Day 8

Today I visited UHS. I should have thought ahead and left 15 minutes earlier because I got to the school at 7:55 for a class at 8:00 and I had no idea where it was. Turns out I was in the wrong building. I ended up being like 15 minutes late. D#%@ it! Well, now I know. I should have known before, but I'm like "oh noo, it'll be fine" this is why I have so many detentions.

I woke up at 6 this morning. It doesn't matter if I'd woken up at 4, I'd still be late.

Okayy, so annnyway. The class I observed had 4 people in it because a bunch of the students were doing AP history exams. Its strange how every class I've visited has had 4 people. Oooohhh magic.

They were watching the orphanage. My lord! That. Movie. Was. Rediculous.

Here are some things I really liked about the class:

- The teacher spoke in Spanish the entire time. Even to explain words people didn't understand.

- The movie had Spanish subtitles. This is definitely something I've noticed in a lot of language classes, when teachers play movies they almost always have english subtitles because they first-and-foremost want students to understand. The problem with this is that because they can understand, they don't need to make the extra effort to listen to the language being spoken, and because they can't see the TL (target language) words written down, its a lot harder to pick up what people are saying. If both english and TL subtitles could go at the same time, thats better than just english but still not as good, especially at higher levels.

- The teacher paused the movie and asked questions and explained things, all in Spanish. She also used the emotional moments in the movie (a lot, since it was The Orphanage) as a way to teach vocabulary.
The room got really intense as a lady on the screen just recognized the mother of the killer on the street. She craned her neck and opened her mouth to call to her, just as she was beginning to utter the word-WHAM!- the mother was slammed by a bus. The class jerked in their seats and some screamed. *click!* the teacher paused the movie and looked around at us, giving us a moment to let it sink it. "There is a verb for that" she said (in Spanish) "Atropear. It means to be hit by a car."