kids can sound out the word "alligator." My kids are also starting on identifying the noun and verb part of sentences, which I'm really proud of them for starting to understand. :)

So, my kids were much better than I expected, and I was super proud of them. I'm also a little disappointed in the fact that they are clearly capable of behaving well, but they just choose not to every other day. Ah, well. They have some good days and some bad days. It comes with the territory. They still did pretty well after the women left, so that was good because the plans for the day weren't enough to fill the time we planned for, and I had them for another hour after that.

I just have to share one HUGE triumph for one of my kids. We were trying to identify good/bad sentences by the structure of the sentences, which was hard for them since they barely know the meaning of all the words. One pair of sentences was this:

The man sat.
Man sat the.

When I asked if "Man sat the." was a good sentence or a bad sentence, I got mixed replies, so I asked them "Why is it good?" or "Why is it bad?" I noticed Dennisito's face look especially intense as he looked at that sentence, and I knew he wasn't just guessing when he said it was a bad sentence.

So, I let him explain, and he managed to get out, "porque es no 'man sat the.' Tiene que ser 'the man sat.'" Although he couldn't quite explain why he knew it was wrong, it was clear to me that he knew it was wrong, and could easily see which one was right.

That was really encouraging to me. I can only hope that the other kids can start to get to that level by the end of the year. He's really smart so he tends to pick things up first, but it's a good indication that the other kids CAN learn it, too. They just need a little more time and practice. :)