Hello Everyone!

Hello Everyone!

My name is Raquel and I am from Costa Rica.

I have been teaching for 6 years now. I started to teach when I was very young.
I am starting my own language school this year, its very difficult at the beginning but not impossible.
 I mostly teach very young kids ( from 4 months old to 12 years old) I also manage groups of teens and adults.

I am eager to learn as much as I can in order to give my students the best. I spend all nights preparing material and thinking about the best ideas to become a better teacher.

My dream is to get a MA in TESOL and later on teach abroad.

I am looking forward to learn a lot from Juan and all of the participants!!

Nice to meet you!

Comments

  1. Danielle SalesApril 1, 2016 at 5:11 AM

    Hi Raquel. I would love to hear more about you on how to teach 4 months old babies! <3

    ReplyDelete
  2. Raquel CastroApril 1, 2016 at 9:17 AM

    Hi Danielle. Sure, I will tell you a bit through here.

    We have to work hard on the skills babies are using at that time (Sight and the listening skill)
    I make a combination between baby massages, stimulation of senses and the english class.
    All the class is developed in english, every instructions, every activities and all songs and games.
    I use flashcards to show them colors, animals, sounds and the contents we are working with them.
    We also work the socio affective area, by doing different activities with their mommies.
    Our goal is to introduce the language little by little, I prepare a beautiful portfolio and a routine which parents must use at least 2 times a day, we teach them the contents and the language too, so the kid hears english not only from teacher but from parents too.

    If you start early, by the age of 10 months and over, kids understand instructions, and even dance the songs by themselves. e.g One little finger song. They recognize up, down, body parts and so on.
    Its AMAZING!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Maha ZakariaApril 2, 2016 at 6:04 AM

    Oh great, I have a 6 month baby and I hope I can help her with such things too. Is there a website that can help me more with teaching babies or an online course about that

    ReplyDelete
  4. Raquel CastroApril 2, 2016 at 5:11 PM

    Hello Maha. In this moment I don´t have like a blog, website or something like that. I would love to have something like that in the future, I just started to work with that age last year , so I dont really consider myself an expert in the topic. But I do read a lot and also have learnt my colleagues who work early development. But any question or recommendation do not hesitate to contact me, it would be a pleasure to help you to teach english to your little baby since now.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Juan UribeApril 3, 2016 at 4:57 AM

    Hi Raquel! It is really exciting and challenging to open one's school, isn't it? I opened mine 22 years ago with my sister Sosô and we are very happy with the legacy we have created. Count on me on whatever you need. Hugs from Brazil!!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Raquel CastroApril 3, 2016 at 7:13 AM

    Thank you so much Juan!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TASK 2: Getting ready for storytelling.

TASK 2: Getting ready for storytelling. I have a group of 12 kids ranging from 7 to 8 years old. They are already familiarized with the characters of the book (Tina the tortoise, monkey, own, duck and rabbit). The leading character is Tina the tortoise. This is a pre-teaching activity and I bring realia objects to the classroom like: football, a coat, socks, a cap and a mug. I ask kids where Tina is: where is Tina? ( I act like I'm looking for her..) Oh look! Tina is in her shell! Tina come out and play! ( sound of a negative answer) Help me kids! Repeat: Tina come out and play! ( sound of a negative answer again). Let's try again but louder! Tina, come out and play! Tina answers: No, no! It's cold outside! I say: Tina let's swim! ( I make the gesture) Tina answers: no, no! It' cold outside! I let children have ideas showing the objects inside the box! Let's play football! Children keep trying to convince her (Put on a coat! Put on a cap! Put on your socks!). A...
Read more

Finding the right audience and making writing meaningful are two of the major challenges teachers face when...

Finding the right audience and making writing meaningful are two of the major challenges teachers face when designing writing activities. What affective strategies have you used that achieved these goals? Imagine asking a ten-year old student to write about the impact of the economic collapse in the USA. This student will not have much to say and he/she will feel frustrated. Now imagine asking a 17-year-old student to write about his/her favorite toy. This student will not feel excited to write about this because it is not part of his/her reality anymore. Of course, these are extreme examples, but we do have to take into consideration many aspects such as students's age, background, reality and interests when designing writing activities. Besides relating to students lives and realities writing acitivities should also cover three moments: pre writing, writing and post writing. In the first stage, we should activate students memories, feelings and senses providing them with the ...
Read more

Discussion task #2

Discussion task #2 Finding the right audience and making writing meaningful are two of the major challenges teachers face when designing writing activities. What affective strategies have you used that achieved these goals? 1) I try to personalize writing as much as possible. I usually start talking about myself to get students at ease and more open to share their own feelings and ideas towards the writing topic. Then I adapt the task to allow students to express themselves in a comfortable and confident way. 2) Finding the right audience is definitely a key issue in all writing tasks but it's even more important with young learners as they need to feel their writing is authentic and will be read by real audience. That's why I try to do peer check/correction before I read it myself. Whenever possible, I try to have students write to each other and reply back. As a different version of it, we created at our center (A wise owl) which students write to and get personalized replies...
Read more