Buen Provecho

Lunch club is still going strong. After a few kids initially dropped out, I combined traditional and multiage so that everyone gets the chance to eat at lunch club every week if they want too. This is much more beneficial for my students rather than every other week. Kids can come and go as they please from week to week, as long as I know ahead of time. I still take attendance every week and there are probably about 30 kids who come consistently. My principal was a guest at one of the lunch clubs last week and even though she doesn't speak Spanish, she had a lot of fun. She sat with a group of 5th grade girls who were trying to teach her some words so that she could participate as well. It was a lot of fun. And I'm not the only school doing this! Check out this article about a private school in a nearby community from where I teach in Lake Bluff, Illinois.

Where did they go?

This week was the second meeting of my lunch club group from the multiage classes. Since the students don't have school today (there is a tri-district meeting for all the teachers), I held both 4th and 5th grade lunch clubs yesterday. My 5th grade multiage was the smallest group to begin with, and dos people did not show up so we had a group of six girls. However, I love this group of six and we just laugh the whole time. They speak in Spanglish and are constantly trying out  new sentences. I love watching these girls explore the language and it is so much fun to eat lunch with them. They were sad when lunch was over and we actually ran over by a few minutes. By the time we got cleaned up and I got down to the lunch room to pick up the 4th graders, most had already settled in and were content to stay where they were. A lot of the 4th graders choose to eat in their home classrooms though, so the one boy who was ready for lunch club and I swung by the other classrooms upstairs. However when I announced lunch club in those rooms, these 4th graders had also already settled into their spots and weren't too content on leaving. So I sent the boy back down to the lunch room to eat with his friends. I am hoping the reason that lunch club wasn't as popular yesterday is because I was late in picking them up. They all seemed to be really enjoying themselves during the first meeting and I hope to get that excitement back in 2 weeks. We'll see! At least the 5th graders still had a blast :)

Mmm... delicioso

I had my first week of lunch club with the traditional classes this week. About twice as many students showed up from traditional classes than the multiage classes. Almost every seat in my classroom was full and that doesn't even happen for some of the classes I actually teach! I was impressed and a little nervous but happy to see the club be so popular. I gave the students the options of either just sitting and chatting and trying it (it: referring to speaking Spanish) or coming up with different topics for each week to talk about. These groups chose to just sit and talk and see where that takes them. It's so funny how each lunch club is so different, yet the introduction of the idea was the same in every class. That just shows you how student personalities really do affect your plans for the day. 


There were a few students in this group that had signed up that made me slightly uneasy. They aren't the best kids in class; they tend to misbehave and not focus all the time and really only speak Spanish when pushed. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that it was those same kids who were trying the hardest to speak Spanish during lunch club. I think that giving them the freedom to talk about whatever they wanted in a relatively unstructured time/setting really allowed these kids to shine and see that Spanish really does actually interest them. It also made their class more fun as I taught their class right after lunch. They were so much more well-behaved and engaged in my class! 


One other fun thing about lunch club this week.... I don't see every student in the upper grades because some are pulled out for speech therapy or ELL help or other needs. One of the girls in particular is a native Spanish speaker and so I think she gets a lot of ELL help. After hearing about lunch club, she came up to me outside the cafeteria and asked it she could join! I was so excited because not only does it give me a chance to get to know a student that I don't teach, it allows her the chance to be proud of her native language. Sometimes native speakers are embarrassed by their first language because it's different than everyone else. Lunch club is really helping to show that speaking another language is cool and awesome and something of which to be proud. I am so happy with where it's going.

Success!

I held my first two lunch clubs this week and they were a huge success!. I introduced the whole idea to all of my classes on Monday and Tuesday and had students sign up as they walked out of class. By Wednesday, I had almost 70 students signed up (about 35 each grade)! This was way more than I had bargained for so I decided to do lunch club on a rotational basis. At my school, there are 3 traditional 4th grade classes, 3 traditional 5th grade classes, and 4 4/5 multiage classes. I ended up starting with multiage this week and will switch every other week with the traditional classes. This made the numbers closer to 15-20 per lunch club, which was still twice as many students as I had hoped for. As my principal warned me, "be careful what you wish for!" However, what actually happened was much more pleasant and manageable... about 10 students showed up each day either due to absences or students choosing to no longer attend. While I probably should have been disappointed that not all the students showed up, I was actually thrilled because the numbers were much more ideal for conversing.


I started el club del almuerzo by speaking English to lay down some ground rules. I had the students restate the goal (to speak Spanish!) and talked about different ways to do that (use the place mat, use words that we know, ask me, look in a dictionary, etc.). I also reiterated the fact that if students wanted to talk to their friends in English, the lunch room was the best place to do that and I would not be offended if they didn't want to come one week. After that, the 5th graders (I forgot to do this with the 4th graders) and I came up with a list of topics to discuss in future lunch club meetings. The list includes animals (and not the normal ones we talk about in class), sharks, food, sharks, music, Great White Sharks, and hip-hop dance. Can you tell that one of my girls is obsessed with sharks? :) I plan on creating this list with the 4th graders next time we meet. Then, I played Pandora Juanes radio as they ate lunch and we all chatted. It was so much fun. Some of the boys decided to start a dance party and chant "fiesta, fiesta" over and over again which was very entertaining. They also requested playing with puzzles next time "and we promise we'll speak in Spanish Sra. Zhang!" I love that idea and am even thinking about teaching them Monopoly in Spanish. 


My biggest success story is with one of my 5th graders who is normally very, very quiet in class. She rarely volunteers to speak and is reluctant to complete partner activities. However, during lunch club, she was talking up a storm! In Spanish! I was floored. She kept asking me "como se dice (insert random word here)" and then would try to come up with a sentence that fit that word. I think lunch club is really going to help her come out of her shell. Just hearing her speak so much during the first meeting really motivates me to continue holding el club del almuerzo. I am looking forward to many more!

El club del almuerzo

Next week, I am starting el club del almuerzo (a lunch club). I got the idea from the nandu listserv. (An email group all about world languages in the elementary/middle school grades. This listserv really is quite fantastic and I strongly encourage everyone to join, even if you're high school! It won't always apply to older grades, but still is very useful. Instructions for joining are here.) I’m going to announce the lunch club in class next week, and then one day a week I will dine with each grade; 3rd on Wednesdays, 4th on Thursdays, and 5th on Fridays. I want to give my students who are excelling more of a challenge. I definitely still struggle with differentiation inside the classroom (that's a whole other post) but I figure this is a way for me to work with the upper kids, since I feel they aren't as challenged during class. The goal of el club del almuerzo is to speak as much Spanish as possible during lunch. I’ve created placemats with key phrases that will help. Check out these snapshots.

A sample of a bunch of placemats.

 Useful question words. 

 Phrases/words for lunch.

 Some of the food (some they [should] already know but probably have forgotten).

 These last three pictures are of the back of the placemats. Just more useful phrases and conversation topics.

Some other ideas that people on nandu had were playing games in Spanish, listening to Spanish music, and every now and then, eating Hispanic foods. I’m very excited to try this, but also very nervous. I’m also going to have a reward system to encourage speaking in Spanish. Let's face it, I'm nervous that the kids are just going to speak English and not even try the new words. But, kids can do more than we give them credit for so hopefully they'll prove me wrong! Every now and then when I "catch" them speaking Spanish, I’ll give them a sticker that they can store on their placemat. After an undetermined amount of stickers, they’ll get a small prize like a Spanish book or pencil. Any thoughts/feedback/concerns on this idea would be greatly appreciated! I'll post next week and let you know how it goes!