Lessons Continue

At the beginning of the month I wrote that I was going to give English lessons twice a week to Alejandro's nephew Ezra via Skype.  Since then we have had three more lessons, and it seems to be going well.  I keep the lessons short... about a half hour... and he doesn't seem to view them as an onerous task.  Since he has had English classes in school since the first grade (he just finished fourth grade), much of the material is simply review, but there always seem to be some vocabulary and phrases that are new to him.

As I previously wrote, our first lesson was centered around basic personal information...  What's your name?  How old are you?  Where do you live? etc.  Our second lesson was about school.  We went over the names of all his class subjects, and I made flash cards with drawings representing the different classes.  I could tell that he had definitely never heard of our common term for gym class... phys. ed.!  That was a bit difficult for him to pronounce.

The next session dealt with weather.  We went over common weather expressions, and I threw in one which made him laugh... "It's raining cats and dogs."  I had a flash card with cats and dogs falling from the clouds.  I also made up pictures showing weather forecasts for cities around the world.

He had to tell me what the weather was like in each city, and tell me what the temperature was.  (At the same time he was also getting a little geography lesson, and a bit of science, seeing how degrees Fahrenheit and degrees Celsius compare!)

Our most recent lesson was about the family.  We went over family vocabulary, and I asked him questions about his family.  We then looked at a family tree diagram that I had made up, and he had to tell me relationships between the people.

At the end of each lesson I teach him a short, simple song, which he seems to enjoy very much.  In addition to "Are You Sleeping" which I taught him in our first lesson, he now knows "The Wheels on the Bus", "It's Raining, It's Pouring" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat".

After every four lessons I will do a review lesson, so the next time we go on Skype we will simply go over the previous material, and he can sing a song of his choice.

I hope Ezra is enjoying these lessons, as much I enjoy teaching him.  It's a teacher's dream... one sweet, intelligent student... no discipline problems... and no papers to grade!